View report page

21
The majority of the work in connection with visiting of infants
at their homes notified under the Notification of Births Act
is carried out by one of the health visitors (Miss Peacock), who
states in her report : " Visiting under the Notification of Births
Act brings us face to face with difficulties with which only the
very poor have to cope. It is a recognised fact that the poorest
people have the largest families, and as a natural consequence
the health of the children is bound to suffer. Quite recently a
sugeestion has been made that a clinic should be opened for
children between the ages of one and five years, where they may
be examined by a doctor and then passed on to the hospitals, if
necessary. Now judging from experience in visiting, the children
who are most likely to need the services of such a clinic are those
whose parents have large families, including several children under
ten years of age. For instance, to quote an actual case, the
mother is a delicate young woman and her husband a labourer,
they have five children, the eldest only four years old, two pairs
of twins. All of the twins are in need of constant medical attention,
but it seems almost an impossibility for them to obtain it for
it is quite unlikely that any other woman would be willing to look
after three or four young children and prepare dinner for a husband
without payment, while the mother is visiting a hospital and
perhaps not arriving home until late in the afternoon or evening.
This is only one case among many. Several of the women visited
have five children under seven years of age. The result is that the
mother's health is undermined by lack of food and continual
strain of maternity. Each baby as it arrives is weaker than the
last. It seems almost impossible to obtain help to enable the
mother to pay someone to look after the children while she visits
the hospital, the consequence being that her own health permanently
suffers, so they are, if not actually unhealthy, yet
weakly, and unable to resist attacks of disease when they do come.
The Battersea Mothers' Dining-room is the only adequate attempt
to cope with this weakness. It is a voluntary effort which carries
on its work in an admirable manner, but unfortunately it suffers
from lack of funds. Unfortunately, too, there is only one branch
of the institution in the Borough, and therefore too far distant
from other districts of the Borough requiring its services."
To the superstition still prevailing amongst mothers with regard
to the cutting of the nails of their children is attributed by the
health visitor the frequent appearance of suppurating sores on
babies' heads and faces, with swollen glands. Miss Peacock quotes
an amusing instance of this superstition that if a child's finger
nails are cut it will grow up a thief, one woman assuring her that
the only one of her children who had had his nails cut during
that period, and who was then four years old, could not keep his
fingers from the sugar basin.