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very few returns available for the Becontree eight-year-old child,
the investigation was confined to the data in respect of the five-yearolds.
As there were comparatively few children of 5 or more years
of age who were born here and as, of course, the control London
children had lived here for some period of time, it was necessary to
decide exactly which children should be included in the categories.
Owing to the very extensive changes that have occurred in the occupation
of the houses, it was found not sufficient to accept that the
five-year-old children attending a school in a section which had
been erected over 5 years were necessarily Becontree born children.
As an indication of this may be recorded the fact that in one infants'
department of some 400 school places, open for 5 years, the register
contained a total of 2,000 names. It was therefore necessary to
ascertain in each particular case the length of residence here of the
child. The procedure followed was that all the school cards which
contained data relating to children of 5 years of age were sorted out
and a slip was issued to each of these children for completion by the
parents, the information required being the date the family transferred
here. These slips were collated with the appropriate record
cards and divided into three categories. A child was classed as a
Becontree child if he had lived not more than one year elsewhere,
and as a London child if he had lived here not more than one year.
The three categories therefore, were the Becontree child, the London
child and the other, far and away the largest, group comprising
those children who did not fall into either of the other two classes.
The information obtained from these last cards was of no value.
These two groups, namely, the Becontree and the London child,
are comparable in many respects. They consist of children of the
same age whose measurements were taken over the same period of
time, so that the results are not overshadowed by any possible
difference in the nutrition of the child before or after 1929.
Epidemic outbreaks of measles and whooping cough have invaded
this district at the same time as they affected London, so that both
sets of children ran the same risks and were probably equally
affected. The effects of the personal equation of the observer are
eliminated to a great degree, as the observation of both classes of
child will have been made by the same persons. In one respect
Possibly, the children are not strictly comparable. The Becontree
child is one who has lived here 5 years. For the family to have
managed to pay its rent for this length of time implies, for most
cases, the receipt of minimum family income for this period. The
ondon child is one who has lived here less than one year. Many
of these children would be members of families which, because of
inabilit.y to pay the rent, will return to London. To this extent
then, the figures are not strictly comparable, in that the London
child is the average of all fhe children who come here, whereas the
Becontree child is the average of those whose financial circumstances