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garment-making and cookery was given, and information concerning
all those various activities was brought into the homes by trained health
visitors. We live in days when maternity and child welfare is a term
in common currency, and remote indeed must be the township which does
not possess its welfare centre. But in the early days of the Society
it required high courage to break down the defensive barriers of those
who felt it an indignity to be told how to bring up their own children.
In 1918 the Society gave up the work in that part of the city comprising
the wards of Victoria, Knightsbridge St. George and Hamlet of Knightsbridge,
and the Council took over their duties. The same premises at
No. 1, Pimlico Road were used as a centre, and the health visiting was
reorganised, an additional visitor being appointed to the Council's staff.
The scheme was enlarged in 1920 by the opening of another centre at
15, Bessborough Street.
The City is thus served by two centres administered by the Council
in the area mentioned above, and in the remaining and larger portion by
two centres organised by the Westminster Health Society. Of the latter,
one is situated in Soho at 60, Greek Street, and the other at 100, Rochester
Row, in St. John's Ward.
The Society have felt for some years that the work at the Rochester
Row centre is being seriously hampered by lack of accommodation. The
building is an old dwelling-house, the ground floor of which was formerly
a shop. The building is high, the stairs are narrow and steep, and the
rooms are small. A scheme to build a new centre in the neighbourhood
is in contemplation, and it is hoped to put into this project all the modern
notions of what a maternity and child welfare centre should be. The
Society, faced with the end of the lease of their northern centre at 60,
Greek Street, came reluctantly to the conclusion that they ought to
concentrate all their energies and resources on the scheme for a new centre
in place of that at Rochester Row. Accordingly, in December they
intimated to the Council their intention to discontinue the work in the
northern area when the lease of 60, Greek Street, ends in June, 1926.
Ante-natal Work.—Expectant mothers are brought in touch with the
centres by introduction from mothers who already attend : they may be
recommended by the health visitors or by the almoners of hospitals to
which the women have applied for assistance in their confinements.
Some arc sent by midwives. Thus 817 became known to the centres,
and 796 primary visits were paid to them in their homes by the health
visitors; subsequent visits numbered 1,169. Ante-natal clinics are held
once a week at each of the Council's centres by Dr. Ethel Vernon, who