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11
[1919
Medical Officer of Health when in practice in a dockyard town was so struck
by the want of knowledge among mothers, where the artizans and their wives
were of a superior class, that he raised his voice in a plea for the better training
of mothers so that they might rear healthy children. At that time the late Sir
George Turner was the Medical Officer of Health of Portsmouth, and he gave
the writer opportunities to study the question in that Borough, with the result
that he took up the subject, lectured on it in that town, and from that day to
now has never failed to do his utmost to prevent the serious waste of
infant life as well as the unnecessary pain and anguish suffered by little
children. His greatest regret was his failure in Islington, for so many
years to prevail on the Council to do its duty with regard to this class
of mortality, and were it not for the exertions he put forward privately,
this great Metropolitan Borough, instead of being to-day the happy
possessor of four Maternity and Child Welfare Centres and a Maternity
Home, which are doing a glorious work, would have been a figure of
scorn amongst the great communities of the country. Only the other
day his long fight for the much to be desired health visitors finished, for they
were at last appointed, and it is mainly, but not altogether, due to the zealous
manner in which the present Council took up the subject as soon as it was brought
before them. Perhaps the Labour Party as a class felt the want of instruction
among the women more than any other body of people in the community, and
was therefore most anxious to secure the services of educated and trained
women to visit and instruct those among the working classes who could not
afford to employ the services of medical men as readily as those in a better
position in life than they.*
The days of your adviser as Medical Officer of Health arc numbered, for
the time must soon arrive when he must seriously think of handing over his
most anxious and responsible duties—the greatest that can be borne by any
borough official—to a younger and more vigorous man who, when the day
comes, will be able to start with a Borough well equipped to secure good results
in fighting the battle of the infants and young children in it. The
Medical Officer of Health would indeed have looked on his failure to secure
for Islington a well equipped staff and institutions as the greatest failure of
his life ; but now he feels that whenever he retires it will be with the
satisfaction of knowing that so far as he is concerned he has been the means of
providing a staff that is second to none in London and far better than most,
and that too whether having regard to maternity and child welfare or any
other branch of public health work.
" The previous Maternity and Child Welfare Committee had taken the matter up and at the
time of the Election in November, 1919, had largely decided on their action with regard to child
welfare work.