Indifference to the children appears. They are looked after out of a stern sense of duty. The native impulse of spontaneous maternal fondness is killed by the deadly routine, and when, as frequently happens, the child dies, after a few pangs of grief, an easy reconciliation (perhaps not without a deep-seated sense of inward gratitude), is made to what is acknowledged as the “Will of the Almighty.” Sometimes, the mother makes no secret of her relief. But no man who has come for any length of time in contact with these working-class mothers can fail to admire the patience, the stoicism and the grim fortitude with which they face their dreary lot. Their ignorance of Birth Control, in face of the publicity the subject is now given in the Press, is almost incredible. The same quality of fatalism and resignation felt by the soldier in the war before the prospect of wounds or death, is still evinced by these women in the matter of child-birth. One frequently meets with a sentiment that “we must take what comes without grumbling,” that “what is fated must be,” and even that “we must not fly in the face of the Almighty.” There further exists a superstition that any object requiring internal adjustment, like a pessary, runs the risk of being lost in the woman’s inside. A further aspect of the problem is the prevalence under the existing system of the practice of abortion. It is difficult, of course, to give any trustworthy figures in this connexion, since in many cases the fact that the mother has attempted to induce an abortion is not revealed to the medical man who attends her, or to the hospital authorities who take her in. The methods usually resorted to are of an amazing crudity. They vary from the pregnant mother jumping three or four times consecutively off a table on to the floor or throwing herself downstairs, to her swallowing large quantities of lead, ergot, quinine and other substances as well as nocuous doses of emetics, irritants and purgatives. Frequently the woman practises local violence upon herself, or engages the services of a professional abortionist, a class more numerous than is generally supposed. Such a person, after practising his art, is in the habit of instructing the woman as soon as she feels the pain or notices any haemorrhage, to report herself to a medical man or present herself at a hospital where she is taken in as an ordinary case of threatened abortion. The responsibility for what may subsequently happen to the woman is thus effectively removed from the abortionist’s shoulders, it being in the interest of everyone concerned to preserve silence as to the part he has played. The damage done to the health of many poor women by such practices is enormous, and might largely be avoided by a judicious instruction in Birth Control.