THE WEEK-END BABY.

Gisborne Times, Volume XXV, Issue 2085, 21 May 1907, Page 4

THE WEEK-END BABY.

HIDDEN PHASE OF LIFE IN

LONDON.

CHILDREN “LEFT TILL CALLED

FOR.”

Parents who go away from London for the week-end, leaving the baby in charge of the nurse, would bo surprised if baby, having the power of speech, could narrate his or her experience during their absence.

A story is told of a certain young married couple who spend more of tlioir week-ends in country-liouso visiting, and who, in consequence of an anonymous lottor, paid a surprise visit to their home on Saturday night. The nurse and the baby-boy were absent. The young parents at once took a cab to tho address in Chelsea given to them by the anonymous letter-writer. They inquired of the grubby-looking maiden of fourteen who ansivored the bell if the Lady So-and-so’s baby was within. To the sound of distant dance music the girl ushered the young couple into a gloomy-looking anteroom crowded with bassinettes.

The young couple had unveiled for themselves a hidden phase of London life. Young parents of tlio middle or upper classes who have hut one child frequently leave it with tlio nurse at home from Friday night till Monday, and on the Saturday evening the frivolous nurse, secure, presumably, fr.om interruption, takes her little charge and goes out to enjoy herself in the company of her fellows at dancing class or at a remote little dancing hall. On every Saturday night ten to twenty children, from one year okl to four, may be seen in their bassinettes |in the cloakroom of these assemblies.

But these are not the only experiences of the week-end baby. “In some districts,” said a leading detective recently, “there are rooms in which on a Saturday night a nurse, on payment of a few pence, "Can leave her baby charge -while she goes to the music-hall or theatre.’.’ While the nurse is enjoying herself in the pit, Master Harry is in a dimlylighted room, with his bassinette ranged side by side with those of Lord ’s little girl and the baby of the greengrocer,