The late 19th and early 20th century saw an emphasis in developed countries on the reforming of mothering practices. In Australia, a desire to improve infant mortality rates and produce healthy, well-adjusted citizens saw a network of reforming individuals, government organisations and welfare associations working to instil rational, scientific principles into the feeding and rearing of babies. The transformation of mothering practices included an emphasis on measuring babies, regulating their feeding patterns, and calculating the amount of feed they received, whether by breast or bottle. By the 1930s most mothers had been influenced to a greater or less extent by these new approaches to infant care.
Baby clinics, chemist shops and the surgeries of family doctors all featured scales where baby's growth and weight gains could be monitored. When mother's milk production was suspected of being inadequate, the Baby Health nurse would conduct 'test meals' or 'test feeds', weighing baby before and after he or she was put to the breast. It may have been unusual for mothers to have their own baby scales, but then again, perhaps it was considered necessary by progressive middle-class women in isolated country towns.
This particular set of baby scales was purchased by the wife of the solicitor in the rural Queensland town of Monto, when she had her first baby in 1935. To ensure that the baby was getting enough breast milk, mother conducted her own test feeds.
Thirty years later, when that baby had her first child, the scales were brought out again. The grandparents travelled all the way from Monto to Melbourne to see the new baby, bringing the scales with them. When the clinic sister pronounced that the baby 'was not getting enough to eat' the new mother conducted her own test feeds and concluded that the baby was indeed getting enough. It was decided that the baby was small because all the family 'were tiny people'.
The scales were not used for a third generation of babies because by the time those babies were born the metric system had been introduced in Australia and pounds and ounces no longer applied.
References:
Conversation between donor, Mrs Naida De Cean, and curator of health and medicine, Megan Hicks, October 1999.
Kerreen M. Reiger, The disenchantment of the home: modernizing the Australian family 1880-1940, Melbourne: Oxford University Press, 1985.
Virginia Thorley, 'Softly, softly: how the Mothercraft Association of Queensland co-existed with government policy, 1931-1961', Health and History (Journal of the Australian Society of the History of Medicine), 3(2), 2001, pp. 80-93.
Made by W&T Avery Ltd, Birmingham, England, United Kingdom. Distributed by Australasian Scale Co Ltd, Australia.
Mrs Naida De Cean was born in 1935. By her account, the scales were bought by her mother to weigh her when she was a baby.
According to the donor, Mrs Naida De Cean, the scales first belonged to her mother, Mrs Norma Bandidt. Mrs Bandidt would have bought them when she had her first baby, Naida, in 1935. At the time Mr Henry N C Bandidt and Mrs Bandidt lived in the rural Queensland town of Monto, where Mr Bandidt was the solicitor. The scales were probably purchased in Brisbane. Mrs Bandidt used them when conducting test feeds to ensure that her baby was getting enough breast milk.
Mrs De Cean herself subsequently used the scales for her first born, a daughter, Tamara, born in 1965 in Melbourne. When her parents, Mr and Mrs Bandidt, drove down from Monto to visit, her mother brought the scales with her, and left them. The clinic sister said the baby was not getting enough to eat, so Mrs De Cean did test feeds and concluded that the baby was indeed getting enough and that she was only small because all her family were "tiny people".
Fuller notes of the conversation between Mrs De Cean and curator of health and medicine, Megan Hicks (26 October 1999), are available in the Blue File.
Family snapshots have been copied to a CD with the kind permission of Mrs De Cean and the CD has been placed in the Blue File. The snapshots show Mr and Mrs Bandidt and the house at Monto in the 1930s, as well as Naida as a baby and toddler, and her younger sister Beverley.
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