ANTE-NATAL HYGIENE : DISCUSSION 371 



penny. They had formed a committee and different ladies 

 served on different days. They only paid for the cook and 

 the rent, which was guaranteed by Mrs. Willey. The 

 dinners consisted of two courses. One day they had 

 cottage-pie, which meant potatoes and meat with a crust. 

 After that they had blancmange and jam with a cup of tea. 

 They gave them a good supply, and the mothers often 

 testified that they had never had anything that had pro- 

 duced so much milk. They did not give meat every day, 

 but only had it about three times a week. On other days 

 they had lentil savoury with bread crumbs and with thick 

 brown gravy and vegetables. After that they had suet 

 pudding with either jam or treacle, and always a cup of tea 

 afterwards. They found the babies got on admirably. 

 They not only provided for the mothers after the birth of 

 the baby, but the expectant mother also from the fourth 

 month was fed up to the time of her confinement, and as 

 the result they found there were no prematurely born babies, 

 but healthy, strong ones. They had had this system now 

 running for two years. They linked up all the other things 

 with the dinners, and it was reported to the various agencies, 

 so that there was no overlapping. She knew what dinners 

 were given by other societies and what parish relief had 

 been given, and so knew exactly how much relief any 

 mother had had both whilst in bed and after she had got up. 

 Mrs. GREENWOOD (Sanitary Inspector, Finsbury) said 

 that in her work in the last ten years she had taken syste- 

 matic notice of the infant deaths in her borough, and one 

 who did such work could not fail to be impressed with the 

 enormous number of deaths which took place deaths 

 which could only be prevented by work amongst the 

 expectant mothers. She had been enormously impressed 

 with the importance of the instruction of the expectant 

 mother in pre-natal hygiene. She had been fortunate 

 enough on several occasions after investigating a death to 

 give the mother such advice that later she had been able to 

 bring forth a living child, and she had afterwards been 

 called into the house by the mother and shown with great 

 pride the baby she was nursing, and which the mother had 

 said was due to the advice she had given her earlier, and 

 which had led her to seek medical advice. In the borough 

 in which she was working there was not the slightest diffi- 

 culty in getting hold of the expectant mother, but the 

 difficulty was to get workers who would follow up the cases. 

 In her borough they had herself and two health visitors, 

 and some time ago an attempt was made to deal with the 

 question. One of the health visitors used to go to St. 



