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10
By the Act, local Registrars are allowed to inspect the notifications
received, and to compare them with their own list. By
this means it is possible to trace those parents who have not
sent information to the Public Health Office. To these a printed
form is sent drawing attention to the omission and asking that
the notice shall be sent. This has always been effective.
The number of notices of omission sent out to parents have
been in 1908, 277; in 1909, 181; in 1910, 196 letters.
The explanation tendered is often ignorance of the existence
of the Act, the exigencies of daily employment "working early
and late," or a confusion with the terms of the Births and Deaths
Registration Act 1874, which enacts that all births must be
registered within 42 days.
Occasionally the notice is sent written in a large round schoolboy
hand—probably dictated to her son by the mother or by
a neighbour.
The following is an example : —
"To the Gentlman of the Gardians,
I am taking my pen in hand hopeing you are in the best
of health as it leaves mother at preseant and for me to say
that she as had a baby girl according to the rules of the baord
of health this is all at preseant with best rispects from
Perce.
it is a girl and she as got to have the name of rose after
mother but father he don't hold with it. Excue pencil no more
at preseant."
In these homely letters it is not uncommon to find the name,
the date, and the address omitted.
The number of notifications received in 1910 was 3,566—consisting
of 1,848 males and 1,718 females. There were 42 sets
of twins, no triplets, but one case in which four children were
born at a birth—these four all died within a few days. There
were 89 still-births.