Maternal and child welfare in England and Wales between the wars: a comparative regional study.

This study explores the factors which shaped the local maternal and child welfare services of the inter-war period. It draws on research from local authority minute books, local newspapers, and from mothers themselves. It shows the strong influences exerted by the complex interplay of geographical, economic, political and cultural factors in determining the shape of services in the four very different localities studied here. The services were very different in the different localities, in two of the four areas expensive for the mothers, offering little practical medical or material help, and relying heavily on voluntary effort to meet government targets of every scheme being as self-sufficient as possible. Although it is shown that those indices of maternal and infant health, the infant and maternal mortality rates, fell in all four areas studied, the precise connection between educating the mothers and better perinatal and infant health remains to be established.

Ph. D. (submitted in partial fulfilment of the requirements for this degree).