View report page

6
of the well-to-do, and are much lower amongst hand-fed
children of the richer classes.
It may then be conceded that there is this regrettable
mortality, and the question will occur to you what can be
done to lessen it ?
In Huddersfield, Wakefield, and some of the London
boroughs steps have been taken lately to grapple with this
question. In Huddersfield the Mayor lately offered a guinea
to each mother in his own ward who produced a fine healthy
child at the end of a year. At the same time a Lady Health
Visitor was appointed who went about amongst the poor in a
tactful way, giving advice and helping mothers in their
difficulties. The result of these two innovations was a reduction
in the infantile mortality in that ward, and this
good result has, I believe, been kept up.
The Lady Health Visitor of Wakefield says:—
"An analysis of the 87 infant deaths that have come under
my notice will emphasise the point. All these deaths will have
figured in the Registrar's report under the familiar terms convulsions,
marasmus, bronchitis, etc., but these single words give
little clue to the underlying causes as I have seen them in my frequent
visits. Of those 87 deaths only 14 were non-preventable :
of the remaining 73, in 4 cases there had been serious and continued
want of care, and in 9 cases want of care combined with improper
food. In 6 cases death was due to infectious disease or
accident, from which an infant might have been guarded; 5 were
due to excessive dampness of the house; in 16 cases the real cause
was improper food or methods of feeding, that is, ignorance; of
the remaining 33 I can only say that had these children been born
in homes where they would have received skilled attention or the
whole attention of an intelligent mother, they would have survived.
Many of them were really fine infants, and had the mothers
only known how to treat slight illnesses instead of answering
every cry by giving more food, and putting down every ailment to
teething, they should have been living now. And for one baby
that succumbs to any particular form of error we must remember
that there are three or four who struggle through more or less
maimed for life, ricketty maybe, or with the beginnings of chronic
bronchitis, lifelong indigestion, decayed teeth or deafness implanted
in them before they are out of their cradles."
In 1905 her second year of work the infantile mortality of
Wakefield, which had hitherto been above the average for
England and Wales, was for the first time 22.5 below it.
There were only 119 deaths, at the old rate there would have
been 191 or a saving of 72 lives. She now finds that mothers
are offended if she does not call. In the first half of her
register 8 births were notified to her by father, mother, or
near relative, in the second half 77 were so notified.