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53
maintain one or more creches. The Parliamentary Committee, though
professing sympathy with the object, refused the application. Under
the industrial conditions which prevail in the district, the refusal
seems to have been prejudicial to the interests of the Public Health.
We are not at present concerned with the economical aspect of Married
Female Labour; the effects of such labour are dealt with in
another paragraph.
It was pointed out by Councillor Hunt, Chairman of the Public
Health Committee, in a paper read at the Congress of the Royal
Institute of Public Health, that "there are in Acton some 450 laundries,
employing 4,500 females. No less than 23 per cent, of them
arc married women and widows, of whom a large proportion have
young families. These young families are often farmed out—or
placed out—at rates varying from fourpence to eightpence per head
per day. The persons who take charge of these children are generally
aged people living in squalor, too often heavy spirit-drinkers, and
quite unfit to take charge of infants. Sometimes one old woman will
have the care of as many as seven or eight children in one dirty little
unventilated room. The children are left very much to chance; they
have no regular or proper feeding; the bottles are not kept clean,
nor is the food wholesome. To try and persuade the baby-minders
to be attentive and cleanly is labour in vain."
In a report by the London County Council, the advantages connected
with creches were shortly summarized as follows :—
The creche is usually healthier and cleaner than the child's
home, the treatment is more enlightened, and the method of feeding
better adapted to the child's tender yars.
Every creche can show children who have come there miserably
anaemic and suffering from rickets, whose health has visibly improved
after some weeks of the creches' treatment.
Where no creche exists, the mother who is obliged to go out to
work for her living, is compelled either to leave the child during the
day where it cannot be properly cared for, or to place it out to nurse
in either case at a cost in excess of her means.
At the creche the child is taught cleanliness and good habits,
becomes stronger and healthier, and is given a better chance in life.