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merit for mothers in a poor Borough like Bermondsey is the
trouble of providing adequate help in looking after the husband
and children while the mother is being confined in an institution.
Being confined in an institution has many advantages for the
mother, since she is away from the cares and worries of an ordinary
home, and can be provided with the best medical attention and
the necessary quiet to enable her to make a rapid and good
recovery. Practical experience, however, shows that many
mothers who are confined in an institution are more worried than
they would be if they were confined at home because they imagine
that everything would go wrong in the latter during their absence.
The question of providing home helps was considered by the
department, but it was felt that the proposal was an impracticable
one, and that sufficient municipal helps could never be provided
for all the cases needing them. An alternative proposal, and one
which I hope will be carried out one day, is that we should keep a
a list of women who are willing to act as home helps, and that
the condition of their being placed on this list is that they are
of a respectable character, and agree to attend a certain number
of lectures on the after-care of mothers who have been confined
and their infants, these lectures to be provided by the staff of the
Public Health Department. Other more important public health
reforms, however, have delayed the adoption of this proposal.
MIDWIVES.
As mentioned under the heading "Lying-in Hostel," there
was a great dearth of midwives practising in the Borough, and
besides starting a hostel the Council decided to engage two municipal
midwives to attend to mothers living in the Rotherhithe end
of the Borough, as it was in this region that the want of skilled
attendance for mothers on the birth of their children was most
felt. The same reasons, however, which caused the closing of the
hostel, decided the Council to utilise the services of the midwives,
who were fully qualified nurses, in another direction. They had
not been started many months when the number of women requiring
their services fell off, and accordingly it was decided to
bring their duties to an end in April, 1921.