arrangement, by which the Women Inspectors can only inspect Poor Law
Institutions on sufferance, is seen to be indefensible and the need
for reform in this direction urgent.

There is one Assistant Woman Inspector, who is a highly qualified
medical woman, in the Public Health Department of the Board. She has
been in office only a few months, but it has been remarked in more
than one quarter that the enhanced value of the recent report of
the Board's Medical Officer on Infant Mortality is due to her
co-operation.

The jurisdiction of the Local Government Board in London is confined
to England and Wales--Scotland and Ireland having their own Boards in
Edinburgh and Dublin respectively.

The Local Government Board for Scotland appointed a Woman Inspector
for the first time about three years ago, at a salary of L200 a year.
She is a fully qualified medical woman. Her duties include both Poor
Law Work (_e.g._ the inspection of children in poor-houses or boarded
out, enquiries into complaints of inadequate relief to widows) and
Public Health Work (_e.g._ enquiries into any special incidence of
disease).

The Local Government Board for Ireland employs two Women Inspectors,
one at a salary of L200-10-L300 and the other at a salary of L200, to
inspect boarded-out children.

There are no prescribed qualifications for these posts; but they
have always been, and still are, held by highly qualified
women--distinguished graduates and experienced in social work; one is
a doctor of medicine.

Sir Henry Robinson, Vice-President of the Local Government Board for
Ireland, said in his evidence before the Royal Commission on the Civil
Service that he would like to have one or two women doctors to go
round the work-houses and to visit the female wards, but the salaries
offered by the Treasury to women doctors seemed to him too low to
attract well qualified women.

_The Home Office_

It was about twenty years ago that the Home Office began to realise
that the ever-increasing number of women and girl workers in factories
and workshops made it imperative that women as well as men inspectors
should be appointed if the Factory Acts intended for the protection of
workers were to be effectually enforced. There was no doubt even from
the first about the usefulness of these Women Inspectors, but in ten
years' time the number appointed for the whole of the United Kingdom
had only increased to eight. At the beginning of the present year,
1