View report page

15
Other households are visited on request, or on complaint as to
ill-treatment, neglect or exposure.
While the first visits are made in a general way all over the
borough, revisits and supervision of a minute character are
chiefly directed to the babies who are not thriving, babies who
are debilitated, ill, neglected, dirty, badly fed or clad, "wasters,"
twins, and others who need careful watching and attention. Very
few visits are paid to those mothers who have successfully reared
large families and have lost none, or only earlier children. It is
astonishing sometimes to see how these children of large and
entire families thrive in spite of dirt, neglect, exposure and the
violation of every sanitary precept by a careless, fool-happy and
slatternly mother.
Some of these babies, as soon as they are able to crawl or even
before, are placed on the kerb early in the day, watched or nursed
by a girl of 4 or 5 years. In a few hours both the baby and the
"nurse" may be filthy and gutter-stained: they are true gutterchildren.
Sometimes both are asleep.
Sometimes the immature nurse sleeps, wearied with a task far
above her strength, while the baby crawls to the other side of the
road, heedless of the traffic.
It is believed that in such families the members possess or have
achieved a resistance to the commoner ailments of childhood. The
stock from which they have sprung rises superior, and is immune
to the ordinary diseases of children.
Such a resistance, such an immunity is known to exist amongst
animals; without doubt it may also be present in human beings.
In the case of a reference to a philanthropic agency, the method
adopted is to urge the mother to attend for a personal interview
with the Secretary or the executive officer of the society or
organisation.