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occasionally given good bundles of clothes for the baby. These
she sold. She said it was "no good going out with an organ
unless you had a child with you—you might just as well stay at
home." The mother had already been imprisoned for exposing
another child.
Cape and Condition of Baby.—Many of the babies when
first seen were wasting, improperly or irregularly fed, insufficiently,
improperly or too tightly clothed, or occasionally suffered from
exposure or neglect. For some babies the parents possessed no
clothes
Very few slept throughout in a separate cot, nearly all slept
with their parents at night, even though they slept elsewhere
during the day time.
Some babies were premature and delicate. Others were dirty,
and savaged and blood-raked by vermin. Some of the babies were
ill, suffering from measles, bronchitis, pneumonia, diarrhoea,
thrush, sore eyes, sore navels, sore buttocks, rickets, rupture,
harelip and cleft palate.
Many of the infants were left during the mothers absence in the
care of quite young girls, from 10 to 16 years, or of their grandmothers,
blind or infirm. Where the course is possible, the
mothers are advised to put the babies out in the back-garden in
a perambulator or push cart in the afternoon. This is not without
its risks, because boys from adjoining houses throw stones at
the pushcart.
Some parents do more for their children when they are dead
than when they are alive. One mother fully clothed her dead
baby in flannel for burial, and sewed on its flannel binder. Another
mother bought socks and woollen vests for her dead child in order
that it might be buried "decent and comfortable." During life
both these children had been very sparingly clothed in cotton,
had never had socks, and had never worn woollen clothes.
When the child becomes ill, some mothers imagine they have
done all that is necessary when they have "fetched a bottle of