The Problem of the Family

III.—Hampstead v. Shoreditch " BIRTH control is here to stay," Lord Dawson of Penn declared not long ago. That is a fact which few who have studied its development will deny. Starting with the middle class, it is now spreading rapidly among the poor in both cities and country. The movement in Britain has been along parallel lines with other- countries. The words of the General Director of the Medical Services of the German Army, in 1917, intended for his own land, closely ,apply here. " The causes are to a very slight extent a decline in physical fertilitity or a reluctance to marry, and are mainly a voluntary restriction of families by married couples. This phenomenon started with the middle and upper classes in large towns, and gradually extended to the rest of the population, even to country people."

While the proportion differs widely in various areas, the general decline in the birth rate among the working classes in our large cities in the past ten years has been about 17 per cent.

How far is this due to the active propagandist campaign. of various middle class leagues and societies among the poor ? Only to a very limited extent. A much more potent cause is operating. Working folk are inclined to suspect middle class advice on matters such as this. They believe that such advice is selfish as well as altruistic, They have an inkling of the fact that the birth rate is twice as much among the very poor as among the well- to-do imposes a heavy burden on the middle classes. Every- middle-class family carries the cost of the relief or upbringing of at least one other child on its shoulders. The real impelling cause is that large families are to-day an almost intolerable burden on the poor in cities. TheY have no room to house them, and often not enough food to feed them. The burden on the wife, especially, is cruel in its severity. Only occasionally, as in the volume Motherhood, published -by the Women's Co-operative Guild, does the working-class mother admit the crushing load of deprivation of comforts of life and of physical suffering that a large family imposes on her. When the fourth or fifth child comes she treasures it and loves it, but when it can be avoided she thanks God. This is not picturesque imagery. It is cold, hard fact, familiar to all who know the life of the back streets to-day. The middle-class campaign for the voluntary limitation of the families of the working classes is preached with the fervency of a new Gospel, On the political side it has

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neentrated Man effort to permit 'the teaching of birth ,ntrol in the public. Welfare Centres.' throughout the country. This proposal, significantly enough, has been approved by the House of Lords but was scotched by a abour Minister of Health, Mr. Wheatley.

Voluntarily supported centres for instruction and advice for women in. birth control are .being opened. The at known of these, started by Dr. Marie Stopes in 1921! a Holloway, and later removed to the rear of Tottenham ourt Road, claimed in 1924 that it had dealt with five housand cases. Various Leagues have started educe- ',anal campaigns. The oldest of all such associations, the lalthusian League, has resolved to concentrate its ropaganda henceforth among the workers.

Apart from the propagandists, there are purely business .entures seeking profit along these lines. Almost every rious paper circulating among the poor carries numerous dvertisements of free literature on this matter, including amphlets by foreign writers. This literature is distri- uted to promote the sale of appliances. Socialist papers arry a specially large number of such announcements. Some of these advertisements veil a trade in drugs for ausing abortion, which is still largely practised among a section of working women, despite its ruinous effects on alth. This is specially true in industrial areas, and is evealed by the large number of deaths of mothers. Mr. rtrand Russell in his evidence before the National irth Rate Commission gave the following figures in proof

MATERNAL DEATHS PER THOUSAND BIRTHS.

alifax (wool industry) .. 1911-1914 6.23 1919-1922 7.82 (Report of the M.O.H. mentions abortion-monger and drugs.) aekpool .. 1911-1914 5.58 1919-1922 7.55 (11 out of 35 deaths due to abortion.) ochdale (cotton) .. 1911-1914 7.21 1919-1922 7.05 cry (cotton) .. .. 1911-1914 6.49 1919-1922 6.43 ewsbury (textile) .. 1911-,1914 8.44 1919-1922 6.34 Lumley .. 1911-1914 5-81 1919-1922 6.15 (Drug-taking very prevalent.)

radford : 25 out of 51 deaths followed abortions, and of of 37 deaths from other causes at least 12 were asso- iated with miscarriage or abortion: London affords an admirable example of the movement f population in different classes of society. The most Inking fact in the statistics of London is that, despite increase in population, the number of children in the rea covered by the London County Council is markedly eclining. In 1911, the number of children under ten ears of age was 901,056. In 1921, it was 775,896. I ave not more recent figures, but the probable total to-day s between 700,000 and 725,000.

Apart from central areas like the City, Holborn and Vestminster, which are not in the least representative population, the lowest birth rate, 13.5 per thousand, is n Prosperous Hampstead. The highest is in Shoreditch, 4.6 per thousand.

The scale of the birth rate moves almost automatically most cases with the prosperity or poverty of the isti et. Most of the middle London boroughs are ted, apparently purposely, in population, so as to include rich as well as poor areas. Thus the borough of Lambeth stretches out to Penge, and the borough of St. Pancras includes not only poor areas around Hampstead Road, but prosperous northern suburbs to the borders of Hornsey. • To obtain strictly " black coated " districts we must go further out to the extra urban districts. Most of these are mainly inhabited by black coated London workers. Hampstead can claim that its birth rate per thousand is not a fair measure of its population, because so many elderly people settle there. But if another test is applied, it comes out still very low.

Taking the year 1924, the last for which I have returns for the whole of the boroughs and districts, the births per thousand were in Beckenham, a very prosperous suburb, where many well-to-do go to escape the burden of London rates, 14.1 ; Chislehurst, a still richer area, 18.1 ; and Barnes, 18.9. In four of the poorest areas of London the figures were : Shoreditch 25, Bermondsey 24.3, Poplar 22.9, and Bethnal Green 22.1.

It is equally true that in all these districts the birth rate is rapidly falling. The gulf between the rich and poor district is rapidly narrowing. Shoreditch is a typical example. Fifty years ago, the birth rate in Shoreditch reached the enormous figure of 41.9 per thousand. In 1887 it was down to 87.4 per thousand, by 1900 to 32.9, by 1915 28.5 and by 1925 24.4.

Let us consider Shoreditch a little .more in detail. It serves well as an example of the poor areas of our great cities. Here we have a population of 180,000, crowded together 158 to the acre. A wise poultry farmer does not attempt to keep more than one hundred chickens to an acre. Eighty-three babies out of every thousand die before they are a year old. Shoreditch's civic fathers are rightly very proud of this figure. A generation ago it was more than twice as high. Most of the children live far from any big public gardens. Overcrowding is the rule. You have father, mother and several children crowding into one room, in an old dilapidated house. You have the children crouching in a corner of the one room home during the night, while the mother is in the agony of her birth pains, the mother who has not and could not save a few pounds to meet the extra cost of her ordeal. Most employment is uncertain and most of the population is struggling on the edge of destitution. Many are on the dole. Boys are sent from school to idleness, not because they want to be idle, but because there is no work to be had.

When I go into the home of middle class families of good means, and find one pampered and spoiled child, or no child at all, and know that this is by wilful choice, I feel contempt and pity. But when I visit Shoreditch back streets and realize the conditions under which many of these people live, I cannot blame them if they take every legitimate step to keep their families from being