By Dorothy Nixon

I have no idea how my grandmother gave birth although I am 99 percent certain she gave birth in a hospital. Why? Because I have since met a woman who was born but a month after my father in Kuala Lumpur! She is also the daughter of a British Colonial and she was born in a hospital. I consulted two books: Maternities and Modernites, Kalpana Ram and Sickeness and the State. Health and Illness in Colonial Malaya 1870-1940. Lenore Manderson. I also had a first-hand account, in the form of a letter from 1916 era.

From my work on Tighsolas, this website, I am well-versed in the Child Welfare Movement of the era. And I did find a mention of the Kuala Lumpur Infant Welfare Program started in 1922.

Apparently, 1/2 of all Tamil babies died (a rate about the same as French Canadians of the era who had highest infant morality rate outside of Calcutta!) a few less for Malay and Chinese.

This infant welfare program was designed to stop this, although the motive was probably to ensure healthy workers for the future and train nurses for the use of Expats.

In 1910 in Canada they had they created schools to teach "the new profession of homemaking." This too had a double purpose, to keep middle class women in the home (by making them feel homemaking was a profession) and to train better servants for the wealthier classes, who were finding that good help was hard to find.