View report page

inquiries were not uniform and the figures should be treated with some reserve. There
are in London some 1,100,000 families, although only about 400,000 of them have a
child or children under 16—the London total of problem families works out at about
2.75 problem families per 1,000 total families, although as will be apparent from
preceding sections of the report the various components of the total number were not
all arrived at in quite the same way and more reliance can therefore be placed on some
than others.
Public Health Department Survey
Factors—An analysis was made of factors present in over 1,000 of the problem families
included in the survey and the frequency of occurrence of the various factors taken into
account in assessment is set out in Table III below. There were, as might be expected, a
number of differences between the divisions in the incidence of such factors as prolonged
unemployment or lack of amenities. The table again separates the families into the
potential and hardcore categories: a further sub-division was made into those with
all children under five years of age and the mixed families but this has been omitted
from the table as printed partly to save space but largely because nothing of any
importance was revealed.
The salient features of the table are first the high amount of emotional instability
in the families—if it be accepted that excessive drinking, excessive gambling, sexual
promiscuity and persistent quarrelling are symptomatic of emotional instability.
Although not shown in the table, the percentage of potential problem families in
which emotional instability is revealed by one such symptom is 54.5 and in the hardcore
71.6. The second feature is the high incidence of low intelligence or mental deficiency
which occurs in 42.2 per cent, of the potential problem families and 67.3 per cent, of
the hardcore (it is admitted that low intelligence has not been defined and it is therefore
a matter of judgment of the individual health visitor).