Infant welfare, philanthropy and entrepreneurship in Glasgow: Sister Laura’s Infant Food Company

Laura Smith was sister-in-charge of the Children’s Dispensary in Glasgow from 1897 to 1922. In 1911 she established Sister Laura’s Infant Food Company to market a special milk formula of her own invention. The directors of the Dispensary were not amused. As the ‘outdoor’ department of the Royal Hospital for Sick Children (Yorkhill), the Dispensary was at the forefront of efforts to combat child ill health and malnutrition. This paper considers Laura Smith’s initiative within the context of the health and care of infants of the time – high infant mortality, public and professional concerns for infant welfare, technological advances in food science, changing recommendations and practices of infant feeding and ambiguous relations between medicine and commerce