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Maternity and Child Welfare
The opening of the Isleworth Health Centre in April was a red letter day in Isleworth,
but, as so often happens, one's forecast was not entirely satisfactory.
The design has certainly achieved all I wanted for it. The big hall when it is opened
in the Infant Welfare Clinics has the sunshine through, and the vista of the green lawns beyond
and the back of Syon Park make a very delightful outlook, and the building is bright and
cheerful in a manner which I have not yet seen in any other Clinic.
One mistake I made is that the Perambulator Shelter was too small—that will have to
be enlarged.
In the design I was anxious to avoid the prison feeling that one finds in some of the
Clinics in other parts of the country, where the lighting was through clerestory windows and there
was no outlook whatever, and the whole place felt like a glorified well. The difference it has
made having the windows at each end of the Hall with a vista of gardens and trees is amazing.
At the same time there is added ventilation over and above that which is obtained through the
clerestory windows on all four sides, in that the windows can be thrown open to the gardens.
Another mistake is that three cubicles are not sufficient to keep the Ante-Natal Clinic
working at high speed. We find that even four is insufficient, and we are compelled to use screens
in the Waiting Room to supplement the three cubicles specially provided for the changing mothers.
We thought that three would be ample, but, either it is the rapidity of the work or the dilatoriness
of the mothers in dressing that produces the congestion, and had I to design the Clinic again I
should most certainly put in five cubicles.
The work has grown and has needed an extra session, which was commenced on May
31st, 1937.
It is, as I said last year, complete in a way in which I think no other in the country is
complete, in that we have Dental beds available at the Eastman Clinic for multiple extractions of
pregnant mothers. We still have difficulty with the dental troubles of the expectant mother, and
time after time they have put off and put off the necessary treatment until the time at which the
Ante-Natal Specialist thinks no further interference should be allowed has arrived. Time after
time one gets the mother desiring to put it off until after the confinement not realising to the full
that the whole idea is to give her a safe confinement by removing every possible source of sepsis.
However, one keeps on educating and the results are encouraging, but sometimes one's patience
wears very thin.

The number of children who attended at the Centre during the year, whilst they were
under 1 year of age, was 1,093, which shown as a percentage of the notified live births gives a
figure of 77.03.
As from the 6th September, 1937, on account of the increased numbers attending, it became
necessary to put on an additional session on Monday afternoons at Douglas Road.
An additional session was also put on at Heston on 30th August, 1937, to cater for the
increasing numbers of mothers coming from Cranford, until such time as a clinic in Cranford can
be provided.