A CLUB FOR BABIES.

Dominion, Volume 1, Issue 101, 22 January 1908, Page 3

A CLUB FOR BABIES.

AND A SCHOOL FOR MOTHERS. For a long while wo have been aware, in a subconscious, uncomfortable sort of way, of the great waste of infant life that is going oii, year in and year out, in the richest country in tho world , (writes Evelyn Sharp in the /'Manchester Guardian"). But all the statistics, available, do not bring an ugly truth homo-'to us half so effectually as one little attompt to fight the ugliness of it; and I think that must he why the St.- Pancras School for Mothers, though outwardly only an unimpoSiing building in a row of other buildings down a back street in the Northwest of London, manages to bo so extraordinarily impressive. On Tuesday aiul Friday afternoons the club contains more adults thiin , babies. To begin • with, there is ; a mother/ to e\'ery babv; there is also the Lady Superintendent, thero' is the honorary secretary, thero.is Dr. Dora Bunting, there are I other ladies who havo come to help to dress and undress, tho babies. But' all tlicsb countas nothing in the presence of tho. baby who is being weighed, of tho baby who, has just been weighed, and of tho row of babies .who aro waiting to bo weighed. Even if the voices of these small persons were riot so insistent and. so, penetrating as to drown all attempts at instruction that might otherwise bo mado during the weighing process, it is easy to see from tho attitude,of everybody present that, for the. moment at all events, tho .baby is the thing.- On Tuesday and Friday afternoons, from. 3 till 5, the School for Mothers is just a club for babies, and a very flourishing one too, though the. subscription is only a penny a fortnight and the only entrance fee is an assurance that tho applicant ,is under one year old. On other days the baby is put kindly and gently in its place—this .being the empty dining-room, where, in company with all the other babies, it has a lady to play with— while tho mother takes her turn. For a penny a week, she can not only bring her baby to bo weighed, but is also free of all the classes and other privileges of the school. She-may attend the cqokcry class on Thursday afternoon, or- the needlework class on Wednesday; or she may bring her husband to the Tuesday evening talks on health, given by a lady doctor. If she, is an expectant mother, she may pay her savings into a provident club, on which a small interest will be' afterwards paid, so that later on sho may have extra help in the home and extra nourishment for herself. If she is a nursing mother sho can come to tho "Welcome" every day except Sunday, and enjoy a meat dinner with vegetables, followed by a milk •pudding or stewed fruit, for which sho pays Lid., the total, cost of it being only 2Jd. In every case tho mother has been underfed owing to the low wagfs or unemployment of her husband; and this is not surprising when wo learn that the average wago of the railway mail in that district is rather below 15s. a week, and out of that the rent has to .bo paid and the man and his children fed. Tho mother almost inevitably goes without. For all that, so difficult is. it for her to get away from homo in tho middle of tho day— the dinners have to bo eaten at the club— that much tact and persuasion aro required in order to make her como regularly. In very bad cases the whole cost of the dinneris defrayed by tho club, and then it is oiton found that tho mother stays at home rather than comd without the money to pay for her food. It is interesting to find that at tho School for Mothers the classes aro eminently practical and suited to the income of those who attend them; ' Tho needlework lessons aro aimed at dispelling the mistaken kindness of the mother who overweights her infant with tho wrong sort of clojjics. Tho need for some instruction of tho sort was badly felt after' a tiny baby who was brought to bo weighed was found to bo enveloped in six layers of cotton clothing and two tight hinders, its lungs, shoulders and arms being left uncovered. Tho Lady Superintendent, Mrs. Barnes, who, besides being a mother herself, has had much valuable expericnco as a sanitary inspector, and also in connection with the milk depot at Leicester, possesses a fund of ideas as to economical clothing for babies and much tact in imposing them on her pupils. The result is that the visitor to the school ends in doubting whether there is anything in the placo that is what it seems! One sees a charming cradle, and learns that it is mado out of a banana-box bought for a penny, that it is draped with a few pennyworths of cheap print and fitted with a mattress, stuffed with shavings, and that tho total cost is less than a shilling. Ono sees a ginger-beer bottle with a screw top, and is told that this represents tho baby's hot-water bottle. A cosy looking pair of boots, as uuliko tho stiff anil cheap leather ones generally forced upon crumpled pink toes as anything could be, turn out to have been made from a castaway felt hat and sundry scraps of blue sergo. Wo • should almost doubt tho reality of tho babies if they did not assure t.lio wholo listening world so constantly and so loudly that thoy arc distinctly genuine. Naturally, many difficulties havo to be met by tho littlo handful of women who are trying so hard to combat ignorance and poverty, tho two prime causes of infantile mortality, in this ono corner of a great imperfect city. To begin with, thero is the irregularity of the attendance, which is inevitablo, arising as it does from tho inability of tho mother to leavo her home because sho lias a sick child, liccause her husband comes in at odd times for his meals, because sho has to use the copper for her washing when it is vacant and not when sho would like to uso it, and so on. Ono good result of this, though, .is that tho Lady Superintendent sometimes has to pursuo her course of instruction in the homo itself; and practical demonstration of this sort is often more offcctual than any amount of theoretical instruction.