A NEW HEALTH CONSCIENCE
[To the Editor of the SPECTATOR.]
Sin,— Your note under this heading in your issue of last week has aroused in me, and I daresay in many others who serve on school care committees or are familiar with the facts in other ways, a deep anxiety lest the public conscience should so easily, and in my opinion, falsely, be satisfied. Care Committees are charged in general as the local repre- sentatives (in the London county area) of the L.C.C. with the care of school children's health and welfare, and, among
other things, to see that children are adequately fed. They are given statutory powers to feed children at the cost of the rates where they are satisfied that funds other than public funds are not available, and that children " are unable by reason of lack of food to take full advantage of the education provided for them." (See Education Act, 1921. Sections 82-84.) Note that there is no stated criterion of lack of food, and that children are expected to take full advantage of the education provided. In these circumstances, I maintain, sir, and I believe many other Care Committee workers would maintain, that a medical officer's report is not the sole criterion of whether a child is sufficiently fed to take full advantage of its education. A child may be not medically speaking undernourished, and yet continually unwisely or badly fed on indifferent or insufficient food to an extent to handicap its developing intelligence. My impression of school children of to-day is that they have considerable absorptive but little constructive or even repro- ductive mental powers ; this may be traced to many causes, not least to underfeeding.
However that may be—for my impression is open to chal- lenge—the Care Committee of which I am Chairman, and the Soup Kitchen for which I with other voluntary, workers are responsible, both believe, and act on our belief, that known poverty, as such, is evidence of insufficient feeding, with or without a medical report. There is nothing in the Education Act, or in the L.C.C. rules, so far as I know, to contradict this view, and it is certainly a view on the basis of which public money is being spent at the present time. In order to confirm my impression, that families where the wage-earner is unem- ployed and on transitional or ordinary unemployment benefit are not receiving sufficient funds to make adequate feeding of their children possible without public support, I recently sent in a request to the L.C.C. to allow me to collect Care Committee statistics over a wide area of Bermondsey and Southwark. This request was refused on the ground that the question of the sufficiency of unemployment benefit was not a matter for the Education Committee as such. Presumably the results might have involved criticism of the P.A.C. Dept. by representatives of the Education Dept. : and this is anathema to bureaucratic circles. But how are Care Com- mittees to look after children as a body if they may not call attention to facts which, in a body, may show the great poverty which they suffer ?
I have been constrained, however, to collect some statistics Without the official sanction of the L.C.C. from private friends on ('are Committees, and independently through the Soup Kitchen for which I am responsible. The former class of facts are those on consideration of which public money is actually being spent, and consequently they may be considered to be reasonably accurate, especially in the case of men who are on Transitional benefit and whose statements can be checked by reference to the Relieving Officer ; Soup kitchen figures cannot so be guaranteed, but I may say that we are only giving assistance at present to those whom we know well, or to those recommended us by Care Committees, and that in any case the scale of unemployment benefit and the amount of local rents is well known to us.
Class A.—Care Committee Cases. All families given are those in which the principal wage-earner is unemployed.
2V.11.—The so-called nett income is the total income when rent and insurance (for burial and so on) have been deducted from the gross income.
Total numbers Number of children " Net income in being fed of all families concerned. on school dinners. families combined.
117 48 £20 1 ls. 2d. per (in 18 families) week Average nett income per head : 3s. 6.153d.
Class B.—Soup Kitchen Cases. All families given are those in which there is only one wage-earner, and he out of Work or in partial work (not 6 days a week), or else cases of idows or deserted wives' families.
Total numbers in Nett income of all families families. combined.
56 £9 15s. 8d. per week. Average nett income per head : 3s. 5d.928d.
This average nett income, remember, is to provide for food, clothes, light, heat, amusement, supplementary educa- tion, holidays and all other expenses. I do not imagine that the figures given are in any way exceptional, although they cover only a small area, and I should like to hear what other correspondents find in their own districts ; what I want to maintain is, that quite apart from any medical certificate of underfeeding such an average income per head is not, and cannot be, enough, not only to enable children to take full advantage of their education (which is the technical Care Committee point), but to help them to grow up as adequate citizens of the State (which concerns your readers at large). If this is denied, I should like to ask those gentlemen who deny it—whether they be L.C.C. officials, or others less burdened with responsible decisions—a plain question. How would they manage on such a figure themselves, and would they like to feel that their own children had to go through their schooling with such funds alone available for their other than educational needs ?
I apologize for the length of this letter ; but this, sir, is a
vital question.—I am, Sir, &c., P. M. GEDGE, Charterhouse Missioner in Southwark. Chairman Chaucer L.C.C. School Care Committee. Treasurer Charterhouse Soup Kitchen. The Clergy House, 40 Tabard Street, S.E. 1.
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