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18
The number of births which actually occurred in the borough
during the year was 4,027. The number of births notified therefore
amounted to 84 per cent, of the total.
The following measures are adopted with a view to diminishing
the mortality among voung infants.
All houses where births have taken place are visited by one of
the health visitors, if the home circumstances are such as to make
it probable that any advice given will be acceptable or necessary.
No hard and fast rule is drawn, but an endeavour is made to include
all houses where a medical man is not likely to be in attendance
for more than ten days after the confinement of the mother. The
number of visits paid during 1914, amounted to 5,342. In most
instances it is not possible to make more than two visits during the
first six months of life.
Other means to check infantile mortality in Croydon include
inquiries into deaths under one year of age, and the very general
dissemination of leaflets. A special handbill has been prepared in
connection with puerperal fever and other accidents of childbirth,
clothing of infants, the feeding and care of infants, and summer
diarrhoea. Health lectures or talks to mothers have also been very
generally given by members of the staff during the past 11 years,
and as many as 420 addresses have been given during that period.
4
INFANT MORTALITY IN WEST WARD.
During 1913 the Council directed that a special enquiry be
made into the causes of infant mortality in the West Ward of the
borough. The Medical Officer of Health made as exhaustive an
investigatioQ into the subject as the available information permitted,
and the resultant report was carefully considered by the
Sanitary Committee and subsequently by the Council. It was
thereupon resolved that an Infant Centre be established in a suitable
situation where medical infant consultations might be held
and mothers advised and instructed generally on the proper
methods of rearing children. The report is given here in extenso,
and is followed by a short account of the establishment and the
early days of the working of the Infant and Children's Centre.
20th March, 1914.
To the Sanitary Committee.
Mr. Chairman and Gentlemen,
I beg to submit the following report upon the infantile mortality
in the West Ward of the Borough
By Infantile Mortality is meant the number of deaths of infants
under one year of age for every 1,000 births in the same locality.