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establishment in 1893 of the Nethersole Hospital for women and children, as part of the Alice Hospital, with Mrs. Stevens as Matron. These three steps drew attention to women's health in general, but a maternity service for Chinese women in particular resulted from the support of the Chinese elite and the LMS in the context of public health fears about infant mortality.
4
Mrs. Stevens had reported in 1898 that the Alice hospitals did not have enough wards for women. The two beds set aside for maternity cases at the Nethersole Hospital were not only inadequate to meet demand, they were inappropriately placed in the eye ward, where labour was disruptive for general patients, especially when an operation was necessary, and the mothers and other patients were at risk of cross-infection. The number of cases treated had steadily increased to seventeen in 1900. Therefore an Obstetric Bungalow was mooted and a call for public subscription made in 1901. Correspondence notes that funds were only slowly forthcoming, fund-raising limited by the guidelines of the LMS as a mission. For example, the enthusiasm of the wife of the American consul was dampened when the LMS would not agree to fund-raising from a Charity Ball or Theatricals. It took a move from the Chinese establishment and the sanction of government for midwifery training for the plan to materialise.
For the government, infant mortality was not only a public health risk, a fear heightened at the time of the 1894 plague because of the abandonment of bodies, it also prevented a tidy collecting of demographic statistics. Births and deaths information was of course essential to plan public health services and control contagious and infectious diseases. The problem was that deaths were not recorded and it was only male babies that were registered at the ancestral halls when one month old. In 1896 a Bill recommending the registration of Chinese Midwives' and 'Chinese Doctors' was drafted, but not presented, such regulation being seen as premature.
However, it became clear to the government that a Chinese midwifery service which would enable the recording of births was desirable. In 1901, the Medical Officer of Health recommended the payment of a small fee to the Chinese midwife to report the birth, and in 1902 arrangements to train Chinese midwives at the Civil Hospital were made. In 1904, an Inquiry into Chinese Infant Mortality recommended the payment of a fee to the registrant of a birth, and the employment of female visitors to verify