The International Congress of Women of 1899 (Volume 5)

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1900 Excerpt: ...nursery. Hope for the future rests with the children. What is to be done with them 1 Boarding them out in the country has had excellent results, especially in Scotland, where the system was started many years ago. But the numbers of children chargeable throughout the United Kingdom (Scotland 5800) are so enormous that the supply of suitable homes is quite inadequate. By an ideally suitable home I mean one in which the child's life is absorbed in that of the family, and where the foster parents bestow upon it a share of the care and affection which they give to their own children. Where the homes are not ideal, it is desirable, and indeed necessary, to obtain the official services of one or two ladies in the centres of the boarding-out districts, who would visit the children and befriend them in after life. Cottage homes, too, for 8 or 10 children, should be established throughout the country under the care of a well-paid matron, or, still better, a married couple without children. All such children would of course go to the public schools, and I am sure women guardians will agree with me as to the excellent results obtained by transferring boys and girls from the dull life of a workhouse school to a lively board school. Every Board of Guardians should employ at least one woman inspector to occasionally visit the boarded-out children, and who could at the same time see the lunatics certified to be harmless and incurable--a large number of whom, in Scotland at least, are boarded out in certified houses, where they lead more natural lives and are kept at a much cheaper rate than in an asylum. I may say in passing that pauper asylums offer a wide and important field for the services of women guardians, wha may do much good, especially in the women's departments...