Abstract
The infant welfare movement in Australia was imported. It was part of an international movement to ‘help the mothers and save the babies’ which began in the 1900s but only flourished after the Great War, when nationalists and imperialists were stirred to ‘repair the war wastage’ of the ‘brightest and most physically perfect’ men in the worst war the world had seen.1 Gisela Bock has written of mothers’ place in the emerging welfare states in Western countries that pronatalists ‘saw women as national assets precisely because they were mothers’, whereas ‘maternalist feminists wanted motherhood recognized as part of women’s citizenship’.2 These varied motives underpinned infant welfare initiatives throughout the British Empire, but it was war, and for mothers and families the grief associated with its violence and the universal ‘great sacrifice’ preached for years afterwards, that prompted widespread initiatives irrespective of place or political structures across Australia and in the other white Dominions. As the advertisement for New South Wales’ first baby week put it in 1920, ‘Long Live King Baby!’ Economic and political priorities commanded that ‘the hope of Australia lies in healthy living babies, fewer dead babies, stronger children, and a fitter race.’ ‘Population means power! The nation that has the babies has the future.’3
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Notes
MBHA, Jubilee: The First Fifty Years, Adelaide, 1959, p. 15.
Gisela Bock, ‘Poverty and Mothers’ Rights in the Emerging Welfare States’, in G. Duby and M. Perrot (eds), A History of Women in the West Vol. v, Toward a Cultural Identity in the Twentieth Century, F. Theobaud (ed.), Cambridge, Mass. and London, 1994, p. 420.
For some international comparisons, see Valerie Fildes, Lara Marks and Hilary Marland (eds), Women and Children First: International Maternal and Infant Welfare, 1870–1945, London, 1992.
G.F. McCleary, Infantile Mortality and Infants Milk Depots, London, 1905, pp. 57–60
The Maternity and Child Welfare Movement, London, 1935, pp. 8–9, 38;
W.G. Armstrong, The Infant Welfare Movement in Australia’, MJA, 28 October 1939, p. 642;
Deborah Dwork, ‘The Milk Option: An Aspect of the History of the Infant Welfare Movement in England 1898–1908’, Medical History, vol. 31, no. 1, January 1987, pp. 63–5; Thearle, ‘Dr Alfred Jefferis Turner’, pp. 196–7.
on the expense of milk prescriptions, see H. Douglas Stephens, ‘Some Impressions of Pediatric Work Abroad’, IMJA, 20 January 1908, p. 13
T.M. Rotch, ‘The Essential Principles of Infant Feeding and the Modern Methods of Applying Them’, Journal of the American Medical Association, vol. 41, no. 6, 8 August 1903, pp. 349–50.
Rotch’s method was also discussed by Philip Muskett, in The Feeding and Management of Australian Infants in Health and Disease, 5th ed., Sydney, 1900, p. 220;
Dorothy F. Hollingsworth, ‘Developments Leading to Present-Day Nutritional Knowledge’, in Derek Oddy and Derek Miller (eds), The Making of the Modern British Diet, London, 1976, p. 191
See also T.B. Mepham, ‘“Humanizing” Milk: The Formulation of Artificial Feeds for Infants (1850–1910)’, Medical History, vol. 37, no. 3, July 1993, pp. 225–49
T.M. Rotch, ‘Notes on Infant Feeding’ (2 parts), Archives of Pediatrics, vol. 6, no. 7, July 1889, pp. 476–85, no. 8, August 1889, pp. 536–48
and his textbook, Paediatrics: The Hygienic and Medical Treatment of Children, 34th edn., Philadelphia, 1901;
F. Truby King, ‘Physiological Economy in the Nutrition of Infants’, NZMJ, vol. 6, no. 24, November 1907, pp. 71–103 drew on the work of Rotch and Holt.
See also Editorial, ‘Diet of Infants: A Reply’, AMG, 15 January 1894, p. 206
Jane Lewis, ‘Gender, the Family and Women’s Agency in the Building of ‘Welfare States’: the British Case’, Social History, vol. 19, no. 1, January 1994, pp. 37–55.
On the distinctions between visitor and inspector and their duties, see Celia Davies, ‘The Health Visitor as Mother’s Friend: A Woman’s Place in Public Health’, Social History of Medicine, vol. 1, no. 1, April 1988, pp. 39–58;
On the St Pancras School for Mothers, see Anna Davin, ‘Imperialism and Motherhood’, History Workshop Journal, issue 5, Spring 1978, pp. 38–4 3.
Armstrong, Annual Report of the MOH, 1904, p. 15. Armstrong’s message is reproduced as an appendix in Victoria Cowden, ‘“Mothers, as a Rule, Do Not Know …”: Mothercraft Campaigns in the Inner Suburbs of Sydney 1904–1914’, BA(Hons) thesis, University of New South Wales, 1980. See also Jan Kociumbas, ‘Children and Society in New South Wales and Victoria 1860–1914’, PhD thesis, University of Sydney, 1983, pp. 186–8.
This custom itself originated in the English philanthropic model where titled patronesses attracted funds and women’s voluntary work. On its precedents in Australia, see Elizabeth Windschuttle, ‘“Feeding the Poor and Sapping their Strength”: The Public Role of Ruling-Class Women in Eastern Australia, 1788–1850’, in Windschuttle (ed.), Women, Class and History: Feminist Perspectives on Australia 1788–1978, Melbourne, 1980, pp. 61–2.
G.J. [Grace] Boelke, Quinquennial Report for 1919. Public Health Standing Committee, vol. 48X, NCW of NSW Papers, ML MS 38
Adelaide School for Mothers, Minute Book, vol. 1, 23 September, 26 November, 15 December 1909, 27 January, 7 April 1910, SRG 199/1, Mortlock Library.
Anthea Hyslop, ‘The Social Reform Movement in Melbourne, 1890 to 1914’, PhD thesis, La Trobe University, 1980, pp. 236–7. Jeffreys Wood, ‘Preservation of Infant Life’, IMJA, 20 March 1908, pp. 130, 132
FSP, Sectional Report on the Supply and Distribution of Milk, Minutes of Evidence, Sydney, 1914, Evidence, 23 May 1913, qq. 5982–3
BMA (Vic Branch), ‘Ordinary Monthly Meeting’, 3 June 1908, IMJA, 20 June 1908, p. 322, ‘Ordinary Meeting’, 1 July 1908, IMJA, 20 July 1908, p. 368; ‘A Pure Milk Depot’, AMG, 20 June 1908, p. 304, ‘The Talbot Milk Institute’, AMG, 20 December 1910, p. 673
The Month. Victoria. Pure Milk Supply’, AMG, 21 December 1908, p. 696; The Talbot Milk Institute’, Una, 27 February 1909, p. 186; ‘Wholesome Milk’, AMG, 14 September 1912, p. 288.
‘The Lady Chelmsford Milk Institute in Brisbane’, AMG, 20 November 1909, pp. 622–4.
J.S.C. Elkington, The Feeding and Care of Babies, Hobart, 1906.
The Talbot Milk Institute’, AMG, 20 December 1910, pp. 673–4; ‘Infantile Mortality’, AMG, 16 March 1912, pp. 277–8.
A narrative history of baby clinics in New South Wales is given in K. O’Connor, Our Babies: The State’s Best Asset, Sydney, 1989.
NSW Dept of Public Health, Report of DGPH, 1913, pp. 10–11, 1915, pp. 158–9.
Flowers, Minister of Public Health, Interim Report, 21 June 1914, p. 2; NSW Dept of Public Health, Report of DGPH, 1915, p. 162
Acting Under Secretary to G. Griffiths et al., circular letter, 27 May 1914 2/8566.2; Flowers, Interim Report, 21 June 1914, p. 2; Report of DGPH, 1914, p. 141.
For biographical details, see Lysbeth Cohen, Dr Margaret Harper: Her Achievements and Place in the History of Australia, Sydney, 1971; also O’Connor, p. 31.
Alisa Klaus, Every Child a Lion, Ithaca, 1993, p. 76
M.V. Primrose, ‘Save the Babies’, Una, 30 April 1917, pp. 46–7;
‘Visiting Trained Nurses’, Una, vol. 17, no. 8, October 1919, p. 244.
Wendy Selby, ‘Motherhood in Labor’s Queensland 1915–1957’, PhD thesis, Griffith University, 1992, pp. 223–4.
On the Child Welfare Association, see ‘The Health of Tasmania’, MJA, 8 March 1919, p. 205, ‘The Care of Babies in Tasmania’, MJA, 10 January 1920, p. 34; Hobart Mercury, 8 October 1919; on Edith Waterworth
see Jill Waters, ‘Edith Waterworth’, in Heather Radi (ed.), 200 Australian Women: a Redress Anthology, Sydney, 1988, p. 95
Dr J. Dale at meeting of WA Branch, BMA, MJA, 18 August 1923, p. 183;
Davis, ‘Infant Mortality and Child Saving’, in P. Hetherington (ed.), Childhood and Society in Western Australia, Perth, 1988, pp. 168–71
This report was published as Legislative Assembly of NSW, Public Health. Report of the Commissioner, Mr Neville Mayman, on the Inquiry into the Welfare of Mothers and Children in New Zealand, Sydney, May 1918.
‘Vesta’, ‘A School for Mothers. The New Zealand Scheme’, Argus, 19 September 1917, p. 12
See P. Keep, ‘Stella May Allan’, ADB, vol. 7, 1891–1939, p. 39;
M. Wilson and B. Labrum, ‘Stella Henderson’, in C. Macdonald, M. Penfold and B. Williams (eds), The Book of New Zealand Women, Wellington, 1991, pp. 285–9
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© 1997 Philippa Mein Smith
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Smith, P.M. (1997). ‘Long Live King Baby’. In: Mothers and King Baby. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-14304-7_4
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