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Pine Street Maternity and Child Welfare Centre.
The Pine Street Maternity and Child Welfare Centre was
opened by the Marquess and Marchioness of Northampton, April
4th, 1927, and the opening ceremony marked the consummation
of a desire, long entertained by the Finsbury Borough Council,
to provide the Borough with a new Maternity and Child Welfare
Centre embodying in an attractive building the best accommodation
and equipment that architectural knowledge and administrative
experience can suggest.
Historically, it is the culmination of the gradual progression
and development of a work initiated by the Borough Council some
quarter of a century ago, having for its object the amelioration
of the conditions of motherhood and the care and nurture of infant
life. How small was the beginning, and how surely and deliberately
the work has year by year expanded, may be gathered from the
brief chronological narrative which follows.
The first modest step was taken in the year 1903, when the
Borough Council, impressed with the high infantile death rate of
that period, made arrangements for the giving of lectures on infant
feeding and domestic hygiene. In 1904 the Council co-operated
in the establishment of a milk depot in the Borough, to be managed
by a voluntary Committee of medical men, for the sale of specially
prepared milk for infants. In 1906 this depot was taken over by
the Borough Council as a municipal undertaking. At this period
attention was further directed to the educational side of the question.
The female Sanitary Inspectors were instructed to visit
mothers in their homes and advise them in matters of personal
hygiene and the welfare of their babies. A school for mothers,
established by a voluntary body, was used as a centre for lectures
by, and consultations with, the Council's medical and sanitary
officers. The material side was also enlarged by the adoption of
special arrangements for the free or cheap supply of dried milk.
These provisions remained in force until 1910, when the Council
adopted a policy based upon a wider application of educational