Children and Poverty

Abstract

MR. GOODFELLOW accordingly points out that sanatorium treatment of tuberculosis must be followed by real enterprise to remove the poverty of the patient. Infant mortality figures confirm this effect of the last war on Tyneside. In 1911-13, Newcastle, Tynemouth, South Shields and Gateshead were all below the infant mortality average for English county boroughs. By 1914-16, as a result of increased industrial effort without proper safeguards, these four Tyneside boroughs had infant mortality rates much higher than English county boroughs as a whole and while from 1911-13 to 1935-37 in the country as a whole infant mortality was reduced by practically 50 per cent, the Tyne black spots showed no such improvement. These figures again are related to overcrowding. In 1925, one baby in three in Tynemouth was born in a one-room apartment, and even in 1933 one baby in five suffered this fate although in 1938 the rate had fallen to one in 20. The figures are again related to the work of infant welfare centres. In Leeds, for example, with an infant mortality rate of 64 per 1,000 births, the rate fell to 21 among babies attending the clinics.