Metropolitan Maternity: Maternal and Infant Welfare Services in Early Twentieth Century LondonFor centuries London has been at the centre of the social and economic fabric of British life, and its empire. London has not only been renowned for its pivotal role in the world of finance and politics, but also for its acute problems of overcrowding and social and economic dislocation. Starting in 1902 and ending just before the outbreak of the Second World War, Metropolitan Maternity highlights the distinct role London played in these years within the debates and policies concerning the economic and military future and physical welfare of the nation. Focusing on the expansion of maternal and child health and welfare services in the early twentieth century, this book shows that London mothers and children tended to be better served than those in provincial cities or rural areas. Yet even in London some areas were better served than others. A central theme of the book is the complexity of socio-economic and political forces that determined the differing levels of provision and health standards within the city. The book also examines the increasing emphasis placed on state sponsorship of health services in the early twentieth century and the growing willingness to involve and listen to mothers and their needs in the planning and development of services. |
Contents
13 | |
40 | |
Infant and Maternal Health in Four London | 87 |
Politics and Provision | 132 |
Infant Health and Welfare Services | 167 |
Maternal Health Services | 195 |
Listening To and Involving Mothers in the Provision | 245 |
Popularity and Uptake | 263 |
Other editions - View all
Metropolitan Maternity: Maternal and Infant Welfare Services in Early ... Lara V. Marks Limited preview - 1996 |
Metropolitan Maternity: Maternal and Infant Welfare Services in Early ... Lara V. Marks Limited preview - 2020 |
Common terms and phrases
abortion antenatal clinics attending baby clinic birth control borough council Britain cent child welfare child welfare services Committee doctor early twentieth century East London EEMH England and Wales expenditure Fenton Figure four boroughs four London boroughs Hampstead and Kensington health services health visitors Hist Hospital for Mothers Ibid Idem illegitimacy Infant deaths infant mortality infant welfare centres institutions Jewish Kensington Council Kensington MOH Kensington Women's Welfare Labour Party London County Council maternal and child maternal and infant maternal deaths maternal mortality midwives milk motherhood Mothers and Babies municipal National National Health Service neonatal mortality NKWWC North Kensington North Kensington Women's number of births Nursing overall overcrowding patients percentage political population post-neonatal mortality poverty Public Health Survey puerperal sepsis rates of infant rates of maternal social Stepney and Woolwich Table welfare provision woman women Women's Welfare Centre Woolwich MOH working-class
Popular passages
Page 16 - First, concentrate on the mother. What the mother is the children are. The stream is no purer than the source. Let us glorify, dignify, and purify motherhood by every means in our power.
Page 31 - Once the production of healthy, moral and intelligent citizens is revered as a social service and made the subject of deliberate praise and encouragement on the part of the government, it will, we may be sure, attract the best and most patriotic of the citizens.
Page 318 - Irish and Jewish Women's Experience of Childbirth and Infant Care in East London, 1870-1939: the Responses of Host Society and Immigrant Communities to Medical Welfare Needs', D.Phil, thesis (Oxford 1990), especially chs 4 and 8; and L.
Page 11 - Give us good motherhood^ and good pre-natal conditions, and I have no despair for the future of this or any other country.
Page 326 - The epidemiology of acute respiratory infections in children and adults: A global perspective.
Page xi - Stopes papers in the Contemporary Medical Archives Centre at the Wellcome Institute for the History of Medicine, CMAC/PP/MCS/C.24.
Page 81 - Survival Networks: Women's Neighbourhood Sharing in London before World War I', History Workshop Journal 15 (1983), pp.
Page 16 - ... but upon, the health, the intelligence, the devotion and maternal instinct of the mother. And if we would solve the great problem of Infant Mortality, it would appear that we must first obtain a higher standard of physical motherhood.