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This chart has three curves. The thick continuous line gives the cost in pounds sterling per annum of milk distributed
to expectant and nursing mothers and children under the age of five years. This service was put into operation in 1921.
The cost of milk distributed in the year ending 31st March, 1922, was £252. This fell steadily for seven years until in the
year ending 31st March, 1929, it was £41.
Since that date there has been a continuous increase yearly until in the year ending 31st March, 1939, the money
expended was £1,000. The estimated expenditure on the service in the current year is £ 1,200.
The whole of this milk distribution is carried out strictly in accordance with the Maternity and Child Welfare
Committee's instructions under an income scale which is appended.
In the year 1929 the Education Committee adopted the National Milk Publicity Council's scheme for the supply
at the cost of one penny of 1/3 of a pint of milk in a bottle with a straw to be taken by the children at morning break
at 10.30. The number of school children availing themselves of this school milk is shown in the interrupted line and the
cost of the milk to the Education Committee is indicated in the thin continuous line.
It will be observed that the cost to the Education Committee in the years 1929, 1930 and 1931, when the numbers
partaking were 1,600, 2,000 and 2,275 respectively, was nil. The explanation of this is that during those early experimental
years the cost of the milk supplied free to children of parents unable to pay for it was defrayed from a fund raised
for the purpose by the Mayor of Hornsey. In 1932 this responsibility was taken over by the Education Committee
(the Maternity and Child Welfare Committee's income scale being adopted). The cost to the Education Committee was
£348 in 1932, £431 in 1933 and £487 in 1934.
In 1934 the Milk Marketing Board decided to subsidise this distribution of milk to school children to the extent of
half its cost, which meant that parents, whatever their income, paid only one halfpenny for the 1/3 of a pint of milk.
The immediate result of this policy of the Milk Marketing Board was to double the number of school children taking
milk in school and to halve the cost to the Education Committe (£236 in 1936).
At present approximately 5,000 children are taking milk in school, and this number includes all the children of
parents whose incomes come within the Committee's income scale. About a million bottles of milk a year are consumed
in the elementary schools.
It is hardly necessary for me to emphasise the fundamental importance to the health and development of the child
population of a liberal supply of milk. Sound nutrition is dependent on an adequate supply of good food, and amongst
good foods, especially in all the stages of growth and develop-ment, pride of place must be given to milk.
We are still far from optimum milk consumption. In a survey undertaken in Hornsey ten years ago it was ascertained
that the total milk consumption was less than one-third of a pint per day per head of population. It is doubtful
even now, with all the encouragement which the Council's milk schemes have given to the more liberal use of milk,
whether the consumption is more than half a pint per head daily.
This amount could with great advantage to the public health be doubled or trebled. I do not mean that the public
expenditure on this service should be doubled or trebled, but that the housewife in her daily expenditure on food should
make every effort to obtain a pint of milk per day per head of the household, especially if the home has children and
young adults.