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co-ordinate the various welfare schemes of individual boroughs
within those groups. The County Council have not yet been constituted
a welfare council as provided by section 250 Public Health
(London) Act, 1936, and the duties of such an authority cannot be
transferred to them under the Local Government Act, 1929, as
section 60 does not apply to London. Satisfactory co-ordination,
however, cannot be obtained without new legislation to confer the
powers of a welfare council upon the County Council and that
presumably will be the next step. Dual control will result with all
the evils of such a misfortune and only the usual bait of problematical
advantages which never seem to accrue. The final result will
inevitably be that the Borough Council will no longer be a Welfare
Council and all activities will be under the direct, but distant,
control of the County Council. The close touch between individual
families and the various committees of the Borough Council will be
lost—and it is upon that close touch that the success of the Lambeth
scheme has been based—and be replaced by a vast and expensive
County Council scheme of control into which all must fit the
Procrustes' bed. It is to be hoped that the maternal mortality rate
in Lambeth will not be raised as a result.
Infantile Mortality Rates
The infantile mortality rate is based upon the number of deaths
under one year of age per 1,000 births registered. The corrected
number of births was 3,871, an increase of 48 over the number of
births in the year previous. The corrcctcd number of deaths was
230, giving an infantile mortality rate of 59.