View report page

59
|1911
Deaths per
1,000 Births
Deaths. 1911. 1910.
Tufnell 65 85 78
Upper Holloway 109 115 88
Tollington 97 131 88
Lower Holloway 160 162 108
Highbury 130 104 82
Barnsbury 243 162 111
South-East Islington 229 128 94
The Borough 1,033 129 95
Here we see that whereas the mortality was only 85 per 1,000 births in
Tufnell, it was as high as 162 in both Lower Holloway and Barnsbury. Why
was there this great difference? The answer can be expressed in a few words;
lack of education, and want of knowledge as to how to rear the infants.
These are the poorer districts, where we find mothers, who although they love
their children just as dearly as the rich, for
"Lawdy! all the best mothers don't live up the West,"
yet rear them injudicially; and in their anxiety to do full justice to their
offspring, feed them on many things which are absolutely injurious, wanting
that advice and guidance which their more fortunate sisters elsewhere receive
from their physicians, their trained nurses, and their experienced mothers.
Their breast milk is as good, if not better than that of many more wealthy
mothers; and even among the very poor, according to a report recently issued
by the Medical Officer of Health of Birmingham, where many samples of milk
were obtained from 18 nursing mothers in a poor-class district, there was
nothing to show that the milk of the robust woman was better than that of the
weakly woman, ana that the age of the mother or the number of the children
she had had made apparently no appreciable difference in the composition
of the milk. The solids, not fat, in the specimens examined were very constant,
averaging 8 4 per cent., while the variations in amount was from 7.7 per
cent. to 9.3 per cent. Altogether 130 samples of the milk of these eighteen
women were examined. All of them were taken from women who were more
or less in a poverty-stricken condition, but who were receiving one substantial
meal during five days a week; and it was found that the percentage of fat
on these days increased in nearly all cases, and diminished when the meals were
discontinued.