Truby King in Australia A REVISIONIST VIEW OF REDUCED INFANT MORTALITY BETWEEN 1900 and 1945 infant mortality rates fell substantially in north European countries and in English-speaking countries in both hemispheres. In a common pattern, infant mortality halved between 1900 and the early 1920s, halving again by the late 1940s. The fall was steepest in countries where infant death numbers and rates were highest and the downturn delayed, and least in New Zealand, which possessed the lowest infant mor- tality rate in the world until surpassed by Sweden in 1950. For most of this period Australia shared second place with Norway, Sweden and the Netherlands. (See graphs.) 1 In New Zealand the overall infant mortality rate had subsided sharply from 1875-76, whereas the Australian national average rate had entered a gradual decline from this point. If the transition in Australia is recorded state by state, then it becomes apparent that the late nineteenth-century decline was only partial. Infant mortality had begun to fall from the 1870s in Queensland, Tasmania and South Australia and from 1890 in Victoria, had remained stationary in New South Wales until a sudden fall in the early 1900s, while in Western Australia it had soared in the 1890s with the discovery of gold. 2 More pertinent to a study of the baby health movement is the turn- around in the infant mortality rate experienced by all the Australian states in the first ten years of this century. This was manifested in New Zealand by a steeper fall between 1900 and 1910 than between 1870 and 1900. In Aus- tralia a turning point can be identified precisely in 1903-4, when, within a 1 W. P. D. Logan, 'Mortality in England and Wales from 1848 to 1947', Population Studies, 4 (1950-51), p.135; Demography Bulletin, Canberra, 1945, 1953, Table 121; Official Year Book of Australia, Canberra, 1951,p.618; NZ Vital Statistics, Wellington, 1933, 1945; NZ Official Year-Book, Wellington, 1953, p.91; B. R. Mitchell with P. Deane, Abstract of British Historical Statistics, Cambridge, 1962, pp.36-37; UN, Demographic Yearbook, New York, 1951, pp.334-5; US Department of Commerce, Bureau of the Census, Historical Statistics of the United States, pt.l, Washington, 1976, series B136-148. The United States graph compiled from this source consists of three sections, of five-yearly averages for Massachusetts until 1914, the birth registration for 1915-32, and the annual rate for all states from 1933. 2 Demography Bulletins. 23