View report page

17
A much more serious difficulty is how to deal with those babies
where no access is obtained to the tenement. These are the
homes where the mother is the chief or sole support of the family
and maintains an idle, dissolute, or unemployable husband. This
type of home is far too common in the poorer parts of the borough
and to a large extent is, in these quarters, of the very essence of
the problem of the prevention of infantile mortality.
In these streets, the mother, on getting up, gives the children
their breakfast, washes them, sends them to school, fastens the
door, goes to work at 8.30 a.m. as a charwoman, leaves the baby
with a friend elsewhere or with the landlady, and returns home
between 6 p.m. and 8 p.m. The husband may leave at the same
time as the mother, or more frequently stays in bed until 11 a.m.
or midday, then goes out and returns about midnight. The
children are fed in school, or receive a halfpenny or a penny to buy
fried fish or •' pieces " for their mid-day meal.
•
In these cases, if two visits of non-access are paid, a letter is
written to the mother making an appointment for a reasonable and
appropriate time. Otherwise, the neighbours are asked to obtain
the baby's address.
Sometimes there is no access to the home because the mother is
out shopping, is in a public house bar, or because all the children
are dirty, ill-developed, under-sized or ill, and the mother wishes
to conceal this fact.
Occasionally the mother is out drinking, this is chiefly on
Monday or when there has been a recent death in the house or in
the family of a neighbour.
Illustrative Cases. -
1. The mother resented visitation. She did not consider it
necessary for anybody to call and see her baby as she had already
had 4 children and they were all living and healthy. When these
four children were seen, however, they were found to be all very
ricketty, ill-developed, short, slightly deformed and able to walk
with difficulty.