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

Magdalene Stuart Reeves

Date:: 1912

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

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$The parents had insured her for 2d. a week, being unusually careful people. The sum received was £2. Funeral xa Bae ee and Ver 1c a ee Death certificate... ay Re si Gb yg Gravediggers i Oo 10 Hearse attendants ... ee Be oat OF Bos0 Woman to lay her out __... $a 2; ee eS Insurance agent... Ge Fp Flowers ma oe &\ OFN6 Black tie for father... Gi, 2/40 £2 1 9 This child was buried in a common grave with three others. There is no display and no extravagance in this list. The tips to the gravediggers, hearse attendants and insurance agent were all urgently applied for, though not in every case by the person who received the money. The cost of the child’s illness had amounted to 1os.—chiefly spent on special food. The survivors lived on reduced rations for two weeks in order to get square again. The fathers’s wage was 24s., every penny of which he always handed over to his wife. Until burial can be made an honorable public service there seems to be no hope of relief in this direction for the family living on any sum round about £1 a week. How the Budgets were obtained. In order to explain how the family budgets given further on were obtained, it is necessary to state that an investigation has been carried on for three years by a small committee formed of members of the Fabian Women’s Group. The investigation has for its object observation of the effect on mother and child of proper nourishment before and after birth. To further this enquiry it was found necessary to take down each week in writing the whole family expenditure for that week. The budgets thus collected began before the birth of the child and con- tinued until the child was a year old. The names of expectant mothers were taken at random from the out-patient department of a well known lying-in hospital. Only legally married people were dealt with because the hospital confined itself to such persons. The committee decided to refuse cases where virulent disease in the parents might outweigh the benefits of proper nourishment, but it was considered that moderate drinking on the part of the parents would probably bea normal condition and must therefore be accepted. As a matter of fact, tuberculosis in some form or other was found to be so common that to rule it out would be to refuse almost half the cases. Respiratory and tuberculous disease was therefore accepted. With regard to drink, on the contrary, only one instance did we find of a woman who drank. A few men were supposed to take a glass, but in every case but one they faithfully réndered over to their wives the agreed upon weekly allowance. Out of fifty cases taken at hap- hazard this is a good record.$

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

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