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The larger gains in the Town Hall babirs are correlated to the
better social status of the mothers who attend there.
For purposes of comparison, it is found as the result of many
enquiries that the average Finsbury baby, fed on good food and
born of a careful mother, gains, during the first few months of life,
at the rate of 5 ozs. weekly.
SPECIAL BIRTH INQUIRY—In 1911 a special investigation
was made into 200 Finsbury births, taken consecutively as they
occurred in the poorest streets of the borough.
There weie 108 male children, and 92 females; 146 were under
one month at the time of the first visit ; 24 were over one month
and under two months of age. One hundred belonged to Clerkenwell
and the same number to St. Luke's.
Cleanliness of Children.—On the first visit 169 of the
children were found to be distinctly dirty and unwashed between
11 a.m. and 12 mid-day ; 108 of the children—or more than half—
were vermin bitten, some excessively so.
This disregard for the personal cleanliness of their babies is
only too manifest in the poorer streets. It is not due to poverty—
homes may be found where the direst poverty prevails, and yet
where the walls, floor, ceiling, household utensils, and children are
scrupulously clean. It is sometimes due to sheer weariness;
mothers who have to return to work hard to maintain the family a
week or two after their confinements are apt to delegate the
washing to a neighbour, or to one of the other children, often an
immature girl of 10 or 12 years.
The presence of vermin is looked upon almost as a necessary
evil. Insect powders are very rarely used. The method of
extermination usually adopted is to squash the bug between the
forefinger, the thumbnail, or the handle of a kitchen utensil, and
the subjacent wall, leaving the wallpaper stained red in patches,
and discoloured. A more drastic procedure is to apply a lighted
match to the insect. This leaves the wallpaper or the whitewash