Description

Summary: album, spring back album containing variety of reports, child health and diet information, notes, newscuttings and extensive photographs of children, activities and shops relative to the Lymington Maternity and Child Welfare Centre, compiled by Mary Newenham at Lymington, Lymington and Pennington, Hampshire, between 1927 and 1930

Summary: Mrs Newenham was mayoress of Lymington in from 1923 to 1926.

Identification note: Excellent photographs of child related events and shops. In the early years of the 20th century reducing infant mortality became a major focus of concern. The Lymington Maternity and Child Welfare Centre was started soon after the end of the First World War. It met once a month at the Church House: tea was dispensed at 1d a cup with a biscuit, and a jumble sale was held. From 1926 the ‘Welfare’ met once a week, and sold baby milk and supplements such as bone-marrow, malt extract and cod-liver oil. In 1927 an Ante-Natal Clinic was opened, and a Milk Fund started; in the same year the first Lymington Baby Week was held. Events included a baby show, in which over 100 babies were entered: the winner of the cup for babies under two years was Robin Squibb, whose mother ‘is an ideal mother, she has eight children... she has 25/- a week, when the rent is paid, and yet the children always look fat and well-fed’. The following year’s winner was Pat Dedman, aged 4 months, ‘whose only failing was that he was perhaps too big and too heavy for his age, but as he was breast-fed, that could not be counted a legitimate fault’. There was also a well-received lecture on ‘Fathercraft’.