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BIRTH CONTROL NEWS
Doctor's Case for Small
Families.
A defence of mothers who "provide
the State with a small number of good citizens rather than a rabble of neglected starvelings" is made by Dr. John Kershaw, medical officer of health for Accrington (Lancs.)
The number of first-born children, he points out, had increased in Accring- ton, and was higher in 1936 than at any time since 1930. The number of second children had also increased during recent years.
"If young parents prefer pleasure to perambulators and cars to cradles," Dr. Kershaw writes,
16 we should expect to find a decrease in the number of first children, since once the first baby has arrived a life of pleasure is seriously hampered.
"It is in the third and subsequent children that the decrease has been steadily progressing during the last dozen years.
"If these figures mean anything, they mean that women are as ready as ever to become mothers, but that they are unable to afford a large family.
"Parents are still courageous. It is fear for the child's future and not for her own comfort that deters a woman from continuing to bear children.
'Until she is relieved of this fear, it is futile to mouth well-meaning but empty phrases about duty to the State.'
Your Own Opinion.
(
I do not think the writer of the article on empty cradles worked out how a mother with only £2 a week coming in can provide for a newcomer without robbing those she has already.
I have two big and healthy children, and I have just had another in Crumpsall Hospital.
I borrowed £2 for a second-hand layette for my new babe, expecting to
October, 1937
receive £2 maternity money, and now I am informed by the Post Office that I am not entitled to draw any.
I have drawn just 24s. 6d. in money and I have put ninety 1s. 2d. stamps on my cards, expecting it now my babe is here. I have no money to buy even a second-hand pram, nor anything to pay back what I borrowed for the layette. Then we have to read articles on why there are not more children!
D. S., Belper Street, Harpurhey.
Landlord Bans Babies.
A young couple in Aberdeen have been forbidden by their landlord to have any children. If they do they must leave the house.
The identity of the couple is being kept secret, but the matter has aroused tremendous indignation and is being investigated by the Aberdeen House Proprietors' and Factors' Association.
The clergy have taken strong objec- tion to the landlord's ruling, and steps may be taken to have the whole case officially reviewed.
Investigations have revealed that although it is seldom a factor makes the stipulation so definite many young couples have been given houses, but told when they take over that no children were wanted.
"There is no A young wife said: doubt that many young couples are afraid to have families for fear they are put out of their house."
MEDICAL HELP
ON
BIRTH CONTROL
BY
HAROLD CHAPPLE, M.C.
SIR JOHN COCKBURN, K.C.M.G., M.D. SIR W. ARBUTHNOT LANE, C.B. SIR JAMES BARR, C.B.E., M.D.
And others.
Of all Booksellers
6s. net. Putnam, 24, Bedford St., London, W.C.2
Vol xvi, No. 3.
BIRTH CONTROL NEWS
Paris-International Population Prison Ban.
Congress.
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A woman friend who has just become a visitor to Holloway Prison is puzzled and disturbed because she finds she is unable to get permission to give the inmates any instruction in birth control.
CC
At the Congress held in Paris on July 29 to August 1, under the Presi- dency of M. Adolphe Landry, a large number of speakers from different countries assembled to listen to a wide range of theoretical papers. The Here, if anywhere," she says subject arousing most discussion and indignantly, "it is needed.
it is needed. Most of on which the Congress members got
these women, who have either got no thoroughly bogged was that of "Race." brains at all, or the wrong sort, and are It is clear that the word as used at
often physically unsound as well, have large families, some of them eight or ten, even in these days.
80
present is charged with much political significance and based on so little truly diagnostic character that it would be better not to use the word at all at any scientific meeting.
A full Report of the proceedings is to be issued by the Congress Secretary in due course.
Sir Leonard Hill's Warning.
Sir Leonard Hill, specialist in physical medicine, discussed the pros- pect of a greatly diminished population, with a growing proportion of the aged, in his Presidential Address to the Sanitary Inspectors Association Con- ference at Brighton.
He said that, if the present trend con- tinues, in one hundred years Britain's population may have fallen to 5,000,000, little more than half the present population of London. In every 100 people there were now 23 under 15 and 12 over 60. In thirty years' time the figures would be 10 and 24, and in sixty years 4 and 45.
The infant mortality had been halved and the expectation of life at birth had gone up since the middle of last century, from thirty-nine to fifty-nine years.
It was not that the late middle-aged people were now living to be older, but that the young were not dying. If the present trend was followed there would by 1941 no longer be any excess of births over deaths.
'They would like to know how to stop, having children; the prison officials would like them to. I would like to tell them. But none of us is the Home Office will not even listen to able to do anything about it, because
argument on the subject."
Not "Three Score Years and
Ten."
C
The child born in this century can hope on the average for thirty more years of life than his ancestor in the fourth century and twelve more years than if he had lived 200 years ago," said Professor D. Burns, speaking at the British Association.
CC
More and more people of all ages are being protected against natural death, and the proportion of people unfitted for life's struggle is increasing, especially in the more sheltered classes, and they are likely to fall victims to any sudden physical or mental crisis. That explains why the average expec- tation of life of the male of 65 is less to-day than it was at the beginning of the Christian Era.
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