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In 1914, 5,047 children were born in Plymouth, of which 553 died. A local campaigner for improvements in child welfare claimed ‘At the present time it is more dangerous to be born a baby than go out to France to fight.’

Yet the war was a time of immense change in the care of children.

Plymouth’s first infant welfare centre opened in Stonehouse Town Hall in 1917. It had been inspired by the city’s future MP Nancy Astor and the editor of the Western Herald newspaper, James Joseph Judge (his papers including The Care of the Child are part of the collections of the Plymouth and West Devon Record Office).

Devon’s wartime campaign for improvements in the care of children also led to the development of infant welfare centres in Exeter, health visitors and the training of midwives serving towns and villages across the county.

The lives of adults at war were inextricably linked to those of children at home. But so were their deaths. The NSPCC claimed that during the first 15 months of the war more British children died of disease than soldiers in battle. So the war years became a period of life and death at home and abroad.

Town Hall, Stonehouse, Plymouth PL1 3NY
Image of Stonehouse Town Hall courtesy of Plymouth Library Services

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