Child life investigations - poverty, nutrition & growth : studies of child life in cities and rural districts of Scotland / by D. Noël Paton and Leonard Findlay ; with the co-operation of Jean Agnew [and others].

  • Paton, Diarmid Noël, 1859-1928.
Date:
1926
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Child life investigations - poverty, nutrition & growth : studies of child life in cities and rural districts of Scotland / by D. Noël Paton and Leonard Findlay ; with the co-operation of Jean Agnew [and others]. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    is at the present time evidence of the formation of a town-breeding population less abundantly reinforced from outside. The question of the possible influence of heredity has therefore to be explored. At present we are ignorant of the relative importance of these different factors in modifying growth and thus determining the future character of the nation, the great majority of which—some eighty per cent.—-are town-dwellers. Without definite knowledge, the applica¬ tion of remedial measures is mere groping in the dark which may or may not prove beneficial and which may even be prejudicial. Large sums are spent upon child welfare schemes of various kinds. Is this expenditure productive of its optimum effect, or can it be directed into better channels ? The present investigation was begun in 1919 to attempt to determine more precisely to what extent any or all of the above conditions act in modifying the growth and nutrition of the child. Its purpose was not to demonstrate what was already known, viz. that the town child of the poorer classes is on the average less well grown and less vigorous than the child of the well-to-do or than the country child, but to study the influence of the various parental and environmental conditions of the slum child and to try to ascertain why some slum children remain puny and small while others are large and strong. The study was made upon the populations of the slums of the three Scottish towns—Glasgow, Edinburgh, and Dundee—and, in order to throw further light upon the problem, an investigation has also been made of the children of agricultural labourers and of rural miners and the environmental conditions under which they live. Such an investigation must necessarily be a statistical one, and the difficulties of conducting it on scientific lines were fully recognized from the first. The initial difficulty was to secure a fair sample of the population studied. This proved less difficult than was expected, firstly on account of the well-defined slum areas in the three cities, and secondly, because of the experience of the investigators selected and the ready assistance given by Medical Officers of Health and their Health Visitors. Further, the Child Welfare Centres throughout the cities not only furnished infants of the class which was to be studied, but gave the entree to the houses of the parents, and thus secured a similarity in the material throughout each part of the investigation and gave a random sample without selection. In determining whether the sample dealt with was adequate we were guided by the advice of Dr. Brownlee. After a statistical analysis of the earlier work he decided that 100 children of each age and sex in each town should be included in the study, and this has been done. That the families studied are representative of the class under consideration is indicated by the fact that in Glasgow 43-7 per cent, lived in one-roomed houses, 53-7 per cent, in two-roomed houses, and only 2-54 per cent, in houses of three and more rooms. In Dundee the numbers were 29-1, 66-5, and 4-4 per cent., while in Edinburgh they were 40-0, 53-1, and 6-9 per cent. Thus, in each of the towns, over 93 per cent, of the families investigated lived in one- or two- roomed houses.