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its disruptive effect on the family. In previous wars the men only
have been taken, but this time the families have often been disintegrated
as if by some invisible centrifugal force —men to the services
or the factory, girls to the services or directed labour and mothers
to industry. Only too often family life has suffered a disaster. I do
not know the figures for venereal disease, but, judging from interviews
with people in trouble, these diseases have increased, as they always
do in war-time. One very revealing case came to my notice. An
unmarried girl, a little over twenty, was sent to me wanting treatment
for gonorrhoea. According to her statement she already had one
child, blind and in a public institution as the result of this disease.
She wished to be treated so that she might marry a young man to whom
she was engaged. When I suggested that what she proposed to do
was wicked, she promptly produced the young man, who threatened
physical violence if I interfered. I ascertained, however, that he
really did know the facts and understand the risks. Inquiry at the
Ministry and from the Registrar revealed the astonishing state of affairs
that no legal action whatever was possible, and the couple were duly
united in a registry office. Illicit unions and illegitimate births are
also frequently the evidence of family disruption. One powerful
factor in this direction which existed in the Borough long before the
war, but has been grently accentuated by the war, is lack of privacy.
It is beyond human achievement to establish and bring up a family
creditably in the conditions which are the common lot of many a
couple in this Borough. These are physical conditions which certainly
could be remedied, but there are other factors which justify
apprehension about the future of family life. There have been
great and rapidly developed changes in our Habits, especially in those
of women. The adoption of male garb, the use of cosmetics (even by
school-girls) and the enormous increase of smoking among women all
seem of doubtful value to family life. I have seen a mother breastfeeding
a baby while smoking a cigarette, and when it is remembered
that nicotine can be demonstrated in the milk of a nursing woman
and in the urine ante-natally, there is justification for the view that
this habit cannot be of benefit to the infant. If the national health
is to be built upon that of the family then obviously something more
than mere physical and material change is needed.
Owing to the vital importance of identification it fell to my lot as
Medical Officer of Health to see the bodies of all those killed. This
was a distressing duty, but personal experience thus acquired enables
me to express appreciation of the kindness and sympathy evinced by
the mortuary attendants and of the painstaking care with which they
carried out their work. Two mortuaries were maintained, capable
together of taking between three and four hundred bodies. One of
these was the permanent mortuary of the Council at St. Marychurch
Street and the other was a temporary structure erected for the purpose