View report page

236
unwisely. This pernicious system prevails to such an extent that
not a few seem to practise it from week to week throughout the year,
and unite in one habit both thriftlessness and alcoholism. Such
conditions result in a two-fold effect, namely, money is wasted
which should be spent on better food and clothing—which are
among the greatest needs of many women and girls working in
Finsbury—and an excess of alcohol-drinking brings its own quota
of disease.
(6) Then, lastly, there is Poverty. Absolute poverty is a difficult,
if not impossible, tiling accurately to measure. Relative poverty,
on the other hand, is so evident in Finsbury that it needs no
measurement to emphasise its existence. Poverty, of course, means
limited house accommodation and poor or unsuitable or insufficient
food, and, indirectly, it leads to uncleanliness and the strain of continual
effort in the struggle for existence. Many of the lifehistories
which we have obtained of dead or sickly infants, reveal
the acuteness of these conditions in many homes in Finsbury.
It lias been known for a long time that poor districts have
(a) a higher death rate, (6) a higher infant mortality, and (c) a
lower physical standard than districts more favourably conditioned.
But frequently this has been attributed to external conditions of
insanitation, naturally more marked as a rule in poor districts.
In point of fact it is probably more due to internal conditions arising
from poverty, the stress of life, ignorance, and most of all perhaps,
from a lower standard of constitution. Not that poverty necessitates
a low standard of constitution—for there are thousands of poor
homes which, happily, make such a conclusion impossible—but
that the conditions which follow in the train of poverty tend more
frequently than otherwise to surround people with an unsatisfactory
environment, from which they cannot escape, and which, combined
with lack of knowledge, exerts an injurious influence on their
physical life. What effect these conditions have upon their moral
well-being it is not within my province to discuss, though, in my
opinion, there is a definite and intimate relation between morality
and public and personal health.