house about forty girls were seated
in a kind of shelter which protected them from the rain, some of them
working and some talking together, while others remained apart
depressed and silent. Most of these young women were shortly expecting
to become mothers. Certain of them, however, already had their
infants, as there were seventeen babies in the Home who had been
crowded out of the Central Maternity Hospital. Among these were some
very sad cases, several of them being girls of gentle birth, taken in
here because they could pay nothing. One, I remember, was a foreign
young lady, whose sad history I will not relate. She was found running
about the streets of a seaport town in a half-crazed condition and
brought to this place by the Officers of the Salvation Army.

In this house there is a room where ex-patients who are in service can
bring their infants upon their holidays. Two or three of these women
were here upon the occasion of my visit, and it was a pathetic sight
to see them dandling the babies from whom they had been separated and
giving them their food.

It is the custom in this and other Salvation Army Maternity Homes to
set apart a night in every month for what is called a Social Evening.
On these occasions fifty or more of the former inmates will arrive
with their children, whom they have brought from the various places
where they are at nurse, and for a few hours enjoy their society,
after which they take them back to the nurses and return to their
work, whatever it may be. By means of this kindly arrangement these
poor mothers are enabled from time to time to see something of their
offspring, which, needless to say, is a boon they greatly prize.

THE MATERNITY HOSPITAL

IVY HOUSE, HACKNEY

This Hospital is one for the accommodation of young mothers on the
occasion of the birth of their illegitimate children. It is a humble
building, containing twenty-five beds, although I think a few more can
be arranged. That it serves its purpose well, until the large
Maternity Hospital of which I have already spoken can be built, is
shown by the fact that 286 babies (of whom only twenty-five were not
illegitimate) were born here in 1900 without the loss of a single
mother. Thirty babies died, however, which the lady-Officer in charge
thought rather a high proportion, but one accounted for by the fact
that during this particular year a large number of the births were
premature. In 1908, 270 children were