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competent glands, organs, muscles and body juices. The prevention
of these deaths is almost entirely a question of relief.
Pneumonia and Bronchitis.— In six years these diseases
caused 419 deaths, in 1912, 55 deaths.
These deaths in Finsbury are nearly always due to exposure
caused by insufficient clothing, by improper cotton clothing, or
by carelessness. The first two causes are often associated with
poverty, the third cause with the mother's absence while working,
shopping, or drinking. It is quite common in mean streets to
see the baby on the doorstep, clad in little or no clothing, left
in the care of a girl from 10 to 14 years, while the mother is
from home. The establishment of a centre where cheap clothes
can be obtained for poor mothers and their babies would be of
great benefit in this connection. The institution of schools for
little nurses would doubtless be also of much advantage.
Sometimes when the mother goes drinking she takes the baby
with her, and leaves it at the door of the public-house by itself
in a cheap mail-cart, or watched by a child.
Excluding the cases associated with drink, the rest would
appear in the main to be instances calling for relief from a
"clothing centre" or from a "dinner centre," and calling too
for the awakening of an acute personal responsibility in the
parents.
The Borough Council officials supply woollen vests for babies
at cost price to those who can pay, gratis to poor mothers.
The acute cases are either sent to institutions or nursed at
home. Nurses are supplied by churches, chapels, missions, and
by the Association for the Nursing of the Sick Poor.
It is difficult to see how these deaths can be prevented by the
public health measures at present available.
Action might more appropriately be taken under Section 12 of
the Children Act, 1908.