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In respect of 1,277 of the 2,503 births in families regarded as coming within the scope of the
Council's scheme, the expectant mothers received ante-natal advice at the special clinics held at the
Queen Charlotte's Nurses Home and the Infant Welfare Centres. The women who gave birth to
the remaining 1,226 children may have received professional attention by private medical men or at
Hospitals, but it is probable that the majority did not secure for themselves the advantages of that
skilled ante-natal advice which is now generally recognised to be of the greatest value.
All those voluntary and official workers engaged in the operation of the Council's Maternity and
Child Welfare scheme are endeavouring to reduce the percentage of expectant mothers in the
Borough who do not receive skilled ante-natal care, and the paramount importance of making a
great effort in this direction becomes very clear as the result of an enquiry made by Officers of the
Public Health Department into the circumstances associated with the 17 maternal deaths in 1923
and the 16 similar deaths in 1922.
Not one of the 17 women who died in 1923 was known to have received ante-natal advice at
clinics or hospitals or from private doctors; and not one of the 16 women who died in 1922 had
attended the ante-natal clinics at the Queen Charlotte's Nurses Home or the Infant Welfare
Centres, but in one case it is possible that ante natal advice was received at a hospital outside the
Borough,
This statistical testimony to the efficacy of skilled ante-natal attention is sufficiently striking to
call for notice in this report, but it must be at once pointed out that the figures are much too small
and the period over which the enquiry has been made is too short to allow definite opinions to be
stated. The figures are, however, the only ones available for Kensington and, even though it be
frankly admitted that it is a coincidence that not one of the 33 mothers who died had been to a
Kensington ante-natal clinic, and that attendance at a clinic might not have prevented certain of
the complications which proved fatal, the facts must prove a great encouragement to the large band
of Maternity and Child Welfare workers in the Borough.
The midwifery service in Kensington is satisfactory, The poor in North Kensington are
adequately provided for by the well-trained staff of midwives attached to the Queen Charlotte's
Hospital Nurses' Home in Ladbroke Grove. Difficult cases found by these midwives are sent
immediately to the hospital for in-patient treatment. Ac there is such an excellent organisation
available for the poorest women in North Kensington, the midwives engaged in private
practice in the Borough are able to deal with all the mothers who can afford the usual fees. The
private midwives are generally satisfactory, and I have no evidence that there is any unqualfied
woman in the Borough carrying on a midwifery practice.
Owing to unsatisfactory housing conditions, particularly in tenement dwellings where there are
very limited facilities for home nursing, there are many cases in which it is particularly desirable
that the woman should be removed from home for her confinement, and it is to be hoped that the
scheme recently introduced for making use of a ward at the St. Mary Abbot's Hospital as a
Kensington Maternity Home will mature, and prove successful in assisting to reduce the maternal
death rate in Kensington.