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48 hours. At the end of 1925, 2,515 foster-mothers and 3,540 nurse-infants were
under inspection. Power is given to remove to a place of safety an infant in the
charge of a foster-mother who is unfit to have the care of it owing to negligence,
ignorance, inebriety, immorality, criminal conduct or other similar cause.

Lying-in
homes.
* Partial.
The Council's powers and duties with regard to the registration and inspection
of lying-in homes are described in the Annual Report for 1922 (vol. III., p. 104).
At the end of 1924, 275 premises were on the register, 40 were added during the
year, and 38 entries were removed (owing to discontinuance of user, removal, etc.),
leaving a net total of 277 on the register at the end of 1925. Nine premises carried
Midwives.
on by registered medical practitioners were exempted during the year.
Under the Midwives Act, 1902, the duties of the Council, as the local supervising
authority for London, were chiefly disciplinary in connection with the conduct,
profess ona! or otherwise, of midwives or persons practising as midwives in London.
To enable it to carry out these and allied duties the Council appointed four qualified
women medical practitioners to inspect midwives and to investigate special cases.
The Midwives Act, 1918, passed to amend the Act of 1902, enlarged the Council's
responsibilities, the chief alteration dealing with the provision of medical assistance
for midwives. By section 14 midwives are required to summon medical aid in
an emergency as defined by the rules of the Central Midwives Board. The fees
of the medical man so called in are payable by the Council (in accordance with a
scale fixed by the Local Government Board and amended by the Ministry of Health)
which has power to recover them from the patient, her husband, or other person,,
liable to maintain her, unless it can be shown that such person is unable to pay
the fees. Owing to the difficulty of assessing the sums to be recovered, the Council,
in 1921, adopted a scale of assessments graduated according to net income, after
allowing a deduction in respect of each maintainable child or other dependant.
From 1st April 1925, to 31st March, 1926, the Council's expenditure under this head
was £4,056 18s., of which £1,241 16s. 1d. was recovered. Further details of
the Council's work are given in Chapter I, pp. 71-73.
Under section 5 of the Act of 1902, as amended by section 2 of the Act of 1918,
any adverse balance in the accounts of the Central Midwives Board is apportioned
between the councils of the several counties and county boroughs n proportion to
population at the last census, and the Council's proport on for the year 1925 was
£639.
Notifications by midwives of intention to practise during the year numbered
843; of intention to practise for specific periods less than a year, 40; and of having
acted in specific cases, 18.
Houses
divided into
separate
tenements.
In February, 1924, the Council provisionally approved under the powers conferred
by Section 26 of the Housing, Town Planning, etc., Act, 1919, as amended by
Section 14 of the Housing, etc., Act, 1923, revised by-laws with regard to houses
divided into separate tenements. The sections of the Acts referred to were repealed,
13651 m