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92
Method of Enquiry. The enquiry was limited to children
born in the year 1921 who had attended the centres in 1921
and 1922. The total number of male infants whose weights
were tabulated was 801 and the number of female infants
was 732 ; the total weighings for males being 6,379 and for
females, 5,454. The weight was recorded at the centres
to the nearest ounce, and the age was recorded to the nearest
week, the practice being to ignore three or less days and to
count four or over as a full week. Subsequently, in order to
complete the figures for the birth weights and the first two
weeks, I asked Mrs. Parnell, the Matron of the British Hospital
for Mothers and Babies for this information and she very
kindly gave me, from her 1921 records, detailed weights of
92 male and 96 female children—at birth, at the end of the
first week and at the end of the second week. These figures
have been incorporated with the Centre figures in all the
tables except Table No. 60.
Type of Case. Many of the standards in use have been
based on specially selected infants, e.g., some observers have
only included what they describe as normal babies and have
excluded premature infants, twins, and sickly children, and
have even excluded healthy, normal children who have had
an attack of some disease. I think it is perfectly obvious
that by this process of selection, bias cannot entirely be overcome,
and consequently the results probably over-state the
true position with regard to infants. The personal equation is
likely to make us careful to select, in any process of selection,
only infants above the normal. As has been pointed out
above, this enquiry was to ascertain the weight of the average
Woolwich infant and so no differentiation whatever was
made. Every child, although its weight was abnormal, was
included and it was hoped that, by dealing with fairly large
numbers, a fair average standard of weight could be