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7
Under her care charitable persons in the town instituted
a "Baby's Welcome Club" for helping poorer mothers with
the necessaries for their confinements. This is very much
wanted here, as I hear from the midwives, who are now under
my supervision, that the absence of the most necessary
appliances causes great hardship amongst many of the poor.
I have little faith in the creche. If the baby is taken
care of the mother goes out to work, and our object should
be to keep the mother at home to suckle her child and look
after it. There are too many men idle nowadays whilst
their wives work for lower wages than men will take.
Suitable milk for babies can be made by proper mixtures
of milk and cream. Not as good as human milk, but very
fair if supplied in aseptic stoppered bottles, each containing
sufficient for one meal according to age. Any dairyman with
his own cows could provide such milk.
I trust you will very carefully consider the question of
appointing a Lady Health Visitor. I have written enough
to show you that a suitable woman would save many lives,
and what perhaps is better still save much illness in childhood
which would otherwise lay the foundations of a diseased
constitution for adult years, when you would have to keep
the person in workhouse or lunatic asylum. Any three
persons you might thus save would cost you as much in the
future as a Lady Health Visitor would in the present, and as
the figures I have given you will show the people saved from
workhouse or asylum would be nearer 30 than 3. These 30
healthy workers would mean wages in circulation instead of
30 paupers annually added to the charge on your poor rates.
If the Lady Health Visitor did not find enough work
amongst the babies, you have some 500 or more children kept
away from school for weeks at a time with ringworm, etc.,
who all the time are losing the attendance grant. With care
and early attention these heads might often be cured in as
many days as it now takes weeks.
There is therefore a large field of work for a Lady Health
Visitor, and I trust you may see your way to find the small
sum of money necessary to establish such a useful addition
to your staff.