Infant mortality : its causes and remedies.

Date:
1871
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Infant mortality : its causes and remedies. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The Royal College of Surgeons of England. The original may be consulted at The Royal College of Surgeons of England.

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    another of those erroneous beliefs, which call loudly for correction, because they are obstacles in the way of a true and permanent improvement of our social condition. As a matter of fact the money value of the domestic services rendered by the wives of labouring men is at least equal to the money value of the maintenance they receive in return, while a large proportion of wives, in the manufacturing districts, contribute to the maintenance of the household. Many do this in an equal or even higher degree than the husband, while some provide for it altogether; and the labour by which this is done being imposed upon them in addition to the burden which, as mothers, they have already to bear, their share in the world's work is absolutely greater than that of men.^^ At Stroud, according to Mrs. Evans, whose letter we have already cited, so little does the received theory affect the lives of the working classes, that some husbands pay the rent, others pay for the bread; those who do both are considered very generous, the obvious inference being, that the wives, until the children are old enough to work, provide all the clothing of the family, and all the food except the bread.^^ Women cannot be brought into contact with the rough occupations of men without defiling their modesty and purity.—Speech of Mr. Bouverie, May 3rd, 1871. When we read such words and remember in what place they were originally spoken, we are seized with doubts as to the accuracy of the census returns of 1861, which give 838,856, 487,575, and 2,110,318 as the numbers respectively of wives, widows, and spinsters who work for their subsistence ; so incompatible do such figures seem with the ornamental theory of woman's vocation ; and when we recall Mr. Dudley Baxter's tables, and the conclusions which we di'ew from them as to the kinds of work in which women are allowed to share, and the wages wherewith their toil Ls remunerated, we cannot help fearing that they must frequently fail in their mission of making life endurable—at least to themselves. ^ We must guard ourselves against the inference which may be drawn from the tenour of the above paragraph, that we wish to represent working men as habitually neglectful of their wives and families. '''At the Liverpool Police-com-t, on June 24th, 1871, a man named Ashton Keefe was charged with having been drunk and set fire to his child Julia, a girl about seven or eight years of age. Superintendent Kehoe said that on the previous evening the prisoner went home drunk ; he sent his little girl out to get some beer, and because she was not able to get back quickly enough he knocked her down, put a box of matches in her breast and set fire to them. She was not, however, seriously btumed. The prisoner, who had not a shirt to his back, seemed to have employment enough and money sufficient to get continually ch-unk with.—Mr. Brancker: Is he sober now? Superintendent Kehoe : No, I think not.—In answer to the charge the prisoner said he knew nothing about it. Julia Keefe, who appeared in the witness box with both her eyes blackened, said the prisoner was her father, and she lived with him in Tyndall-street. Between five and six o'clock on Friday evening her father came homs 4