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Annual Report of the Medical Officer of Health,—1893. 31
It is difficult to exaggerate the vast importance to the parish, that you,
gentlemen, should take immediate steps to check the existing excessive and
needless mortality among young and helpless children. Brought up in the poisoned
air of crowded courts and tenements, these gutter children are terribly handicapped
in the race of life.
As the late Dr. Farr remarked— "the weaklier lives are, under this state of
things, cut off; but it must also be borne in mind that many of the strongest children
are wounded and are left weakly for life."
Apart from general moral and sanitary measures, I have no special remedies
to suggest for these evils, other than those urged in my Annual Report for 1892.
They are the provision of:—
(1) Open breathing spaces.
(2) Creches or day nurseries for the better protection of infants
during the hours they are deprived of maternal care.
It would be idle for me again to expatiate on the advantages resulting from open
spaces—since my advice on this matter has been so often proffered, hitherto, I regret
to say, without any practical result.
A large proportion of the mothers of St. George's follow occupations such as
fur pulling (peculiar so far as I know to the Borough), collar dressing, laundry
work, sweetmeat packing to wholesale confectioners, working in pickle, jam, and other
factories, box making, book folding, and mantle making. The only creche known to
me in this parish is one connected with the church of St. Alphege, and situate at
No. 23, Warwick-Street.
It is open, at a charge of 3d. per day, from 8 a.m. to 8 p.m. daily, with the
exception of Sundays, when it is closed altogether, and on Saturdays, when the
closing hour is 3 p.m.
The creche, supplied with seven cots, accommodates as many as 20 boys and girls
between the ages of three weeks and four years.
Two nurses, specially skilled in the rearing and feeding of children, are in
constant attendance. An increase in the number of partially self-supporting creches
within the parish would, I believe, materially lessen the high death rate and higher
sick rate among the children of those mothers who work during the day in factories
and workshops.