358 MILK AND THE PUBLIC HEALTH chap. 



The population of Woolwich estimated to the middle of 

 1909 was 127,993. 



As Sidney Davies (Medical Officer of Health, Woolwich) 

 points out, it is difficult to give a milk depot death-rate. Such 

 rates are often based upon the rate per 1000 infants fed, but 

 are then totally incomparable with normal infantile death- 

 rates. The method which Davies suggests as the fairest is 

 to take the deaths occurring while children are actually being 

 fed at the depot (deducting those dying within a week of 

 coming on, and adding deaths occurring within a week of 

 going off) and estimate the rate on the average numbers being 

 fed at one time. This is the method adopted in calculating 

 the death-rates in the table above. During the three years 

 (1907-1909) 25 depot-fed children died while on the depot, 

 and the death-rate was 81 per 1000. 



The Liverpool Milk Depot is the largest in England. It 

 was started in 1901, and since that date to the end of 1909 

 16,131 have been fed upon humanised milk supplied either at 

 the milk depots (10,171 infants) or through dairies (5960 

 infants). The average age at the commencement of such 

 feeding was 3|- months. The expenditure for each of the nine 

 years varied from £2000 in the first year to £4077 for 1909, 

 the income from the sale of the milk varying from £518 in the 

 first year of working to £1328 in 1909. The deficit payable 

 out of rates for 1909 was £2749. The milk is supplied 

 from special farms by contract and is modified and sterilised. 



Of the 10,171 infants supplied through the depots, and 

 of whom accurate records are kept, there were 941 cases in 

 which the infant died, but of these 75 had been fed on the 

 milk for less than one week, or had been irregularly fed on it ; 

 713 were ill, some of them hopelessly ill, when the milk was 

 first supplied. Each death formed the subject of a careful 

 inquiry, and it was found that out of the total numbers of 

 infants who died only 179 were fairly healthy at the time of 

 admission and had been properly fed since.^ 



At Leicester Dr. Millard has been carrying out an 



interesting modification in Milk Depots by the use of dried 



milk. The depot was originally started on orthodox lines by 



the use of bottled humanised milk, but in 1907 the use of 



1 Dr. Hope, 1909, Annual Report, City of Liverpool. 



