ESSAY-REVIEWS 631 



this. In Ireland a child just born has about the same chance of surviving his first 

 year as an old man of seventy-seven years of age has of living till his seventy- 

 eighth birthday. The deaths of infants under one year form about one-eighth 

 of the total deaths of the country. Of every 1,000 children born, almost as many 

 die in the first year as in the succeeding fourteen years. In 191 5 576 mothers 

 died in Ireland from conditions caused by or associated with pregnancy or child- 

 birth. The death rate from puerperal septic disease was 2'I2 per 1,000 births. 

 In discussing factors in the causation of deaths of infants and children the Report 

 enumerates the following: (i)The care of the mother before, during, and after labour, 

 and the advice given as to the care of the child ; (2) the economic conditions of 

 the family ; (3) the domestic surroundings of infant and child ; (4) the extra- 

 domestic surroundings of the home; (5) the health and habits of the mother and 

 father ; (6) the affection of the mother for the child : her education and fitness 

 for motherhood; (7) legitimacy or illegitimacy of offspring: (8) the size of the 

 family; (9) the ages of mother and father at marriage; (10) the supervision of 

 milk and food supplies. No Midwives Act applies in Ireland, and there is no 

 Central Midwives Board. The greater part of the people of Ireland are engaged 

 in agriculture, and as the weekly wage of an agriculture labourer was about us. 

 to 1 5-y. before the war, it is easy to understand that the majority of mothers are 

 habitually under-fed, and many of the children actually on the verge of starvation. 

 The economic factor is clearly an important one in the case of agricultural 

 labourers. The mother often works almost to the day of her confinement ; she 

 is badly fed, she cannot provide the necessary outfit, and being ill-nourished 

 cannot continue to suckle her child. Moreover, she cannot provide necessary 

 food or adequate clothing for the child. Although something has been accom- 

 plished to improve domestic conditions in country districts, mainly through the 

 administration of the Labourers (Ireland) Acts, much still remains to be done. 

 The conditions in the towns and cities are very bad. Nearly a third of the total 

 population of the city of Dublin live in one-room tenements. Under the Housing 

 of the Working Classes Acts about 9,130 houses or tenements have been erected 

 in Irish towns by local authorities at an expenditure of, approximately, one and 

 a half million sterling. Alcohol exerts a baneful influence in many centres. 

 There is much mother-love in Ireland, but ignorance still keeps the Irish woman 

 in thraldom. 



"All that she knows about her functions, childbearing, and child nurture is 

 what she has learned from her mother ; it has been handed down from generation 

 to generation, and is a blend of good and bad, a mingling of useful knowledge 

 and harmful superstition. Thougn she went to the national school she is taught 

 nothing that would fit her for her work of bringing into the world and rearing a 

 strong and healthy family of sons and daughters. She knows, however, just one 

 thing, and that perhaps the most valuable of all— that she was intended to suckle 

 her children herself, and doing this, she saves her children from the many 

 dangers surrounding the use of the bottle. The practice of breast-feeding is 

 almost universal among the poorer mothers in the country, and is still very 

 common in town." 



In Ireland in 191 5 there were 3T per cent, of illegitimate births, varying from 

 8 per cent, in Connaught to 4 per cent, in Ulster ; and the mortality among the 

 illegitimate infants was more than two and a half times that of the legitimate. 

 Although the birth rate is low in Ireland, the marriage rate is also very low. The 

 average number of children born alive per family is 4*09, while the corresponding 

 figures are in England and Wales 3*55, and in Scotland 4 - oi. The number of 



