Surely they made a difference? Health visitors and infant mortality in the 1900s.

In number 73 of Local Population Studies, Chris Galley discussed the sharp secular decline in infant mortality that commenced ‘at or around 19001 ... almost simultaneously in every English and Welsh Registration District’,2 and the role played in it by social intervention, especially through the appointment of health visitors. He concluded that ‘social intervention by itself was not responsible for the turning point in the national infant mortality series’.3 He is probably right, if only because we have been taught that mono-causal explanations of demographic phenomena are highly suspect. I feel, however, that by not providing quantitative evidence of the nature and enormous amount of work carried out by the relatively small number of health visitors— the word Stakhanovite springs to mind—his argument lacks depth. This note is an attempt to redress that balance.