The care committee, the child and the parent : a small volume containing the history of the provision of meals to the children of poor parents; and an account of children's care committees, their work and organisation, with particular reference to the place of the voluntary worker and the duties of an official / by Douglas Pepler.

  • Pepler, H. D. C. (Hilary Douglas Clarke), 1878-1951.
Date:
1914
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: The care committee, the child and the parent : a small volume containing the history of the provision of meals to the children of poor parents; and an account of children's care committees, their work and organisation, with particular reference to the place of the voluntary worker and the duties of an official / by Douglas Pepler. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    drink with them, they are to go to some house in the town, there to eat and drink, and resort again to school.” As this free school was founded because of “ the great poverty of the common people ” (perhaps also because “ the children of the said country have pregnant wits”), it may be that the worthy founder believed in that “ parental responsibility ” which not a few in these present days consider to be in danger if free school meals are provided. Dietry. “ Of his diete mesurable was he, For it was of no superfluitee, But of greet norissing and digestible.” —Chaucer. Though it has been left to the twentieth century to revive the public provision of meals to school children, food for children has, curiously, been a matter of private concern in other ages. Hippocrates (460 b.c.) was concerned with the relation between diet and health ; but I suppose if the nutritive values of food had always been the subject of scientific experiment, the choice of food has usually been allowed to be a question of natural appetite. Fortunately, there is not lacking evidence of the kind of foods given to children before the advent of the public analyst. From ^Elfric the Grammarian (995—1020—5), in the time of King Edgar, we have the first glimpse of the dietry of a school child, if we may use his