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Holiday Fund, for instance, sent away 38,000 children. This fund does not extend its work all over
London. Some districts like Finsbury and Holborn have separate organisations doing thorough work
in their own areas. In addition to purely philanthropic agencies numerous religious organisations
are active and in some schools as many as a dozen agencies are found to be in existence. In addition
to charitable agencies many children go to relatives. The growth of London is so recent that
population has come from far and wide and children were found who had been to the Orkney Islands,
to the Scilly Islands, or to France, Germany or Switzerland. A considerable number had also gone
with their parents to various popular watering-places.
The enquiry extended to 320 school departments and only to children over five years of age.
Out of 107,584 children in these departments 35,406 had spent from one to four weeks' holiday out
of London. The total number of weeks so spent was 75,787. This represents a reduction of 17'6.
per cent. in the child population of London during the holiday period. The departments were not
selected, and this may be taken as applying to all children of 6 and upwards in the elementary
schools. It has been suggested that girls being more useful and less troublesome at home than boys
fewer girls will go from home. The enquiry does not bear this out, for of 52,305 boys, 17,256 or
32.9 per cent. had holidays amounting to 36,782 weeks, and equivalent to a 17.6 per cent. reduction
of population, whilst of 52,162 girls, 17,449, or 33.4 per cent. had holidays amounting to 37,512
weeks, and representing 17.9 per cent. reduction in population. The feeling that children should
be sent to the country whenever possible extends even to the Jewish population, although for centuries
these have been town dwellers. Enquiries at the Jews' Free Schools in Whitechapel and
Westminster showed a reduction of 13.2 per cent. in population from this cause. The percentage
was considerably lower in the non-provided schools, including Jewish, owing to many of them being
attended by the very poorest children. The percentage leaving London was stated as 28.4, corresponding
to 146 per cent. reduction of population. Any vital statistics contrasting holiday months
with the rest of the year must take this considerable reduction of population into account, especially
when it is considered that in addition to the 750,000 children in elementary schools there are 150,000
who do not attend elementary schools, and who mostly 6pend the greater part of the holiday term
out of London, and who would probably make the holiday reduction of population at least 20 per
cent.
The reduction in notification of infectious disease amongst children of the ages 5-15 during
the summer holiday of 1906 is shown in Table I, where it is seen that at these ages the drop in the
weeks of holiday influence, for instance in scarlet fever, amounts to 25 per cent., whilst the greatest
number of cases still occurs at these ages.
In Table II. the Boroughs are arranged in order of percentage reduction in notifications at all
ages. It was found that in 14 boroughs in which the reduction of notifications of diphtheria and
scarlet fever was over 25 per cent., 33,361 children spent 23,661 weeks in the country, giving a
reduction in population of 17.7 per cent., whilst in 15 boroughs where the reduction in notification
was under 25 per cent., 75,219 children spent 54,268 weeks or a drop in the population of 18 per
cent.; this shows that the elementary school population all over London is about equally affected,
but it is to be noted that those boroughs with the high reductions contain almost all those in which
the classes reside whose children do not attend elementary schools and amongst whom the general
reduction through leaving London would be greatest.