Page:Labour and childhood.djvu/39

 course typical of many, the school doctors declared 11 per cent of the children to be "dirty and verminous," and 34 per cent "dirty in body and clothes"—that is to say 45 per cent were unfit to sit beside clean children. There were only 12 per cent of the children in this school who might be described as clean—that is to say, as clean as their neighbours would allow them to be.

But this evil, as well as others, has poverty at its root. "Even if one is poor, one can surely be clean!" is a common remark, but it is rather superficial. Artificial heat of every kind is costly. Hot water is not laid on in all homes—or in schools! Cold water appears a very cruel thing to the hungry, though pleasant to the well-nourished. Even fresh, cool air has terrors for the ill-fed. To be sure many very poor children are very clean. And a little while ago—not a hundred years ago—the children of nobles were not washed much oftener than the children of slum-dwellers. Certainly a middle-class child to-day would shrink with horror from little nobles of bygone days if these could reappear just as they were under their fine clothes! The Court of Versailles was not dainty. The ladies did not bathe, and typhoid was a common disease in palaces not very long ago. The history of Queen Anne's