ON women's LA150UR. 361 



must not be forgotten that in this industry, as distinguished from manu- 

 facturing iiidustries, the employer has not the cost of raw material to add 

 to the cost of labour and plant, and this may account for much rapid 

 development of small businesses at the outget. 



APPENDIX III. 



[Subject to Amendment.] 



The Legal Regulation of Women's Employment and Infant Mortality. 



The Committee have made a special attempt to find whetlier any 

 relation can be traced between changes in the law (regulating or pro- 

 hibiting women's work in dangerous trades from time to time, and 

 prohibiting their employment within four weeks of child-birth in 1891) 

 and infant mortality, and have obtained some valuable opinions from 

 Medical Officers of Health, but have not found any definite evidence of any 

 direct connection. 



_ A circular letter was sent to sixty-one Medical Officers of Health, 

 chiefly in those towns wliere numbers of married women were employed, 

 stating the changes in the law that might be expected to have some 

 effect in this direction, and asking for statistical evidence and opinions. 

 Only sixteen replied, and most of these even had no definite information 

 to give. The general opinion was that high rates of infant mortality were 

 chiefly due to ignorance and carelessness in feeding infants, and its main 

 variations from time to time were traceable to the weather and its effects 

 on the prevalence of summer diarrhoea. Nearly all who gave information 

 agreed that even the comprehensive law of 1891 could not produce any 

 effect visible in vital statistics. Dr. Greenwood (of Blackburn) writes that 

 no material reduction of infant mortality was thus caused ; but that ' the 

 nursing out of children Avhile the mothers are at work, after the child is 

 one or two months old, together with irregular feeding with improper 

 and unclean food, and the general ignorance of the principles of domestic 

 hygiene ' cause high rates of mortality. The Medical Officers of Health 

 of Leek and Batley were in fa\'our of a longer period of prohibition. 



The Committee made other attempts at investigation on this question, 

 but in every case the inquiry broke down without result. 



Some information, however, was obtained M-hich may prove useful for 

 further research on an allied question, viz., whether employment of 

 mitrried women in factories has any definite relation to infant mortality. 

 Dr. Erskine Stuart instituted an inquiry in Batley as to the occupations 

 of mothers whose children had died under one year old, and he and Mr. 

 Lindley^have kindly sent the details. Between May 7, 1901, and 

 August 7, 1902, the deaths of 200 children under one year came under 

 their notice. The mothers were by occupation weavers (30), condenser 

 minders (G), rag-sorters (16), feeder-minder, mill-hand, reeler, mender, 

 and laundry work (1 each) ; the ren]aining 143 are given as engaged in 

 'he^sewQrk.' 



