The Baby Clinic was created as a memorial to Margaret MacDonald and Mary Middleton, who both died in 1911. Margaret MacDonald was the wife of Ramsay MacDonald (1886-1937), leader of the Labour Party and first Labour Prime Minister; Mary Middleton was the wife of Jim Middleton (1878-1962), who was MacDonald's Assistant Secretary. Margaret and Ramsay MacDonald's daughter, Ishbel MacDonald, was also a very active supporter of the clinic.
The clinic opened on 13th November 1911 and initially operated from a small house in Telford Road in North Kensington, London. The goal of the clinic was to offer preventative healthcare to the children of the poor. The Baby Clinic First Annual Report 1911-1912, noted that:
'The hope of the clinic is to show that a higher standard of health might be reached in this poor district if medical aid were freely at the command of parents for the many small and mysterious aliments of childhood. Out-Patients' Departments can only be used in cases of definite illness. Poverty keeps parents from seeking private medical advice except in grave and acute need; and so preventative medicine hardly reaches the children of the poor. The aim of the Clinic is to hand the children over to the school authorities, at the age of five years, healthy and sound and capable of profiting by the expensive education they will receive'.
The Baby Clinic operated from 1911 until 1948 when it was taken over by the Ministry of Health under the 1945 National Health Act.
From the guide to the Mary Middleton and Margaret MacDonald Baby Clinic and Hospital, 1912-1976, (Labour History Archive and Study Centre)
