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It is obvious that this condition of things must be due, in large
measure, to the physical condition of the mother, and indeed we
have proved it to be so, both in 1906 and 1907 (see Report for
1906, p. 50). In spite of the tendency of Nature on behalf of the
new-born child, poor physique and ill-nutrition of the mother
exert, in a considerable number of cases, an injurious effect on
the infant.
The attached table sets out a number of facts ascertained by
the Lady Inspectors with regard to 212 out of the 368 infant
deaths occurring during the year. This table may well be compared
with that appearing in last year's Report at p. 53.
A few notes may be added as follows:—
(a) Conditions of Homo.—Most of the homes, indeed as
many as 75 per cent., consisted of only two rooms or less, but
this is not remarkable in a district so largely composed of such
tenement dwellings. What is more noticeable is that only 10
per cent, of the homes in which the infant deaths occurred were
thoroughly unclean and badly kept. The percentage of unclean
homes was somewhat higher in the cases of death from Epidemic
Diarrhœ than from all causes.
(b) Occupation of the Mother—As last year we find a
comparatively small fraction (13.7 per cent.) of the mothers are
absent from homes where infant deaths have occurred. The
majority (65 per cent.) of the mothers of these dead infants had
no work of any kind except to attend to their family duties, and
as many as 85 per cent. of them were able to devote the necessary
time to the tendance of infancy.*
*Our attention has been drawn this year to several cases of respectable
young mothers who have lost their husbands shortly before or shortly after
the birth of a child, also to mothers with young infants at the breast whose
husbands are in institutions entirely incapacitated by mental or bodily
ill-health. In nearly every instance out relief was either absent or the
amount granted was so inadequate that the mother was obliged to put
her infant out to nurse, and go to work, the only alternative offered by
the Poor Lw being to give up her home and go into the workhouse with
the child, a course repugnant to many respectable women. It is a wellknown
fact that the mortality among children, put out to nurse is higher
than among children under their mother's care, and it is not surprising
that several of these children died. It would appear as if a modification
of the rules regulating the administration of outdoor relief to respectable
widows or wives deprived of their husbands' support might lessen the
mortality among infants, as these cases are not infrequently met with.