Right and wrong as to school feeding / Charity Organisation Society.

Date:
1906
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Right and wrong as to school feeding / Charity Organisation Society. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    So we may put it :— The well-clad boys weighed most. The verminous boys weighed much less, and were much less tall than the average. The boys below the average of intellicened did not show lack of height or weight. But the boys above the average had also ‘a decided advantage in physique ’—weighed more and stood higher. The boys living.in overcrowded rooms weighed less and were smaller than others. The boys whose Saher kept the house grew best, even though the father was a ‘parasite member of the family.’ When mothers go out to work the added income of the family is not repaid by the increased physique of the children, who practically never get a properly prepared meal. And we may add—the before-school age is the most important. If mothers suckle their children, fewer die, many more grow to vigorous life. So at St. Pancras* the infant death-rate during the summer quarter of 1905 fell 20 per thousand below that of London, and 22 per thousand below that of England and Wales. During the same quarter of 1906, as compared with the corresponding quarter of 1905, it fell again 32 per thousand below that of London, and 33 per thousand below that of England and Wales. During the warm dry summer of 1906 the infant mortality of England and Wales rose 12 per thousand, that of London 20 per thousand, whereas that of St. Pancras fell 12 per thousand. This result was obtained by no relief system, but “by Women Inspectors and Women Voluntary Visitors persuading women to nurse their own children—one more argument for promoting good bringing up, and not State relief. And again, as evidence that the more important period of young life is not the school-age, and the possible school-meal, period, 5 to 15, but that which precedes it, 0-5, it may be noted that in Kngland and Wales the deaths in the first five years, O-5, numbered 199,678, against 20,048 in the subsequent ten years 5-15. Now, is it not clear that what is wanted is to think of these children not as school children who want meals, but as home- and-school children who want in all ways healthy bringing up ? * See Report of Dr. J. T. J. Sykes, Medical Officer of Health, on Infant Mortality Rates in South St. Pancras, October 18, 1906.
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