Mothercraft Training Society

Briefly known as the Babies of the Empire Society, before taking on its new name, it established its own infant welfare clinic, with a dietetic hospital, and ran a year-long training course from which students emerged as qualified nursery nurses.

Trained in medicine at Edinburgh, he became Medical Superintendent at the Seacliff Lunatic Asylum in New Zealand, where he greatly improved the health of his ailing adopted baby daughter.

[3] King's "Twelve Essentials", which were radical at the time, for the raising of healthy infants included: 'air and sunshine, water, food, clothing, bathing, muscular exercise and sensory stimulation, warmth, regularity, cleanliness, mothering, management, and rest and sleep'.

A National Baby Week was held from 1 to 7 July 1917, and after this event Truby King was invited by Lady Victoria Plunket, and Winifride and Evelyn Wrench of the Over-Seas Club,[6][5] to come to London to establish an infant welfare centre.

[3] A seven-year lease was purchased on two adjoining houses in Trebovir Road, Earls Court, and on Tuesday 9 July 1918 the Babies of the Empire Mothercraft Training Centre was opened with William Massey, the Prime Minister of New Zealand, presiding.

The Babies of the Empire Society, of which Lord Plunket was Chairman and Truby King medical Director, was affiliated with St Thomas' Hospital and remained headquartered in the General Buildings, Aldwych.

The Matron was Miss A. Pattrick, and the aim of the new Centre was "to give a sound, simple, thorough grounding in the everyday needs of home and nursing" with a wish to "make the course practical, helpful, and domestic, to encourage and stimulate commonsense and resourcefulness, and to render the knowledge conveyed as interesting and as widely applicable and adaptable as possible.

[8] The Society decided that it needed to expand its residential capacity and started a public subscription appeal which by 1928 had raised £25,000, enough for a new annex in the Cromwell House grounds, accessed from Winchester Place at the rear, to be called the Princess Elizabeth of York Hostel.

[8][9] In 1939 the Centre became the Truby King Home for Children and during World War II the rear of both Cromwell House and the Princess Elizabeth of York Hostel suffered minor bomb damage.