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89
Labour and Economic Conditions.—The mothers of three
families volunteered information as to their daily routine, their
home circumstances and their expenditure. These statements
are inserted here so that it may be realised how extremely difficult
it is in actual practice to deal with these cases of phthisis in
their own homes. They are not cases specially chosen save for
the fact that the mothers were poor and communicative.
1 Poverty, Difficulties of Isolation, Possible Infection
of the Family.—The family consisted of the father, mother,
and three children, 9 years, 4 years, 2 years, and occupied a
one-roomed tenement in a mean street, rented at 4s. weekly.
There was five weeks' rent owing. The father was a labourer
in casual employment, and had had no work at all for two
weeks at the time of the visit. For many months the family
had lived on articles pawned, and the odd pence earned by the
father in the streets, minding carts and horses, portering, or
doing "anything that came his way." The mother was thirty
years old and had phthisis. The room was dirty, squalid, smelt
offensively, and contained one bed. The floor was black with
grime. The mother pawned her husband's shirts and pants for
2s. 6d., and spent the money as follows:—Tea dust (2 oz.) 2d.;
sugar (1 lb.), 2d.; condensed milk, 2d.; margarine (4 oz.), 2d.;
coal, 4½d.; gas, Id.; potatoes, 2d.; sausages, 4d.; bread, 5½d.;
tobacco and cigarette papers, l½d.; borrowed money repaid, 2d,;
pawn ticket, 1d.; paid a woman for pawning clothes, ½d. The
mother had ½d. over from the previous day. She did not go to
the pawn shop herself—it is generally considered that a woman
who is well known to the pawnbroker can get better terms than
a casual visitor.
The father brought home l½d.
On the next day further articles were pawned for 2s., expended
as follows:—Coal, 4½d.; sugar, 1d.; bread, 5½d.; potatoes, 2d.;
tea dust, 2d.; condensed milk, 2d.; soap, l½d.; soda, ½d.; wood,
½d.; sausages, 3d.; gas, 1d.; butter, 2d.