142 ADMINISTRATIVE SECTION 



and infants elsewhere. The babies were supposed to join 

 it was understood that they brought their mothers. 

 (Laughter.) They had the privilege of membership till 

 they were a year old. The doctor met them every week. 

 There was a nurse attached to nearly all the clubs. There 

 were now some sixteen of them in Ireland in different parts 

 of the country, and out of those clubs came all sorts of 

 agencies like little mothers' classes, and playgrounds for 

 little children, and instruction for mothers in the manage- 

 ment of the home, and so on. The clubs were greatly 

 valued wherever they had been started. It had been a 

 common experience that these arrangements were greatly 

 welcomed by the mothers, who had shown themselves most 

 keen to receive advice, to attend health classes, and to carry 

 out the instructions which they received there. As the 

 point had been raised as to whether it was desirable that this 

 sort of organization should be wholly under an official 

 authority or whether it should be voluntary, she wished 

 to say that she very much agreed with Mrs. Kitson Clark 

 that it would be a very great mistake if they were ever to 

 come altogether under the charge of the official authorities, 

 however splendid they might be. Of course, the more 

 co-ordination there was, the better, on the same lines as 

 those carried out by Dr. Chalmers in Glasgow. In Dublin, 

 in addition to babies' clubs, they had the City Infant 

 Mortality Committee acting in connection with the Notifi- 

 cation of Births Act, and both co-operated with the same 

 end in view. Very much the same conditions existed in 

 Ireland as had been shown by Mrs. Kitson Clark to exist 

 in England and Wales. 



Councillor ARTHUR RITSON (Sunderland) said they had 

 had several speakers who seemed to look to the State 

 almost entirely in connection with this work, and they had 

 had other speakers who had spoken for voluntary effort. 

 He thought the great thing to do was to get the work 

 combined. The State had done a good deal and in Sunder- 

 land they were trying to find how to combine what the 

 State had authorized them to do and had given them the 

 means of doing with the voluntary workers who were willing 

 to help them. He was very much struck with Mrs. Kitson 

 Clark's address, that she did not wish to be put under 

 the municipality or to be made into a State department. 

 In Sunderland he did not say they had got a state of 

 perfection, but he believed they were working on right lines. 

 They had a resident medical' officer of health ; they had 

 three lady visitors; they had notification of births which 

 they had as a voluntary act three years before the country 



