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7
diseases and Respiratory diseases were always comparatively
high. The explanation probably lies in the fact that the extra
nourishment and greater comfort which extra-domestic labour
provides mask any harmful effects which may result. Quietude
of body and mind in an expectant mother is almost as important
as ensuring that she is not overworked.
But if the ante-natal effect of married female labour is
not obvious, the conditions under which the child is brought up
as a result do affect the infantile mortality.
Want of breast milk, Bronchitis, Pneumonia and Diarrhoeal
Diseases have always caused an abnormal infantile mortality
in Acton.
The laundry industry has always been a favourite one
with married women, and a large number of the employees are
married women.
The employment of married women in extra domestic
duties tends to produce premature weaning, and it was one of the
causes of our heavy mortality from Diarrhoeal Diseases.
The excessive mortality from Bronchitis and Pneumonia
was also in part one of the effects of married female labour. The
mother has to take her baby to be cared for in the morning as she
proceeds to work and fetch him again in the evening. Under the
best of conditions the child is liable to contract Respiratory diseases.
In the section on infantile mortality the death-rate from these
causes will be referred to, but we should bear in mind that the conditions
associated with and assisting in varying degree in the production
of excessive infantile mortality are partly social and partly
sanitary; and it is easy, according to the point of view adopted,
to magnify unduly the importance of one set of factors.
During the war large munition works were established in
Acton and in the neighbouring districts. In addition to the Filling
Works at Park Royal and Hayes, most of the large factories in the
district were converted into munition works. At all these factories
during the war, women were very largely employed, and the number
of married women employed in extra-domestic duties was very
much higher than it was in pre-war days. In very few cases where
women replaced men in factory work, have they been retained
after the war. In the majority of factories, the men were re-instated