HC Deb 19 July 1910 vol 19 cc1079-82
Dr. ADDISON

I beg to ask for leave to introduce a Bill to require that in public elementary schools instruction shall be given in hygiene, and to girls in the care and feeding of infants.

The Bill which I ask leave to introduce to the House represents what I believe is the essential and primary step in an organised and properly directed effort to remove the principal cause of the great waste of the strength of infant life which occurs at the present time. It represents a departure from precedent in that it proposes to make certain instructions Statutory in our schools although Article 2, Section 9 of the Code makes similar teaching of a more advanced type compulsory in schools for older scholars. I hope, however, that the House will agree that the grave state of affairs existing at the present time not only fully warrants this departure from precedent, but demands that our action in this respect should be as prompt as can be in its beginning, and thereafter methodical and sustained. At the present time, in this country, 120,000 children die every year under the age of twelve months. In the Constituency which I represent, for instance, 300 out of every 1,000 children born die before they reach the age of five years. Amongst those that survive the conditions that I am referring to there arises an unspeakable amount of bodily infirmity and waste of energy, which remains often throughout life. I believe this is the fountain that at all times feeds that reservoir of social distress and bodily incapacity which our Poor Law is striving vainly to drain. When we examine this subject we find that something like one-third of this waste of life is brought about by improper feeding and ignorance on the part of those who have the care of this infant life. Some improvement has been effected since the adoption of the Notification of Births Act, but, in the main, during the last thirty years in this country, notwithstanding the general decline in the death rate of adults, there has been an actual increase of the death rate of children under the age of twelve months from this class of conditions. Every industrial town of Great Britain supplies abundant proof of the character and extent of this evil, and it is the more conspicuous the more married women find industrial employment. If, for example, we examine the industrial towns of Lancashire, the Pottery towns, Dundee, and other places, we see this to be so. Compare two places such as Cardiff and Preston much alike in respect of population and housing conditions, etc. You will find that whilst in Preston, where a great many married women work in factories, the infantile death rate is about 240 per 1,000. In Cardiff where few women relatively work in the factories, the infantile death rate is only 150. A committee in Preston investigated the matter, and they discovered that the death rate of infants from 1880 to 1900 had actually increased. In support of my measure I should like to quote two sentences from the committee's report. It says:— There are few people with less knowledge or experience of household duties than the ordinary factory girl, and as a consequence when she becomes a wife and a mother, knowing little of the duties required of her. she is content, as regards the management of her children, to follow the example of her parents … and the customs of those among whom she lives. The report goes on to say that:— Unwholesome food and lack of cleanliness in its preparation and administration are the direct causes of many infantile deaths. Bread and starchy preparations are substituted for milk. When the latter is given, the feeding bottle is often in a dirty condition and a source of danger to the child. Unclean feeding, of course, is bad for adults, and often it is fatal to the child.

As the result of careful examination of the deaths of over 8,000 children in Derby during the years 1900–1–2–3, Dr. Howarth proved that the death rate amongst those fed naturally was 69 per 1,000 and amongst those fed by hand 197. Dr. Hope, of Liverpool, came to the conclusion that fifteen times as many more children hand-fed died of intestinal complaints than those fed in a natural manner. Dr. Reid states that the mortality in the naturally fed and hand-fed classes in Longton in Staffordshire was 111 against 442. I may mention a very interesting fact which supports this general statement. Dr. Newman states that during the Lancashire cotton famine, when 20 per cent. of the people in the affected district were in receipt of charitable relief, the infantile death rate actually declined. The same occurred during the Siege of Paris. The women stayed at home in both cases. Again it was found that out of a com- parison of 72,000 Glasgow children, those living in one-roomed tenements were on the average nearly five inches shorter, and nearly twelve pounds lighter, than those of the same age, fourteen, who lived in four-roomed tenements. Physical incapacity of this sort diminishes wage-earning capacity. I am convinced that a well thought out and properly directed scheme of the sort I indicate to get at the main cause of our national weakness must begin at the cradle.

It is very difficult—only those who have had experience at first hand know the difficulty it is—to instruct women of childbearing age how to feed children. They inherit prejudices, and they feed their infants on all sorts of deleterious substances. For that reason it is necessary to begin with the girls of school age. The instruction to be imparted is quite simple. It need take only a few hours, and I think it would well displace some of the subjects which at the present time engage a good deal of attention in some of the schools. It would mean that these girls, when they came to be mothers, in the next generation, would be able to utilise the information that a baby should have no food artificially save milk. If they knew and believed this simple truth, it would diminish, in the next generation, the infant death rate by 25 per cent. The machinery is at hand. This subject is closely interwoven with housing, and many other problems. But we have the machinery for removing the ignorance already at hand. It could quite easily be put in motion, and I ask leave to introduce this Bill, which provides for it in a simple manner by teaching girls in our elementary schools.

Bill ordered to be brought in by Dr. Addison, Mr. Alden, Mr. Holt, Mr. Hughes, Sir Joseph Compton-Rickett, Mr. Wedgwood, and Mr. A. F. Whyte. Presented accordingly, and read the first time; to be read a second time upon Tuesday next.