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22
1913]
the country, and of raising a strong and healthy race, for only just recently
(June 26th, 1914) Lord Haldane, the Lord Chancellor, made an arresting
speech on the subject. It should be read, for it indicates that our rulers now
recognise the necessity of action on this great question for which Medical
Officers of Health, who are only anxious for the health and vigour of the
nation, have pleaded for many years.
The only regret of the Medical Officer of Health of this Borough (who has
so often advocated similar action in addresses, papers, lectures, and official
reports for the last 36 years, and who knows no politics in his work) is that
this new policy comes clothed in a strongly political garb. This, however,
will soon be forgotten, as that of the opposite party in introducing the Public
Health Act, 1875, has long been, when the good results, which must accrue
from it, are seen.
It is clear that the Lord Chancellor thoroughly grasps his subject, for he
says:—"Now I want to come to what our problem is. In some respects it is
a serious one. The birth-rate is diminishing. That may not be altogether an evil
—it may mean a general desire to bring up children in a way they were not
brought up in before—but it is a difficulty which the most highly-civilized
nations have to reckon with. While we cannot hope to increase the birth-rate,
and while I am not sure that I should very much wish to do so, there is one
thing we can do, and that is to secure compensation. I have studied these
things pretty closely, and what has concerned me, I think, more than anything
else is the enormous proportion of children who die in the first .12 months of
life, and who never come into the world at all, although under proper conditions
they would be living and healthy. The statistics are frightful. In the
first 12 months of child life the death-rate is 128 per thousand. But that is
not so bad as the rate relating to children who might come into the world and
yet die before they are born, which is perhaps not less than 150 per thousand.
If you could only reduce these even partially you would have compensated
for all our difficulties as regards the birth-rate and would have made good the
assurance we desire to have about the future generation. Can it be done? The
purpose of my right hon. friend's Budget is directed, perhaps, more than anything
else, to solving this problem."
Illegitimate Births.
These births numbered 297, or 36 less0 than in the preceding year, and
represented 3.55 per cent, of the total births, a proportion which is somewhat
less than in 1912, but more than the average of the twenty years 1891-1910,
in which it was 2.77 per cent.