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33
is "dauntoned." But soon she hears of the new home; her furniture
is taken direct in its van to the borough's disinfesting station where
poison gas plays havoc with the bugs; finally, it is carried into the
new home and a new life begins for the Smith family of Hackney.
The fortunes of the Smith family, however, do not begin and
end with the new house. Perhaps baby George is shortly going to
have a little brother or sister. Mrs. Smith then can go to the antenatal
clinic where she is advised and taught how to look forward
to bringing a healthy citizen into the world. A delightful model
illustrated this point. In a small, squalid bedroom stood as realistic
a Sairey Gamp as ever trod Dickens' pages, a gin bottle by her side
and every evidence of unhappy childbirth. A step, and one has
entered a "brave new world" of efficiency and hygiene. There
is the shining, ante-natal clinic, and the bedroom where Mrs. Smith
is to be confined. A layette is ready, everything for the actual birth
is laid out, and by the side of the bed is the Queen's nurse, Sairey
Gamp's metamorphosis. Queen's nurses are not only midwives,
and their neat model showed different branches of their work.
Moreover, baby and his mother are not abandoned after the
necessary business of entering the world—Hackney—is accomplished.
The infant welfare exhibits teach the mother how to
clothe her child, how to protect it from dirt-borne disease, how to
feed it and how to amuse it. And all these points are illustrated
by concrete images. Thus, clothing patterns are provided and you
learn how to make a baby's dress, perhaps, or, cleverer still, how to
transform father's old Sunday coat into trousers for Johnny. But
Johnny must play, and with the aid of patterns and scraps of wool
his mother can knit him a woolly teddy bear which, of course, can
be washed, for a few pence. In this great excitement, too, of
rearing Johnny, the father can help, for Johnny's crib, and his
canvas stretcher bed for the afternoon nap in the communal garden,
are easily made at home, the one from an orange crate, the other
from a cheap camp chair with a cotton awning. Nearby, diet is
illustrated by specimen meals, with charts telling of their value and
use. These are not coldly labelled "protein," "vitamin," and so
on, but more vividly "body building foods" or "protective foods,"
as the case may be.
So far this is a tale of protection and comparison with the "bad
old days," which only hint at the resultant evils. Other exhibits,
however, show their moral more plainly, and of these the tuberculosis
exhibit is one of the most arresting. The tubercle bacillus under a
microscope, sections of a tuberculous lung, and sputum flask are
stern reminders, if any were needed, that tuberculosis flourishes
under certain conditions. Fortunately, however, there are
remedies, and treatment can do much. The Council provides a
garden shelter (made at Papworth), bed and bedding for necessitous