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18
Day Nursery
Accommodation
Date opened
under 2 years
2-5 years
Cynthia Mosley 20 50 4.11.1948
Gipsy Hill 24 42 8.8.1944
Coral Street 23 48 5.6.1944
Knight's Hill 26 44 17.11.1947
Chestnut 40 40 10.3.1947
The nurseries have been full throughout the year because
quarantine has never been put into practice in the nurseries at any
time, since it would appear to serve no useful purpose.
The demand for places has been and still is as great as ever but
the chance of vacancies occurring for new entrants between the
ages of three and five years is now almost negligible. As children
leave to go to school so the younger children move up from the
age group below, filling all vacancies as they occur
Preference is given on the Council's instructions to widows,
unmarried mothers; and others obliged to go out to work and
whose need is therefore greater. There is thereby created a selected
community of children instead of a cross-section of the average,
but the children appear to be too young for anything like an
adverse effect to be noticed from such an artificial selection.
The opening of the Chestnut Nursery in March filled a long-felt
want near the largest employer of women and girls in the borough,
and it was rapidly filled. Building actually began in 1943, four
years before it was finally ready for occupation, but many factors
such as policy, wilful damage, lack of labour and materials,
prevented its completion before. Knight's Hill Nursery, situated
in the premises which before the war were occupied by the
Maternity Home, opened in the middle of November. Here in
addition to the nursery is the hostel in which 16 of the nursery
probationers lodge, girls whose homes are in the provinces.
The nursery was opened there because it was the only building
available to replace the Annie McCall Nursery, so urgently
required by its owners, the Mildmay Mission, for reopening as a
maternity home. Arrangements were made for a coach to pick
up the Annie McCall children and take them the three miles across
the borough to the Knight's Hill Nursery and bring them back
at night, calling both ways in Brixton to pick up other children.
Members of the nursery staff accompany the party in both
directions. These coaching arrangements have worked quite
smoothly and have been singularly free from complaint.
All the nurseries which have no resident staff are frequently
broken into, usually over the week-ends, some as many as ten and
more times in the year. Generally children are the culprits, at