In sickness and health: Public health in inter war Belfast

Dr Seán LuceyA.H.R.C. Research Fellow,

Queen’s University Belfast.Click here to listen to the audio of this paper

Belfast Corporation and Municipal Services

Trams

Gas

Public Baths Public Parks

‘Cradle to the grave’ Public Health

TB patients in Whiteabbey Sanatorium

‘The Public Health is now, a living, pulsating force, permeating and influencing the lives of all from the cradle (and 6 months before) to the grave’

Dr Charles Thomson, Belfast Medical Superintendent Officer of Health, 1931

Maternity and Child Welfare Centres

Mothers receiving instruction in ‘mothercraft’

15 Centres in Belfast including one on York Street

‘It all comes back to the question of an educated motherhood…. we must concentrate more and more upon the mother… future mothers as well as existing mothers should be taught mothercraft’

Dr Charles Thomson, Belfast Medical Superintendent Officer of Health, 1932.

‘Blaming the mothers’

‘it is not uncommon to see women standing in the streets or at the doors of their houses, with babies in their arms… and on Saturday nights especially the babies are often taken in trams to places of amusements, where they catch cold’

‘it is essential that women should realise that pregnancy is a serious business which they should not be expected to face without advice and support’

Dr Charles Thomson, ‘Report on the Health of the County Borough of Belfast for the year, 1932’ (P.R.O.N.I.)

The Great Depression and Public Health

Unemployment

Outdoor Relief Riots, 1932

Social Protest

Poverty and infant deaths

‘disclosed a state of malnutrition and debility in expectant mothers….[and] that the poor relief granted for a man, wife and three children, after deducting rent, fire and light, will not give an expectant woman the food necessary to produce a healthy child’

Dr Charles Thomson, ‘Report on the Health of the County Borough of Belfast for the year, 1932’ (P.R.O.N.I.)

Belfast Maternity Hospitals

Jubilee Maternity Hospital, 1935 Royal Maternity Hospital, 1933

Mater Infirmorum Maternity Hospital, 1942

‘It all comes back to the question of an educated motherhood…. Are our expectant mothers educated in mothercraft? What facilities have they for such education?

Dr Charles Thomson, Medical Superintend of Health, 1932.

Children about to receive ‘Sun ray’ treatment in Child Welfare Centre