s by the Board.

Midwifery training is now required not only by those who are going
to act as midwives, but also by most missionaries, all fully trained
nurses (for matrons' posts or colonial posts) and by health visitors
and inspectors before obtaining appointments.

But it should be borne in mind, especially in considering the present
condition and future prospects of Midwifery as a profession, that even
now a large though ever-decreasing proportion of registered midwives
are still ignorant women who have never passed the Central Midwives'
Board or any other examination, and have had no teaching from any
one more experienced or better informed than themselves. For when
the Midwives' Act came into force in 1903, it was necessary to move
slowly, and so a clause was inserted, permitting women who had been
in _bona-fide_ practice for more than one year before 1902 to continue
their work under inspection and supervision (with many attempts at
teaching them by means of simple lectures and demonstrations). This
plan, or some similar one, was necessary, not only in the interests
of the midwives themselves, a set of decent and kindly, if ignorant
women, who would have been ruined by too sudden a change, but also
because a large number of mothers in England would have been left with
no one to help them in their time of need unless they were prepared
to run the risk of breaking the law. This, until recently, respectable
English women disliked to do.

It is important to remember this fact, when considering the present
and future prospects of the midwife. The untrained woman used to
charge 5s. or 7s. 6d. for her services, and the fact that her name had
been enrolled on the Government Register, that she was subject to
the supervision of an inspector, without having spent anything on her
change of status beyond the 10s. registration fee, did not suggest the
need of any particular change in her scale of charges. Thus 7s.
6d. per case, unfortunately still remains the very common fee for
midwifery, though this now involves, under the rules of the Midwives'
Board, not only the long hours of watchful care at the birth, but ten
days of daily visits to supervise both mother and baby, with careful
records of pulse and temperature, etc., kept in a register. Naturally,
the general public who employ midwives--viz., the poorer classes--do
not differentiate between the trained certificated midwife and the
untrained _bona-fide_ midwife whose n