The headmaster of one casually selected school makes a special return upon the quality of the clothing of his 405 children. He tells of 7.4 per cent. of his boys whose clothing was "the scantiest possible--_e.g._ one ragged coat buttoned up and practically nothing found beneath it; and boots either absent or represented by a mass of rags tied upon the feet"; of 34.8 per cent. whose "clothing was insufficient to retain animal heat and needed urgent remedy"; of 45.9 per cent, whose clothing was "poor but passable; an old and perhaps ragged suit, with some attempt at proper underclothing--usually of flannelette"; thus leaving only 12.8 per cent. who could, in the broadest sense, be termed "well clad."
Taking want of personal cleanliness as the next indication of neglect at home, 11 per cent. of the boys are reported as "very dirty and verminous"; 34.7 per cent. whose "clothes and body were dirty but not verminous"; 42.5 per cent, were "passably clean, for boys," and only "12 per cent. clean above the average."
Eleven per cent. verminous; think what it means! Think what the homes must be like from which these poor little wretches come! Better, perhaps, than the country cottage where the cesspool drains into the water supply and the hen-house vermin invades the home, but surely intolerable beside our comforts! Give but a moment again to the significance of the figures I have italicized in the table that follows, a summarized return for the year 1906 of the "Ringworm" Nurses who visit the London Elementary Schools and inspect the children for various forms of dirt disease.
---------------------------------------------------------------- | | Number of | | | | | Departments. | children | Clean. | Partially | Verminous. | | | examined. | | cleansed. | | |--------------|-----------|-----------------------------------| | Boys . | 34,345 | 32,726 | 847 | 1,139 | | Girls . | 36,445 | 22,476 | 4,426 | 12,003 | | Infants . | 42,140 | 6,675 | 2,661 | _29,675_ | | Mixed . | 5,855 | 4,886 | 298 | 897 | | Special . | 977 | 624 | 133 | 296 | |--------------|-----------|----------|-----------|------------| | Total . | 119,762 | 67,387 | 8,365 | 44,010 | ----------------------------------------------------------------