Family life on a pound a week / By Mrs. Pember Reeves.

  • Magdalene Stuart Reeves
Date:
1912
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Family life on a pound a week / By Mrs. Pember Reeves. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    17/24 page 17
    . had to give each child a daily bath, if she had to attend thoroughly to teeth, noses, ears, and eyes, if she had to cook really nourishing food, with adequate utensils and dishes, and if she had to wash up these utensils and dishes after every meal, she would need not only far more money, but far more help. The children of the poor suffer from want of light, want of air, want of warmth, want of sufficient and proper food, and want of clothes, because the wage of their fathers is not enough to pay for these necessaries. They also suffer from want of cleanliness, want of attention to health, want of peace and quiet, because the strength of their mothers is not enough to provide these necessary conditions. It is easy to say that the mothers manage badly. If they econo- mize in rent the children die. If they economize in food the child- ren may live, but in a weakened state. There is nothing else that they can economize in. Fuel and light are used sparingly ; there is no room for reduction there. Clothes hardly appear in the poorer budgets at all. In the course of fifteen months visiting, one family on 23s. a week spent £3 5s. 54d. on clothes for the mother and six children. Half of the sum was spent on boots, so that the clothes, other than boots, of seven people cost 32s. 9d. in fifteen months, an average of 4s. 8d. a head. Another family spent 9d. a week on boots and 9d. a week on clothes in general. There were four child- ren. Other families again only buy clothes when summer comes and less is needed for fuel. Boots are the chief expense under this heading, and few fathers in Lambeth are not able to sole a little boot with some sort of skill. Most of the body clothing is bought third and fourth hand. How it is that the women’s garments do not drop off them is a mystery. They never seem to buy new ones, and yet the hard wear to which the clothes are subjected ought to finish them ina month. It is obvious that clothing can hardly be further reduced. Remains insurance. It has been shown that steady, hard- working people refuse to have their dead buried by the parish. If they should change their attitude to this question and decide to economize here, it is difficult to imagine the state of mind of the ‘parish’ when confronted by the problem. How then is the man ona pound a week to house his children decently and feed them sufficiently? How is his wife to care for them properly? The answer is that, in London at least, be they never so hardworking and sober and thrifty, the task is impossible. But there is a large class who get less than a pound a week. There is also a large class who get work irregularly. How do such people manage ? : A small proportion of the cases undertaken in the investigation, from ill health and other causes, fell out of work. Their subsequent struggles afford material with which to answer this question. Mr. H, carter, out of work through illness, gets an odd job once or twice in the week. Wages 24s. when in work. Six children born, five alive.
    digitised image 1
    digitised image 2
    digitised image 3