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were employed only in their household and family
affairs, 8 per cent, were outworkers, and only 7 per
cent, go out to work. Seven women were hawkers in
the streets, and in the habit of taking the baby with
them about their business.
Births.
Eight hundred and seven visits have been paid to
houses where births have occurred. In spite of the
fact that their parents are very poor, and that the
mothers have to work hard, the majority of Bethnal
Green babies, when born, are very fine babies. And
it is not found that the mothers are so ignorant as is
generally supposed. Indeed, in these days, when
every newspaper, novelette and magazine has its page
of advice on home and nursery matters, hygiene, cooking,
baby-clothing, etc.; with hospitals and dispensaries
within the reach of all; with district visitors,
health societies, and mothers’ meetings, beside sanitary
inspectors and health visitors, there is little excuse for
ignorance. Often through poverty, sometimes through
carelessness, lack of method, indolence, hopelessness,
or through sheer force of habit, (they do much as their
mothers before them did), the present day mothers do
not give their babies the care an infant requires; but
this is not because they do not know. When enquiries
are made as to the method of treatment, the things
that are told me are often exactly what they should
be, even when there is reasonable cause to doubt that
this course of action has actually been followed.
Nor are the mothers always ready to follow advice
when it is given. They first submit the advice to the