THE CHILDREN
In this investigation forty-two families have been visited. Of these,
eight, owing to various reasons, were visited but for a short time.
Three were given up after several weeks, because the husbands objected
to the household accounts being shown to the visitor; and here it would
be interesting to mention that in three other cases, not reckoned in the
investigation, the husbands refused after the first week for the same
reason as soon as they thoroughly realised the scope of the inquiry. In
four cases the babies were born too soon, and lived but a few hours.
The investigation was primarily on infantile mortality, so that it
automatically ceased with the child’s death. One family moved out of
London before the child’s birth. There remain, therefore, thirty-four
babies who were watched and studied by the visitors for many months. In
every case but one these children were normal, and thriving at birth.
Only one weighed less than 6 lbs.; four more weighed less than 7 lbs.;
fifteen more weighed less than 8 lbs.; ten more weighed less than 9 lbs.;
and four weighed over 9 lbs. The average weight at birth for the whole
number was 7 lbs. 10 ozs. The child which weighed 5 lbs. 12 ozs. at birth
was always sickly, and died of diarrhœa and sickness during the hot
August of 1911 at the age of six months. Her mother was a delicate woman,
and had come through a time of dire stress when her husband was out of
work for four months before this child was born. A baby born since,
which does not appear in this investigation, is now about five months
old. Not one of the others seemed otherwise than sound and healthy, and
able to thrive on the nourishment which was provided for their special
benefit by the investigation. One child, however, a beautiful boy of
five months, who weighed 7 lbs. 12 ozs. at birth, and 14 lbs. 14 ozs. at
twenty weeks, died suddenly of bronchitis in December, 1910. His mother’s
health record was bad. He was the sixth child she had lost out of eleven.
She was an extraordinarily tidy, clean woman, and an excellent manager;
but her father had died of consumption, and she was one of those mothers
who economised in rent in order to feed her flock more adequately. She
paid 5s. a week for very dark ground-floor rooms. The death of the child
was so sudden and unexpected that an inquest was held. The mother was
horrified and bewildered at the entrance of police officers into her
home. She wrung her hands and repeated over and over, “I done all I
could!” and never shook off the impression that some disgrace attached
to her. The burial insurance money paid by the company was £1. Five
shillings specially earned by the mother and 5s. lent by a friend brought
up the amount to the necessary 30s., and the humble funeral took place.
The child was buried in a common grave with seven other coffins of all
sizes.
With these two exceptions, the babies all lived to be over a year. They
usually did fairly well, unless some infection from the elder children
gave them a bad cold, or measles, or whooping-cough, when some of them
had a hard struggle to live, and their convalescence was much retarded
by the close air and overcrowding of their unhygienic surroundings.
Compared with babies who were fighting such surroundings without special
nourishment, they did well, but compared with the children of well-to-do
people they did badly indeed!
The ex-baby, where such a person existed, was nearly always undersized,
delicate, and peevish. Apart from such causes as insufficient and
improper food, crowded sleeping quarters, and wretched clothing, this
member of the family specially suffered from want of fresh air. Too
young to go out alone, with no one to carry it now the baby had come,
it lived in the kitchen, dragging at its mother’s skirts, much on its
legs, but never in the open air. One of the conveniences most needed by
poor mothers is a perambulator which will hold, if possible, her two
youngest children. With such a vehicle, there would be some sort of
chance of open air and change of scene so desperately necessary for the
three house-bound members of the family. As it is, the ex-baby is often
imprisoned in a high chair, where it cannot fall into the fire, or pull
over the water-can, or shut its finger in the crack of the door, or get
at the food. But here it is deprived of exercise and freedom of limb, and
develops a fretful, thwarted character, which renders it even more open
to disease than the rest of the family, though they share with it all the
other bad conditions.
There is no doubt that the healthy infant at birth is less healthy at
three months, less healthy still at a year, and often by the time it
is old enough to go to school it has developed rickets or lung trouble
through entirely preventible causes.
To take several families individually, and go through their history, may
serve as illustration of the way in which children who begin well are
worn down by the conditions round them:
Mr. A., whose house was visited all the year of 1909, was originally
a footman in one of the houses of a large public school. He seemed
at the time of visiting to be fairly strong and wiry. He was about 5
feet 8 inches in height, well educated, and very steady. His wife had
been a lady’s-maid, who had saved a little money, which she sank in
a boarding-house kept by herself and her sister. The boarding-house
did not pay, and when Mrs. A. married, the sister went back into the
service of the lady with whom she had been before. Mr. A. left his
position as footman, and became a bus conductor in one of the old
horse-bus companies. When visited in 1909 he had been fifteen years in
his position, but owing to the coming of motor traffic, his employers
gradually ran fewer buses, and his work became more casual. He was paid
4s. a day, and got four days’ work a week, with an occasional fifth day.
He had to present himself every morning, and wait a certain time before
he knew whether he would be employed or not. All that he made he brought
home. His wife, who by the time the visits began was worn and delicate,
was a well-educated woman, and an excellent manager. She saved on all the
20s. weeks in order to have a little extra for the 16s. weeks. Her sister
in service often came to the rescue when extra trouble, such as illness
or complete unemployment, visited the household. There were five children
after the baby of the investigation arrived. The eldest, a girl, was
consumptive; the next, a boy, was short in one leg, and wore a surgical
boot; the next, a girl, was the airless ex-baby, and suffered with its
eyes; and only the new-born child, weighing 9 lbs., seemed to be thriving
and strong. The average per week for food was 1s. a head for man, woman,
and children. Presently the conductor’s work stopped altogether. No more
horse-buses were run on that particular route, and motor-buses did not
come that way. Mr. A. was out of work. He used to bring in odd sums of
money earned in all sorts of ways between tramping after a new job. The
eldest girl was put into a factory, where she earned 6s. a week; the
eldest boy got up early one morning, and offered himself to a dairyman
as a boy to leave milk, and got the job, which meant work from 6 a.m.
till 8 a.m., and two hours after school in the evening. Several hours on
Saturday and Sunday completed the week’s work, for which he was paid 2s.
6d. His parents were averse to his doing this, but the boy persisted.
The family moved to basement rooms at a cheaper rent, and then the
gradual pulling down of the baby began. The mother applied to the school
authorities to have the two boys given dinner, and after some difficulty
succeeded. The elder boy made no complaint, but the short-legged one
could not eat the meals supplied. He said they were greasy, and made him
feel sick. He used to come home and ask for a slice of the family bread
and dripping. The father’s earnings ranged between 5s. and 10s., which
brought the family income up to anything from 13s. 6d. to 18s. 6d. The
food allowance went often as low as 8d. a week. A strain was put upon the
health of each child, which reduced its vitality, and gave free play to
disease tendencies. The eyes, which had been a weak point in every child,
grew worse all round. The consumptive girl was constantly at home through
illness, the boy had heavy colds, and the younger children ailed. Work
was at last found by the father at a steady rate of 20s. a week. He took
the consumptive girl from her work, and sent her into the country, where
she remained in the cottage of a grandparent earning nothing. The boy was
induced to give up his work, and the family, when last seen, were living
on a food allowance of 1s. 6d. per head all round the family. The baby
was the usual feeble child of her age, the children were no longer fed at
school, and the parents were congratulating themselves on their wonderful
good fortune.
Mr. B., whose home was visited part of 1911 and all 1912, was a printer’s
labourer, and brought his wife 28s. a week every week during the
investigation. He had been in the army, and fought all through the South
African War. He seemed to be a strong man. His wife was one of the few
fairly tall women that were visited. She had been strong, but was worn
out and very dreary. There were eight children, all undersized, and
increasingly so as they went down the family. The ex-baby was a shrimp
of a boy, only eleven months old when the baby—another boy—was born. The
third youngest was a girl, and was so delicate that neither parent had
expected to rear her. She weighed less than many a child of a year old
when she was two and a half. The chief characteristics of these three
youngest children were restlessness, diminutiveness, and a kind of elfin
quickness. The baby, which was a normal child weighing 7 lbs. at birth,
caught the inevitable measles and whooping-cough at four months and
six months, and at a year weighed just 15 lbs. He could say words and
scramble about in an extremely active way—so much so that his harassed
mother had to tie him into the high chair at an earlier age than most
children of his class. The eyes of all the children in this family needed
daily attention, and showed great weakness. The eldest girl was supplied
with spectacles at school, for the payment of which 2d. a week appeared
for months in the mother’s budgets. There was no specific disease. The
children were stunted by sheer force of circumstances, not, so far as
could be ascertained, by heredity. The sleeping was extremely crowded,
and the food allowance averaged 1s. 2½d. a week, or 2d. a day for the
mother and children.
A third family is interesting for the reason that the mother firmly
believed in enough to eat, and, being a particularly hard-working, clean
woman, she could not bear to take dark underground rooms or to squeeze
her family of seven children into a couple of rooms. She solved her
problem by becoming a tenant of the Duchy of Cornwall estate. She got
four tiny rooms for 8s., and kept them spotless. Her husband, who was a
painter’s labourer and a devoted gardener, kept the tiny strip of yard
gay with flowers, and kept the interior of the damp, ill-contrived little
house fresh with “licks of paint” of motley colours and patches and
odds and ends of a medley of papers. When work was slack, Mrs. C. simply
did not pay the rent at all. As she said: “The Prince er Wales, ’e don’t
want our little bits of sticks, and ’e won’t sell us up if we keeps the
place a credit to ’im.” She seemed to be right, for they owed a great
deal of rent, and were never threatened with ejection. She explained the
principle on which she worked as follows: “Me and my young man we keeps
the place nice, and wen ’e’s in work we pays the rent. Wen ’e’s out er
work in the winter I gets twenty loaves and 2 lbs. er sixpenny fer the
children, and a snack er meat fer ’im, and then I begins ter think about
payin’ th’ agent out er anythink I ’as left. I’d be tellin’ a lie if I
said I didn’t owe a bit in the rent-book, and now and agen th’ agent
gets a shillin’ er two extra fer back money, but ’e carn’t ’elp seein’
’ow creditable the place is. That piece er blue paper looks a fair treat
through the winder, so ’e don’t make no fuss.” The house they lived in,
and many like it, have been demolished, and a number of well-built houses
are appearing in their stead. The Lambeth people declare that the rents
have gone up, however, and that the displaced tenants will not be able
to return, but this rumour has not been inquired into. What happened
to the C.’s overdraft when they were obliged to turn out is not known.
The children of this family were short and stumpy, but of solid build,
and certainly had more vigour and staying-power than those of the two
other families already mentioned in this chapter. The baby flourished.
She weighed 7 lbs. at birth, and at one year she weighed 18 lbs. 10 ozs.
She could drag herself up by a chair, and say many words. The system of
feeding first and paying rent afterwards seemed to be justified as far as
the children were concerned.
Another woman who lived in “the Duchy,” as they all call it, and whose
house has since been demolished, had not the temperament which had the
courage to owe. She paid her 8s. for rent with clockwork regularity, and
fed her husband and four children and herself on a weekly average of 8s.
6d. a week. The average for herself and the children worked out at 1s. a
week, or less than 2d. a day. All four children were very delicate. The
baby, who weighed 8½ lbs. at birth, weighed 16 lbs. 8 ozs. at one year.
The ex-baby suffered from consumption of the bowels, and was constantly
in and out of hospital. The two elder children were tuberculous. The
father was a printer’s labourer, and appeared to be fairly strong, though
a small man. The mother was delicate and worn, but seemed to have no
specific disease.
Some of the children in the different families had strong individuality.
Emma, aged ten, stood about 4 feet 6 inches in her socks. Four years
later, when she began to earn by carrying men’s dinners backwards and
forwards to them at work, she measured 4 feet 10 inches. At ten she was
a queer little figure, the eldest of six, with a baby always in her arms
out of school-hours. She was not highly intelligent, but had a soothing
way with children. Her short neck and large face gave the impression of
something dwarf-like. But she was sturdy and tough to all appearance, and
could scrub a floor or wring out a tubful of clothes in a masterly way.
She had a dog-like devotion for a half deaf, half blind little mother,
who nevertheless managed to keep two rooms, a husband, and six children
in a state of extraordinary order, considering all things. When Emma’s
school shoes were worn out, her mother took them over and wore them till
there was no sole left, and Emma was provided with a “new” fifth-hand
pair, which were generally twice too big. Emma’s mother found her a great
comfort, and very reluctantly sent her to work in a factory at the age of
fifteen. There she earned 6s. a week, and became the family bread-winner
during the frequent illnesses of her father.
Lulu was ex-baby to the deserted wife, and was three years old when her
mother was visited. She was a lovely child with brilliant dark eyes
and an olive skin. She had round cheeks, which never seemed to lose
their contour, though their poor little owner spent many weary weeks
in hospital after four different operations for a disease which the
visitor only knew by the name of “intersections,” pronounced by Lulu’s
mother with awe and respect. Lulu would be playing, and suddenly she
would be seized with violent pain and be hurried off in her mother’s
arms to the hospital. The visitor was present on one of these occasions,
when it seemed as though the whole street knew exactly what to do. One
neighbour accompanied the mother and child, one took over the baby,
another arranged with a nod and a word to take the mother’s place at work
that afternoon, and in two minutes everything was settled. Lulu came
out of hospital four weeks later, with pale but still round cheeks and
a questioning look in her eyes which gave a pathetic touch to the baby
face. She still lives—the very idol of her mother—to whom the two boys
are as nothing in comparison.
Dorothy, a person of two and another ex-baby, was devoured with a desire
to accompany her elder brothers and sisters to school. She was a fair,
thin child, with bright blue-grey eyes and straight, wispy tow-coloured
hair. Her tiny body was seething with restlessness and activity. She
spent her days in a high chair, from which place she twice a day shrieked
and wailed a protest when the elder, happier ones started for school.
She was quick as a needle, and could spend hours “writing pictures” on a
piece of paper with a hard, scratchy lead pencil. She had no appetite,
and had to be coaxed to eat by promises, rarely fulfilled, of taking her
for a walk as soon as mother’s work was done. She slept in the chair
during the day, as her mother declared it was not safe to have her up
stairs on the bed or she would be out the window or down the stairs
directly she woke. She simply hated the baby, another girl, which had
condemned her to second place and comparative neglect. At three, she
was kindly allowed a place in a school near by, and her health visibly
improved from that moment. She became almost pretty.
’Erbie was of an inquiring turn, and during fifteen months’ visiting had
at different times managed to mangle his thumb, fall into the mud of the
river at low tide, and get lost for ten hours, and be returned by the
police. He was excessively sorry for himself, on each occasion, while his
diminutive mother took the catastrophies with infinite calm. He was eight
years old and a “good scholar.” Physically he was a small nondescript
person, thin, and fair, and colourless, with neat features and a shrill
voice, which penetrated into the core of the brain.
Joey had a tragedy attached to him, which clouded a portion of his days.
He was guilty of telling a “boomer” to his parents. He said that he had
been moved out of the infant school into the boys’ school when he hadn’t.
One day his mother accompanied him to the school gate because it was
raining, and she was protecting him with the family umbrella. Then the
horrid truth was discovered, as the entrance for boys is in a different
street to that for infants. Joey urgently declared that he had only been
“kidding” his parents, and that when they were so wildly delighted and
took his news so seriously he had not had the courage to tell them it was
“kidding.” The net result was gloom and disgrace, which floated round
Joey’s miserable head for many days. In the middle of this awful time
he _was_ moved, and the strained atmosphere was consequently relieved.
He distinguished himself in his new class, however, by his answer to
a question his teacher put to him as to the origin of Christmas Day.
“You get a bigger bit of meat on yer plate than ever you seen before,”
he replied, and after a pause he added, “and w’en ’E dies you gets a
bun.” The teacher had called round to complain of this way of looking at
things, and Joey was in deep disgrace again. He was a nice, chubby thing,
with earnest ways and some imagination. His “boomer” preyed on him, and
made him thin and anxious till the climax was over. The second offence
worried him not at all. He was the pride and delight of two very simple
and devoted parents. His two little sisters, both younger than himself,
were extremely attached to him.
Benny was twelve and very, very serious. He was the boy who, without
telling a soul of his plan, offered himself to the milkman as a boy who
would leave milk on doorsteps. He earned 2s. 6d. a week for the job, and
faithfully performed the duties for some weeks, till a man who kept a
vegetable shop offered him the same money for hours which suited him
better, and he changed his trade. He was a very small boy for his age,
and had a grave, thin face with inflamed eyes. An overcoat, presented
because the visitor could not bear to think of his doing his round in the
rain and sitting all day at school afterwards in his wet clothes gave
him the keenest flash of pleasure he had ever felt. He turned scarlet
and then went white. He had a resolute mouth and a quiet voice and no
constitution.
There is one little picture which must be described, though the child
and its mother were unknown. The visitor in Lambeth Walk met a thin,
decent woman carrying a pot of mignonette. By her side, a boy about seven
years old was hopping along with a crutch under one arm. His other arm
encircled a pot in which was a lovely blooming fuchsia, whose flowers
swung to his movements. The woman was looking straight ahead with grave,
preoccupied eyes, not heeding the child. His whole expression was one of
such glorified beatitude that the onlooker, arrested by it, could only
feel a pang of sharpest envy. They went on their way with their flowers,
and round the next corner the visitor had to struggle through a deeply
interested crowd, who were watching a man being taken to prison.
Questions are often asked as to how these children amuse themselves.
They are popularly supposed to spend their time at picture palaces.
As far as close observation could discover, they seemed to spend their
play-time—the boys shrilly shouting and running in the streets, and the
girls minding the baby and looking on. They played a kind of hop-scotch
marked out in chalk, which reminded the visitor of a game much beloved
by her in extreme youth. Boys whose parents were able to afford the
luxury seemed to spend hours on one roller skate, and seemed to do
positive marvels when the nature of the roadway and the nature of the
skate are considered. Girls sometimes pooled their babies and did a
little skipping, shouting severe orders as they did so to the unhappy
infants. One party of soldiers, whose uniform was a piece of white tape
round the arm and a piece of stick held over the shoulder as a weapon,
marched up and down a narrow street for hours on the first day of the
August holidays, making such a noise of battle and sudden death that the
long-suffering mothers inside the houses occasionally left their work
to scream to them to be quiet. The pathways were full of hatless girls
and babies, who looked on with interest and envy. Needless to state, no
notice was taken of the mothers’ remonstrance. The best game of all is an
ambulance, but that needs properties, which take some finding. A box on
wheels, primarily intended for a baby’s perambulator, and with the baby
inside, makes a wonderful sort of toboggan along the paved path. The boy
sits on one corner and holds with both hands on to the edges, the baby
occupies the centre, and off they go, propelled by vigorous kicks.
In holiday-time elder brothers or sisters sometimes organise a party to
Kennington Park or one of the open spaces near by, and the grass becomes
a shrieking mass of children, from twelve or thirteen years of age
downwards. The weary mother gives them bread and margarine in a piece of
newspaper, and there is always a fountain from which they can drink. When
they come home in the evening, something more solid is added to their
usual tea. On Bank Holiday these children are taken by their parents to
the nearest park. The father strolls off, the mother and children sit on
the grass. Nobody talks. There is scolding and crying and laughing and
shouting, and there is dreary staring silence—never conversation.
Indoors there are no amusements. There are no books and no games, nor any
place to play the games should they exist. Wet holidays mean quarrelling
and mischief, and a distracted mother. Every woman sighs when holidays
begin. Boys and girls who earn money probably spend some of it on picture
palaces; but the dependent children of parents in steady work at a low
wage are not able to visit these fascinating places—much as they would
like to. Two instances of “picktur show, 2d.” appeared in the budgets.
One was that of a young, newly married couple. The visitor smilingly
hoped that they had enjoyed themselves. “’E treated me,” said the young
wife proudly. “Then why does it come in your budget?” asked the visitor.
The girl stared. “Oh, I _paid_,” she explained; “he let me take ’im.” The
other case was that of two middle-aged people, of about thirty, where
there were four children. A sister-in-law minded the children, they
took the baby with them, and earnestly enjoyed the representation of a
motor-car touring through the stars, and of the chase and capture of a
murderer by a most intelligent boy, “not bigger than Alfie.” Here again
the wife paid.
The outstanding fact about the children was not their stupidity nor
their lack of beauty—they were neither stupid nor ugly—it was their puny
size and damaged health. On the whole, the health of those who lived
upstairs was less bad than that of those who lived on the ground-floor,
and decidedly less bad than that of those who lived in basements.
Overcrowding in a first-floor room did not seem as deadly as overcrowding
on the floor below. It is difficult to separate causes. Whether the
superior health enjoyed by a first baby is due to more food, or to
less overcrowding, or to less exposure to infection, is impossible to
determine; perhaps it would be safe to say that it is due to all three,
but whatever the exact causes are which produce in each case the sickly
children so common in these households, the all-embracing one is poverty.
The proportion of the infantile death-rate of Hampstead to that of
Hoxton—something like 18 to 140—proves this to be a fact. The 42 families
already investigated in this inquiry have had altogether 201 children,
but 18 of these were either born dead or died within a few hours. Of the
remaining 183 children of all ages, ranging from a week up to sixteen or
seventeen years, 39 had died, or over one-fifth. Out of the 144 survivors
5 were actually deficient, while many were slow in intellect or unduly
excitable. Those among them who were born during the investigation were,
with one exception, normal, cosy, healthy babies, with good appetites,
who slept and fed in the usual way. They did not, however, in spite of
special efforts made on their behalf, fulfil their first promise. At one
year of age their environment had put its mark upon them. Though superior
to babies of their class, who had not had special nourishment and care,
they were vastly inferior to children of a better class who, though no
finer or healthier at birth, had enjoyed proper conditions, and could
therefore develop on sound and hygienic lines.