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65; the Borough average during the last five years, 1921-1925,
is 65 as compared with 91 for the previous five years, and the
figure for London for the year 1925 is 67.
The position of Hackney as compared with the other Metropolitan
Boroughs, is very satisfactory, as is shown by the table on
page 25, which gives the death rates and the infantile mortality
rates in 1925.
Maternity and Child Welfare.
Maternity and Child Welfare work in Hackney has been considerably
extended during the past five years, and has resulted
during that period in a remarkable fall in the infantile mortality, but
this service, instituted in the first instance for mothers and infants,
is extending its activities to an ever-increasing extent to the age
periods up to 5. Thus, the attendances at the Centres of children
over one year of age in 1925 exceeded by 6,674 those for the
year 1920, and the total number of attendances of children over
one year of age for the past five years amounts in all to 45,757.
The aim of the Maternity and Child Welfare Committee is so to
improve the health of children below school age that none of them
shall, in future, make a first attendance at school suffering from
conditions which it will be expensive to alleviate, and which should
never have been permitted to develop.
There could be no more fatal mistake than to give any grounds
for an accusation of extravagance in any public health service, and
investigation of probably the most criticised part of the work of a
Maternity and Child Welfare Committee, i.e. : the provision of
milk and other foods to necessitous mothers and children, will show
that in Hackney there has been no extravagance and no abuse.
It is evident that the money spent is-yielding a good return, not
only in preventing suffering and in preventing death, but principally
in preventing crippling; for it must be remembered that
it has been stated on good authority that for every child that
actually dies three probably survive in a crippled condition to