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Death-rate per 1,000 of Depot-fed
Infants, excluding deaths of infants
taking the milk for less than one
week.
Death-rate of
Infants attending
from the whole
Borough.
Death-rate of
Infants attending
from E. & N.W.
Battersea.
68.8
63.4
Infantile mortality per 1,000 births
excluding deaths of infants under
7 days old.
Mortality in
E. & N.W.
Batter sea.
Mortality in
whole Borough.
118.9
139.7
From these figures it appears that the mortality of infants
in the Borough during the last six months of 1902 was 87.5
per cent, higher than the mortality in the Depot-fed children,
and that taking the mortality in East and North-West
Battersea only, the difference is no less than 103 per cent.
It may be argued that the above comparison is fallacious,
on the ground that the mothers of the children attending the
Depôt may be asumed to be more intelligent and alive to the
children's welfare than the average mother, and that in any
case these children would have had a better chance of survival.
There is an element of truth in the contention, but that this
influence is more than counteracted is apparent, in my opinion,
from the following considerations:—
1. By far the greater number of children attending the
Depot were in a state of ill-health on admission, and a large
number were already seriously ill. The milk is in many
cases regarded more as a medicine than as a food, and when
the baby has recovered from the illness which brought it to
the Depôt, the milk is often discontinued, and the usual
condensed milk is resumed. The Depot death-rate should,
therefore, be regarded as somewhat analogous to a dispensary
death-rate. Moreover, the milk is frequently misused, being
poured from the sterilised bottle into the ordinary lethal bottle
with the long rubber tube.
2. Most of the Depôt infants were under six months old,
whereas the majority of the infants outside would be aged