Routledge Revivals
Women and Children First
First published in 1992, this book explores the efforts to counteract the high maternal and infant death rates present between the end of the nineteenth century and the Second World War. It looks at the problem in five different continents and shows the varying approaches used by the governments, institutions and individuals in those countries. Contributors display how policy and practice have been shaped by the structure of maternity services, nationalism, the conflict of colonization and cultural factors. In doing so, they illustrate how welfare policy and funding were moulded throughout the world in the times considered.
Women and Children First
International Maternal and Infant Welfare, 18701945
Valerie Fildes, Lara Marks and Hilary Marland
First published in 1992
by Routledge
This edition first published in 2013 by Routledge
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Simultaneously published in the USA and Canada
by Routledge
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1992 Valerie Fildes, Lara Marks and Hilary Marland the collection as a whole; individual chapters, the contributors.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers.
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A Library of Congress record exists under ISBN: 92007627
ISBN 13: 978-0-415-83425-4 (hbk)
ISBN 13: 978-0-203-49382-3 (ebk)
WOMEN AND CHILDREN FIRST
INTERNATIONAL MATERNAL AND INFANT WELFARE 18701945
Edited by
Valerie Fildes, Lara Marks and Hilary Marland
First published in 1992
by Routledge
11 New Fetter Lane, London EC4P 4EE
Simultaneously published in the USA and Canada
by Routledge
a division of Routledge, Chapman and Hall Inc.
29 West 35th Street, New York, NY 10001
1992 Valerie Fildes, Lara Marks and Hilary Marland, the collection as a whole; individual chapters, the contributors.
Typeset by Laserscript, Mitcham, Surrey Printed and bound in Great Britain by Biddles Ltd, Guildford and Kings Lynn
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilized in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers.
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data
Women and children first: international maternal and infant welfare, 18701945/edited by Valerie Fildes, Lara Marks, and Hilary Marland. p. cm. (The Wellcome Institute series in the history of medicine; 4)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
1. Maternal health services History 20th century. 2. Maternal health services History 19th century. 3. Infant health services History 20th century. 4. Infant health services History 19th century. 5. Maternal and infant welfare Government policy.
I. Fildes, Valerie A. II. Marks, Lara, 1963. III. Marland, Hilary. IV. Series.
[DNLM: 1. Child Health Services history. 2. Health Policy history. 3. Infant Welfare history. 4. Maternal Health Services history. 5. Maternal Welfare history. WA11.1W872]
RG940.W66 1992
362.1982009-dc20
DNLM/DLC
for Library of Congress 927627
CIP
ISBN 0415080908
For the mothers and children of the Third World
Cynthia Comacchio is assistant professor at the Department of History, Wilfred Laurier University, Waterloo, Ontario. She received her masters degree at York University, Toronto, Ontario, and her doctorate in Canadian History at the University of Guelph, Ontario. Her research interests include childhood and the family, gender and class. She has published articles on maternal and child welfare in rural Canada, marriage, and class analysis, and is working on a book on maternal and child welfare in Ontario, 19141940.
Valerie Fildes trained and worked as a nurse before obtaining a first degree and Ph.D. in Human Biology at the University of Surrey. Her research has included infant care and paediatrics prior to 1800. She is author of Breasts, Bottles and Babies: A History of Infant Feeding (1986) and Wet Nursing: A History from Antiquity to the Present (1988), and is editor of Women as Mothers in Pre-Industrial England (1990), also published in the Wellcome Series in the History of Medicine. She is currently researching infant feeding practices in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Valerie Fildes is a member of the International Union of Nutritional Sciences Committee on the Nutritional Significance of Colostrum.
Debby Gaitskell teaches history for London Universitys Centre for Extra-Mural Studies and at the Institute of Commonwealth Studies, where she also runs a seminar series entitled Women, colonialism and commonwealth. She has previously lectured at the University of Witwatersrand, Birkbeck and Morley Colleges, and for the Workers Educational Association. An editor of the Journal of Southern African Studies from 1984 to 1988, she has published on African women and Christianity, domesticity and domestic service, and girls education in South Africa.
Molly Ladd-Taylor is assistant professor of United States history at Carleton College in Northfield, Minnesota. She is editor of Raising a Baby the Government Way: Mothers Letters to the Childrens Bureau, 19151932 (1986) and author of Mother-Work: Women, Child Welfare and the State 18901930 (forthcoming from the University of Illinois Press).
Milton Lewis is a graduate of the University of New South Wales and the Australian National University. He is currently Australian Research Council Senior Research Fellow in the Department of Public Health at the University of Sydney. He was chairman of the organizing committee of the first national conference of the Australian Society of the History of Medicine, 1989, and is a member of the National Council of the Society.
Irvine Loudon qualified in medicine from Oxford University in 1951 and worked as a general practitioner until 1970, when he started to research the history of medicine. From 1980 to 1989 he was attached to the Wellcome Unit for the History of Medicine in Oxford, first as a Wellcome Research Fellow and later as a Research Associate. His publications include
