ANTE-NATAL HYGIENE : DISCUSSION 369 



casual labourers, those who were chronically out of work, 

 or extremely poor. They had been told by Mr. John Burns 

 that the mortality in this class was enormously higher than 

 in any other classes, so that the question of poverty was 

 really at the bottom of a very great deal of the infant mor- 

 tality. Under their existing law the able-bodied man and 

 his family were not helped under a medical order. She 

 did not know whether other workers knew of any unions 

 where if a woman was suffering from prolonged under- 

 feeding she could be dealt with by a medical certificate. 

 She was not a doctor, and did not know whether doctors 

 would say it was a possible thing to do, but looking at it 

 from a purely social point of view it would be a good thing. 

 She had been very distressed at different times about many 

 cases, but she might say in this connection that the woman 

 she felt very distressed about went for her confinement to 

 the York Road Hospital, and when the baby was born it 

 was the biggest baby in the hospital. 



Mrs. MODEL (Sick-room Helps Society) asked in con- 

 nection with the wonderful statistics they had heard whether 

 it was not the fact that the foreign mother in the poor 

 districts of New York very rarely went out to work, and 

 could consequently nurse her own infant. From her experi- 

 ence in London amongst the foreign population they had 

 absolutely no difficulty in inducing the mothers to nurse. 

 On the other hand they did find difficulty in inducing them 

 to feed artificially if on account of tuberculosis or some 

 other reason it was considered they ought not to nurse the 

 babies themselves. She would like to know from Dr. Van 

 Ingen whether it was not largely foreign mothers he was 

 dealing with, who owing to their tradition were inclined 

 to nurse their infants themselves. 



Mrs. ROGER GREEN (Burton-on-Trent Health Society) 

 said she would like to say something in respect of the 

 question raised of the co-ordinating of social effort. In 

 Burton-on-Trent they had started a scheme and the Health 

 Society was responsible for this. They had only been at 

 work two years, but she must say that so far they had 

 succeeded in gaining the confidence of other societies. 

 They had a General Welfare Council of their Society, and 

 they had taken it on themselves to do this. She dared say 

 they all found the same thing, that if they looked at the 

 reports of the various societies in their towns for the last 

 forty years they would find one object common to all, 

 namely, the co-ordinating of every other society. 

 (Laughter.) On their present Health Society they had 

 representatives from the Mothers' and Babies' Welcome. 



