NEGLECTED CHILDREN
SIR,—At a time when so much is done to provide for and protect the children, there is a curiously concealed and appalling wastage going on about which little is heard and almost nothing done. When parents are convicted of neglect of the children and sent to prison their children are cared for by the Local Authority. This is well enough, but, what happens when the parents are released? Owing to a shortage of accommodation in homes, these young citizens are sent back to these same parents and all the training and care given is lost. I refer to the bad cases, of course. They are the only ones where parents are imprisoned. In the last fort- night I have examined seven houses, containing about, in all, forty children forty units of our most valuable raw material. Very few people indeed have any conception of the condition of these homes, and that is
why L think a few extracts from two (quite typical cases) should be quoted.
. . . Mother and five children sleep in one bed . . . mattress soaked with excreta and shiny black with filth . . . floor covered with old flocks, filthy rags and adult human excreta . . . mother a prostitute.
Or again:
Six children sleep in a filthy bedroom on one broken wire mattress ineffectively repaired with string . . . the middle of the bed rests on a
pile of filth. Full pail of stale urine .. . no bed coverings . baby lies, soaked through, in an old pram . . . feet black with filth, and discharge from impetigo trickling between toes. . . .
I could give more loathsome details, but the point is that the parents concerned are utterly beyond hope of educating, and these children will have to return to these hovels to be reared in conditions worse than a pigsty. Before the war many children could be sent on to homes. Surely, when we spend so much time and money in providing extra coupons, blackcurrant juice and extra sweets we can find the time and money to provide accommodation for these wretched children. We must do so. Army huts, billets (nay, tents) under supervision would be preferable, infinitely so. I see only a minute fraction of these cases, and the total wastage of child life in the whole country must be very serious. Cannot some Department be moved to action?—Yours truly, Ilnaculin, Hall Flat Lane, Selby, Doncaster. ROBT. W. L. WARD.
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