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severe diarrhoea. This food was being cooked in a can containing
the dregs of stale ale. A little cod liver oil and malt were beingadded
to the mixture, which when warm was poured into a dirty,
offensive-smelling feeding-bottle from which the teat had been
lost. The teat was eventually found on the floor. It was being
used for play by a kitten. The bottle was kept on a very dirty
dresser, and was placed on dirty clothes which awaited washing.
The baby was unwashed at 3 p.m. It was clothed in a flannelette
vest, a dirty napkin, and enveloped in an old piece of rugging.
An older child, years, very poorly clad, slept in a broken
perambulator. Four chldren slept on the floor on discarded coats
and old sacking. The father and mother slept in the kitchen on
the only bed they possessed. The father was a general labourer
earning 22s. a week.
5. The baby was four months old, and the fourth child. All
the children were living. The family occupied 2 rooms. The baby
at the age of four months weighed 1½ 1bs. less than it did on the
day it was born. It had been ordered to have 2 pints of milk by
the hospital doctor, but the mother stated she could not afford
more than half a pint a day. She did not tell the hospital authorities
of her poverty. She asserted that "if anything did happen
to the baby, she was all light for the certificate from the hospital
because she had done her best for it."
6. The baby was 3 weeks old and the sixth child. Only three
children now lived. The baby was breast-fed, clean, but wasting
and suffering from diarrhoea. The mother used to give it "a few
spoonfuls of groats the last thing at night to compose it. It settled
the child till the morning."
7. The baby was 4 months old. The mother used to take it
to the grandmother's house and leave it with a girl 15 years old.
The grandmother and mother went out to work daily. The mother
brought a little patent food in paper for the girl-minder to place
in a saucepan with boiling water and boil the whole up for the
baby's food. She guessed the quantity, and said, "I mixes it as
I thinks. I tastes a drop and if it tastes all right, I give it to
baby." The food seen was very thick and dirty.