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23
One district is assigned to each Lady Health Visitor, and in the
special streets so named and defined every household in which a
birth occurs is visited on or about the eleventh day after the birth
if the mother is up, or earlier on request, or if there is reason to
believe that the mother is unattended by doctor, midwife or nurse.
It is important to notice that, in these streets referred to, every
birth is visited, and not merely births in those households where
the parents are ostensibly poor or dirty.
There are three streets in District 1—Chapel Street, Sekforde
Street, and St. John Street, and three streets in District 2—City
Road, Goswell Road, and Old Street, where visits arc discretionary
and confincd to mothers in poor circumstances, mothers living in
attics or in one-roomed or two-roomed tenements in squalid, dirty
surroundings. Although many infant deaths have occurred in
these six streets, many of their inhabitants aire better-class people
and well-to-do tradesmen who do not need the help of the health
visitors.
In other streets only those births are supervised where the
mothers arc very young, careless, negligent, ill-treated, alcoholic,
deserted, living in poor and domestically squalid surroundings, or
are known to be the chief or sole wage-earners for their families,
or where the children are first children, wasting, debilitated, ailing,
illegitimate or twins.
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.
When the desirability of visiting a mother is a matter of doubt,
a very good test is to ask her to show for inspection the soap
with which she washes the baby. If the mother at once, and