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37
the Health Institute on any baby-weighing day will convince one of the
great popularity of the movement, and the ready means it affords for
watching over the health of the babies, and for checking any unwise
feeding, etc., by the mother.
The weighing of babies takes place as follows:—
On Wednesdays, between 2.30 and 4.30, at the Health
Institute, Kingsgate Road.
On Thursdays, between 2.30 and 4.0, at St. Stephen's
Rooms, Pond Street.
Where conditions of ill-health are partly due to poverty and ignorance,
some improvement is frequently brought about by the efficient
help of the various charitable agencies which work in close co-operation
with the Public Health Department. The Infants' Visitors' Committees
of the Hampstead Health Society, besides their invaluable work of visiting
and befriending mothers during the first year of the life of their
infants, provide milk and oatmeal where the father is, unfortunately, out
of work. The Hampstead Creche supplies good hot dinners to nursing
or expectant mothers at the low rate of 2d. per meal. The Invalid
Children's Aid Association, of whose executive committee the lady
inspector is a member, gives most efficient and kindly aid in getting
suitable cases removed to the country or seaside, and in providing
extra nourishment and clothing for delicate and ailing children.
The devitalising effects of poverty, of which the inspector in her
work sees so much, are thus to a great exteat counteracted.
Hampstead has reason to be proud of its low infantile mortality
rate, which is the lowest in London, and which has reached a point
lower than some authorities have deemed it possible to attain. To further
lessen this figure it will be necessary to search for, and endeavour
to combat, ante-natal causes; and among the best aids to this purpose
would be, as stated on page 17, the compulsory registration of still-births
of whatever period of development, and the extension of the system
of notification of births to the notification of deaths. One of the most
powerful aids in the direction of ascertaining ante-natal causes would be
a transference of the maternity benefit under the National Insurance
Act to the local authority could such a transference be accomplished.
I believe, by its means, expectant mothers could be got to notify their
condition to the Medical Officer of Health, especially if the benefit was