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120 Annual Report of the London County Council, 1913.
was 13. Epilepsy, chorea, and paralysis were chiefly noted among the older children and infantile
paralysis among the younger ones. Boys and girls were found to be equally affected in the two
younger age-groups, but among the leavers the percentage was slightly higher among girls.
In Hampstead, Islington and Shoreditch out of 22,048 children examined, 256 cases of nervous
complaints were noted and 55 of these were referred for treatment, 37 of the 256 were cases
of epilepsy (minor or major), 21 of chorea, 32 of paralysis, 3 of hemiplegia and 1 of paraplegia; the
remaining 162 eases included such conditions as habit spasm, neuralgia, night terrors, etc.
In school work occasionally a striking peculiarity is exhibited by certain children
whose attempts at writing appear unintelligible until held before the mirror, when it is found that
the reflection is perfectly legible. Such cases are reported from time to time in the public press and
give rise to no little wonderment. The condition is one of considerable interest, both pedagogically
and medically. It is associated with various forms of defect of speech and with certain nervous
diseases; it is particularly frequent in certain types of mental defect and in the condition of lefthandedness.
Dr.
McHattie's
report on
mirror
writing.
Dr. McHattie has investigated the frequency of occurrence of mirror writing in normal school
children. He points out that this condition is to be frequently observed in persons suffering from
certain disorders of the nervous system, e.g., hemiplegia, hysteria, locomotor ataxy, &c., and that it
has been said to be not uncommon in normal persons. Elder (Ency. Med. viii., 123) places the
percentage of mirror writing with the left hand amongst normal people over ten years of age as high
as 10*39 per cent., the proportion for females being 14.73, while that for males is only 3.39 per
cent. In children under 15 years of age he gives the percentage as 3.63 for males, 2.06 for females.
These figures he deduced from a study of only 461 persons of all ages.
Dr. McHattie has examined the left hand writing of 1,240 children of ages ranging from seven
years to 14 years, and discovered only seven instances which could be described as mirror writing. Of
these seven cases one was that of a girl whose right hand had been partially disabled by an attack of
infantile paralysis. Omitting this case-, in which there existed an organic nervous lesion, the proportion
among normal children was very small, being only 0.48 per cent.
Of the 1,239 children 654 were boys, of whom two, or 0.3 per cent, were mirror writers, and
585 were girls, of whom four, or 0.68 per cent, wrote in this manner. While the proportion of those
who wrote words (generally their names) backwards was thus very small, a comparatively large
number, when made to write figures with their left hand, were found to reverse one or more of the
figures from 2 to 7. Thus, of 501 boys tested in this way 11 or 219 per cent, reversed one or more
figures, one of them reversed more than three of the figures from 2 to 7. Of 511 girls, no less than
27 reversed their figures, or 5.28 per cent., while seven of them reversed three or more of their
figures. It is possible that further investigation may prove that the proportion of those reversing
less familiar words would be larger than those reversing their own names. In no case in which
figures were written with both right and left hand was there observed a reversal with the right
hand. The following tables show the number of children examined in different standards and the
number affected for words and figures.

The annexed Diagrams A and B give reproductions of writing with the right and left hand
of the seven children already mentioned.
Diagram A.— M.L. Girl. Age 9. St. I.— Dull and backward child but improving after
summer in open-air class. Writes well with right hand but reverses all words and figures with
left. Reads reversed words easily. Given word to copy with left hand does so reversed and says it
looks like copy.