28 OPENING SESSION 



I will take other districts. There is Burnley, which had in 

 1912 an infant mortality of 145 per 1,000, and there is 

 Battersea, a similar community, with an infant death-rate 

 in the same year of 84 per 1,000, or only a little over half 

 that of Burnley. I shall want a lot of convincing to believe 

 that the economic, social, and financial differences between 

 Battersea and Burnley are the reason why Burnley has an 

 infant mortality of 145 per 1,000 considerably less than it 

 was when you began your movement, viz., falling from 212 

 in 1906, and 171 on the average of the four years 1907-1910, 

 to 145 in 1912 while Battersea has 84 per 1,000. It is due, 

 in my judgment, in part at least, to this fact that in Burnley 

 too large a percentage of the mothers are at work, while in 

 Battersea the women are at home. I believe that women, 

 now that they are increasingly entering into all phases of 

 commerce and industry and into official and administrative 

 life, must themselves realize that, so far as their offspring 

 is concerned, this tendency, if unchecked and unregulated, is 

 attended with considerable disadvantages to the community 

 and the race as a whole. I must here ask can poor com- 

 munities improve- their condition so far as their children are 

 concerned ? In that connection I speak of what I know 

 most. Fifteen years ago the infant mortality of Battersea 

 was 176 per 1,000. To-day it is 84 per 1,000, or rather less 

 than half what it was fifteen years ago. I do not believe 

 that there has been any improvement in the total wages 

 speaking generally I should say the working community 

 there is no richer than it was yet in that period the infant 

 mortality has been just halved. Why has that happened ? 

 It has happened because Battersea, being a prescient neigh- 

 bourhood and a far-seeing district, had the courage to see 

 in advance what this Conference is now seeing is essential 

 for the rest of the community; and having the advantage of 

 a medical officer who showed us how to do our own work 

 better with than without his skilled service, we laymen stood 

 by him loyally; and the result is this extraordinary saving 

 of infant life in a working class district. 



Now if I may I will take another example. Lancashire 

 is industrial; its industries are a marvel to everyone. Com- 

 mercially it is very prosperous, and, broadly speaking, the 

 people have regular work with relatively good wages. No 

 county in the kingdom has a lower pauperism than Lanca- 

 shire, but it stands highest in the list for infant mortality. 

 It is lower than it was, but still far too high. In some 

 towns, in some parts of its towns, the infant mortality where 

 the mothers go out to work and the children are thereby 

 neglected is three to four times what it is in Hampstead 



