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Many of these day foster-mothers are most unfitted and
unsuitable for this self-imposed task. Some are infirm, or
crippled, others are dirty, filthy, domestically squalid and offensive.
In effect, they keep modified creches, but evade the provisions
of the Children Act, 1908, by supervising the children only during
the daytime. Under the Children Act, notice to the local
authority is only necessary if the infant is received for 48 hours or
longer.
Some of these modern Mother Gamps were found to be living in
very dirty domestic surroundings—in a few instances the yards
where the children played were strewn with the excrement of
many days and decaying vegetable matter. The children on the
premises were in very poor condition and ricketty.
Notices were served for the various public health nuisances
and abatements effected. It must be realised, however, in this
connection, that public health intervention is only palliative—true
prevention lies in the readjustment of labour and economic conditions
which have rendered it necessary for the mothers to work
in order to support the family and an ailing, unemployed, unemployable,
or dissolute husband.
ILLUSTRATIVE CASES.
1. Improper Reception and Difficulties of Accommodation.-An
illegitimate child was left for payment, soon after
its birth, in the care of a woman and her husband, wl.o already
had 12 children—girls, 20, 17, 14, 11, 7, 6, 4 years, and a baby 10
months; and boys, 26, 25, 23, and 9 years of age.
No notice of the reception of the child was given to the Local
Authority as required by law.
The family occupied a three-roomed tenement in Finsbury consisting
of one out kitchen, one small front room hardly ever used,
and one bedroom. The rooms were all dirty and verminous.
The adopted child was undersized, had its face covered with sores,
and suffered from ophthalmia.
It was fed on condensed milk.