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the giving of full attention to other matters in my hands. I submit a separate
Report on the Consumption Work of the year.
An attempt has been made to study more fully and carefully the home
conditions of verminous and generally neglected children, and it is desired to
continue and extend this work still further as time permits. The problem is by
no means as simple as is generally supposed. Ill-health, motherlessness,
defective sight, poverty, ignorance, mental inefficiency, and absence of facilities
for cleanliness are contributory causes which cannot be removed by a single
compulsory cleansing, supplemented by a ten shilling fine, as provided by the
Children Act. Cleanliness is not a state to be permanently attained by one
effort, hut a condition unstable in the extreme. Teaching and encouragement,
combined with facilities for cleanliness attached, not to the temporary and
artificial life of the school, but to the permanent and real life of the home, are
needed in addition to the present provisions for the punishment of the
wilfully negligent. One useful measure which might be recommended to the
schools is the sending to the Children's Baths before re-admission to the schools
of all children known to have been away "hopping.''
In this work, more particularly in the case of the motherless children,
voluntary help will be of great value, and no doubt the Children's Care
Committees and other social agencies of the district will take much interest in
the whole of the questions involved.
I am, Sir,
Your obedient Servant,
M. E. Bibby,
Sanitary Inspector of Workshops (Women).