From Cradle to Grave (HI278) Lecture 3 Child Poverty, Health and the State

Lecture Outline Changing ideas and experiences of childhood in the 20th century. Value of children/childhood. The family, children and the state. Children, poverty and sickness/ Children’s medicine.

Image of child as patient ‘A physician watching over a sick child’ 1893 Samuel Luke Fildes

Value of childhood/children Value to state (national efficiency) – future citizens. Indicator of social wellbeing (modern humane state). Priceless child (Viviana Zelizer) = less useful economically but emotionally ‘beyond price’ Associated with shift of child from labourer to child-scholar (1870 compulsory education introduced in England and Wales)

New institutions and laws to protect children The London Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children (1 884) – became the NSPCC. Prevention of Cruelty to Children Act (1889) Education Act (1907)

Family, Children, State: a Changing Relationship C19th (until c.1870) – social provision locally financed and administered (Poor Law) Voluntary sector i.e. Charity – vital role well into C20th – most efforts directed at welfare of family With mixed economy of welfare came rise of state provision e.g. NI 1911, NHS 1948

B. Seebohm Rowntree, Poverty: A Study of Town Life (1902) ‘all bore some mark of the hard conditions against which they were struggling. Puny and feeble bodies, dirty and often sadly insufficient clothing, sore eyes, … filthy heads, cases of hip disease, swollen glands – all these and other signs told the same tale of privation and neglect’

Height and weight differences Boys weights Poorest Middle Highest Age 5 38 ½ 40 ¼ 44 Age 13 73 80 84 ¼ Combined Average 3-13 years 52 ½ 55 ¼ 58 Rowntree, Poverty, p.212.

Height and Weight of 13-year olds Manchester 1913 Average Height Average Weight Girls in poor class school 4” 6’ 75lb Girls in medium class school 4” 6’ 77lb Girls in good class school 4” 9’ 83lb Boys in poor class school 4” 4’ 70lb Boys in middle class school 4” 6’ 73 ¾lb Boys in good class school 4” 9’ 82lb Lancet, 17 Jan. 1914.

Rickets in children Lack of sunlight, vitamin D

Great Ormond Street Hospital (est.1853)

Great Ormond Street

Children’s hospitals 1869 Great Ormond Street, London 75 beds and treating 720 in-patients and 15,000 out-patients (Dr Charles West) Evelina Hospital, London opened 1869 with 30 beds East London Hospital for Sick Children opened late 1860s – by 1895 102 beds and treating over 30,000 patients a year British Paediatric Association set up 1928

Conclusions Increasing concern with health and wellbeing of child from late 19th century onwards Reassessment of value of child – dovetailing of national, social and cultural attention and re-evaluation Rise of paediatrics from 2nd half of 19th century as distinct speciality (late compared with other medical specialisms) Shift from 19th-century concern with bodily health of child to mental wellbeing of the child in the 20th century