The Midwife's Tale

by Billie Hunter

  Like Molly T., many of the people we interviewed talked wistfully about the passing of an era where birth and death took place mainly in the home, a time when there was plenty of support from neighbours such as the local handywoman.

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  Handywomen: ‘the woman you called for’

  ‘She saw you into the world and she saw you out the other end … It was just the thing that you called for her.’

  The title ‘handywoman’ presumably developed as a description of the many tasks that might be carried out by ‘the woman you called for’. Our research confirms previous findings that the primary role of the handywoman before she was ousted in the early part of the century was that of midwife. Most handywomen also laid out the dead.1

  Molly B. and her sister, Lily N., grew up in South Shields, Tyneside, in the 1920s. They have vivid memories of Granny Anderson, their ‘midwife’ and the important role she played within the local community. Their descriptions of her paint a picture far removed from the ‘dirty, garrulous, drink-sodden, Sairey Gamp’ image that was constantly levelled at the old midwives by those who saw them as the perpetrators of infection and dangerous practice:

  Lily: ‘Mum was 17 when she married in 1914. She had eight children altogether and every one of them was brought into the world at home by Granny Anderson, this woman down the road that had no medical qualifications whatsoever. Every time anybody was having a baby, you used to see them running down the back lane for Granny Anderson. She always came and bathed the babies and that; followed the babies up. You weren’t allowed to put your feet out of bed for two weeks in those days.’

  Molly: ‘She was quite plump and all in black. And she wore – I don’t know if you’ve ever seen them – one of those little black bonnets, a bit like Queen Victoria used to wear. All in black, but she always had a pure white apron on. And she actually turned it up at the corners and tucked it into her belt to keep the inside clean till she got to you. And always a black shawl. Very few women up in the North at that time had a coat – they all used to wear shawls tied round the shoulders. She had a beaded black bag over her arm – like a shopping bag with two handles.’

  Lily: ‘I never knew if she was a widow. I never saw a man there and I went to her house several times. She didn’t have children as far as I knew. She seemed to be completely on her own. I never heard her first name. Even the doctor called her Granny Anderson. She was quite a matriarch. Everyone was quite fearful of Granny Anderson. But everyone used her in the road.’

  Molly: ‘Ooh yes, she was very abrupt. We was quite frightened of her really. I mean, if your mother sent you for Granny Anderson, you used to run like the clappers up the back lane to get to her. And your house had to be spotlessly clean before she’d enter. Scrubbed out with carbolic. D’you remember? – No, you wouldn’t know the carbolic soap. It was white and blue, a marbley thing and it was horrible actually. But everything was scrubbed out before a birth with carbolic. She used to give you a list of what had to be ready or to hand, like torn sheets, piles of newspapers and boiling water – because nobody had running water. There was a tap in the yard and a range that you cooked on. We used to have to save the newspapers for her and she’d spread it out around and on the bed. And then torn sheets for draw sheets and pads.’

  Lily: ‘Yes, she got the house scrubbed out with carbolic and there was always a bowl of hot water and carbolic soap for Granny Anderson to wash her hands in – that was one of the musts. I can remember seeing her scrubbing her hands. The kitchen table was always laid out and, of course, they always scrubbed the kitchen table.’

  Molly: ‘If you were misbehaving outside she’d tell you. I think she was more for women than she was for men, you know. She just dismissed the men as “OUT!”… You know, “You’re a useless sort of bunch of people” … instead of encouraging them to be there (and they might have changed their mind a bit about sex then if they’d been there). But she sort of shooed them out of the place. She would never allow the men there, would she? They would be completely banished. They were of no use to Granny Anderson.

  ‘Mum said Granny Anderson was furious with dad when I was born. I weighed three and a half pounds and she’d been in labour 24 hours and he said when they showed him me, he said “God, all that fuss over that!” And Granny Anderson was furious with him. Oh yes, he was banished because of his remarks!’

  Lily: ‘She used to lay out the bodies, too, and you always had a drawer in those days. The old people used to have a bottom drawer and all their laying out stuff would be in it – ready for you to be laid out for when you died.’

  Molly: ‘Yes, she laid out Aunty Kitty and all the babies and that. I remember Aunty Jane’s little Georgina dying because of course they had the coffin in the bedroom – they had nowhere else to put it. It was either in the living room where you had all your meals and that or in the bedroom.’

  Granny Anderson may not have been a qualified professional, but she knew how to cope with most situations. She liaised with the local doctor and people referred to her for advice about illnesses at a time when the doctor’s fees were prohibitive:

  Lily: ‘All the babies were born at home. Our mum had some funny births. John was four pounds, first baby, and she was ill in bed for three months after that through haemorrhaging. I think that time Granny Anderson actually called the doctor. They thought she was going to have twins but it turned out to be only one child. You were born with your arm coming out first and weighed three and a half pounds and one of them was born with the caul on.’

  Molly: ‘Granny Anderson was very capable. Most people used to go to her for illnesses, too. The doctor referred people to her but I don’t think he worked with her because no one had the money to pay him. She used to do minor ailments, like sore throats. One of them for sore throats was half an onion, covered in brown sugar. They still do it, some people actually, don’t they? You cut and sliced the onion, put brown sugar on it and then put a basin on it and when it sort of melted and the juice ran out, you just spooned that in for sore throats and colds. That cough mixture you get now, “Liquifruta”, that’s made of sort of the same stuff.’

  Neither of the sisters could remember seeing any financial transactions take place around Granny Anderson and they thought that she was paid in kind – ‘People gave her things’. They were clearly horrified at the suggestion that she might have been paid with ‘a tot of rum’:

  Lily: ‘Goodness, no. I’m sure she was never paid with a tot of rum. In fact, I can’t remember any women up there ever drinking. They weren’t allowed in the pubs any rate in those days – well, they might have been down by the river with all the sailors coming in but not where we were. I never remember any woman going into a pub. At Christmas, I think they might have had a bottle of port and everyone had a little drink, but that was it.’

  It was hard for Molly and Lily to imagine that anyone could take the place of Granny Anderson in the community:

  Molly: ‘She must have died somewhere around the beginning of the war when we’d all moved away and completely lost touch. When we came back Granny Anderson was no longer around but she would have carried on practising right up until she died. Yes, even though you say it wasn’t legal. Up there lots of people did things that wasn’t legal. Granny was still doing her rounds years and years after we were grown up and moved away.’

  Reports written in the first decades of this century paint a picture of the untrained midwife that is rather different from the efficient, carbolic-loving Granny Anderson remembered by Molly and Lily:

  ‘As long as she [the handywoman] undertakes any form of nursing or personal care of the mother, she is a potential danger, and the more she knows the more dangerous she is because she is tempted to interfere, or even act as a midwife. She has no recognised qualification or position, she is under no jurisdiction or authority, she can defy all the rules which a midwife must observe and her dirty fingers must be responsible for a large amount of minor and major sepsis.’ [Whitehall, 1923].2<
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  There is, in fact, no evidence to suggest that handywomen were in any major way dealing out ‘death and destruction’ or that they were involved in providing abortions – another accusation levelled at them. Written accounts of the day, plus the testimony that we gathered, suggest that individual handywomen varied as much as individual midwives in terms of whether people saw them as ‘good’ or ‘bad’. Most of the women we interviewed who spoke harshly about handywomen were describing what Edie M. called ‘dodgy looking after’ rather than life-threatening practice:

  ‘Twice I was unlucky with the woman I got in. It all depends on who you get, how well you get looked after. If you were unlucky, then you wouldn’t get cooked for, your washing done and all that. If they only came in for an hour or so in between looking after their own family, you never got much. I never got a woman that gave me a lot of care. As I say, Mrs. M. was a close friend – the daughter went into films with Monty Banks – she was a close friend but she used to come in full of poverty … starving hungry, saying, “Ain’t had a bit in my lips today, Edie”. I’d say, “Well, put kettle on and go round the corner and get some cakes – twelve for sixpence”. The dairy used to make them out of their cracked eggs – so on would go the kettle. Oh, I had some dodgy looking after. But you didn’t pay them much for the ten days, there wasn’t a lot of money about.’

  Lou N. was one of several other women who remembered being attended by rather ‘needy’ or acquisitive handywomen:

  ‘I had the midwife there, the woman that came in, but she made herself so much at home. “Oooh, I like this, I like that”, and it ended up – you were giving her more than what she did! She took a fancy to my mackintosh and she went on and on till she got this mackintosh off me. She was a midwife, a local woman; there was nothing professional about her.’

  Ruby C. was also unimpressed with the handywoman who attended her when she had her second baby in Ireland:

  ‘When Maureen was born, I had to have a doctor then ‘cause there was no nurse in the village. And an old lady of 70 came. Oh God, she nearly drove me crackers! And d’you know what she did with our Maureen? She believed in bringing a baby up hardy, you know, in the country way. Maureen was born on the sixth of December. We had a big barrel of rainwater outside and she brought in a bath from it! She had to break the ice on the water [laughs]! So our Maureen should have been tough!

  ‘In those days you had to lie in bed ten days. And you mustn’t get out, mustn’t do anything, you know, hardly get out to the toilet, and anyway, as soon as she’d gone home I used to jump out of bed and dust all around the bedroom, y’know and tidy it up, ‘cause the way she’d done it didn’t please me. [laughs] It’s laughable in a way, but it wasn’t funny at the time. She was a proper old countrywoman.

  ‘The next one I had, by then they’d gone in for training and so I had this nurse and she delivered the baby and everything. She was very good – just as good as a doctor, like.’

  Jane W. remembers her first birth experience as being ‘fairly ghastly’ due to conflict with the handywoman. In literature and testimony we came across several references to handywomen encouraging women to ‘bear down’ before they were ready – a disadvantageous practice that could exhaust the mother and expose the baby to a certain amount of risk:

  ‘I’d booked up with the Medical Mission because them times I was a bit nervous of men doctors, and they had a lady doctor there. They asked me to book up with them. Before that I’d engaged a woman. My cousin, she’d just had a baby and she was all right the next day after it. So I thought that the woman must be good, and I asked her if I could have her woman to look after me, which I did. I engaged her.

  ‘Anyway, I’d been out the day before with one of me sisters, walked miles we had. Used to be a great walker. So I came home and there was me landlady waiting for me. She says, “The nurse has been here from the Medical Mission and she’s left these pills. You’ve got to take one every hour and a large dose of castor oil, and then when the pains start, send for the doctor”. Oh dear! I didn’t know where I was. I’d had no experience or nothing, didn’t know what to do!

  ‘So anyway, I did it all and I started – you know – didn’t know if it was the castor oil, whether it was the baby, what was happening to me. So I thought I’d best send for that woman first. My husband went and got the woman, and my eldest sister came round and stayed with me. This woman, she smelt of drink, she wasn’t my type at all, not nice at all [laughs]. She was telling me what to do. And meanwhile my husband got all the pennies and filled the meter up – it was gas, we had no electricity. Of course, they was making cups of tea and all that, getting ready.

  ‘So anyway, the pains got more regular and then I sent and told the doctor. The doctor and the nurse arrived. The doctor said, “Oh, my dear. It’s nowhere near ready yet. You want rest. Don’t do this, don’t do that” – all the things the woman had been telling me to do. She’d been telling me to bear down whenever I got a pain. She’d got a towel and folded it and I had to grasp it. She’d fixed it over the top of the bed – “Get on the bed, pull it and bear down.”

  ‘Anyway, the doctor stopped all that, so of course the woman got a bit nasty. She said, “I’m supposed to see to her”. She did no more. The doctor turned the woman out. She said, “Don’t you come in this room again. ‘I’m in authority.’” And she turned her out. So anyway, every now and then she’d try to come back in and she was pushed out. A little tiny nurse was with the doctor and it was all back pains with me. I’d say, “Oh, me back, me back”. And this little nurse would rub me back. She was very good.

  ‘Well, anyway, it went on hour after hour. And then early in the morning, I was wishing I was dead and all the rest of it. And in the end the baby did arrive. I don’t know, I was half demented with pain because he was a big baby – 9lbs 4ozs. And I was small, small-built inside. And he tore me badly. The doctor started to see to me, to stitch me up. The worst that could happen – the gas ran out – total darkness, no more gas. She had a torch with her so she had to finish stitching me up by torch.

  ‘So then my husband paid the woman off and told her not to come back tomorrow. We’d manage without her. But she was a terrible experience, she was. And she smelt of drink. I still don’t like drink.’

  Mrs G.’s gems

  It is rare to find a handywoman alive today. Most were mature women when they were practising in the first decades of this century. Mrs G. was 95 years old when we interviewed her in 1989. She was the ninth of 18 children and was a handywoman in the London Borough of Bexleyheath for 50 years. She described being seen as something of an expert since the age of 13, when she delivered a baby for the first time. This was presumably under the supervision of her mother, who was a midwife. It would have been interesting to find out more about Mrs G.’s mother – particularly how she managed to get training and work as an employed midwife as well as rear 18 children. Unfortunately, Mrs G. would not be drawn into giving more than a few tantalising comments:

  ‘My mother was a midwife for 50 years. Some of the time she was paid by the East End Council. My mother was trained. She trained at Stourbridge Hospital ‘cause they used to live up that way. Then she went to the London Hospital and then she went to a hospital, in the Midlands. She had a proper tuition, she did [proudly].

  ‘Oh yes, she had to pay for her tuition. You didn’t get your jam for nothing. You had to buy everything then. They’re lucky these days, though I don’t think the training’s so severe as it was. Good job really for the nurses’ sake.

  ‘She taught me a lot about midwifery. I don’t think you can beat it really. It’s nice to be able to bring another life into the world. But some little mites are so deformed and terrible. It’s nice to know we’re not all perfect isn’t it? I say, if a baby’s born healthy and perfect, that’s all you want. You can bring it up properly then. That’s right. My mother said, “Never be frightened. Whatever comes, never be frightened”.

  ‘When the war was on my mother was ver
y old then. She went to the church when the church was bombed. My mother crawled under the stone and all that and delivered a baby boy. She said, “I’m going to get that baby out. There’s a mother crying in there about having a baby and I’m going in there to get it out”. A nine-pound baby boy. Of course they had to go to hospital but they was both all right. Marvellous isn’t it!

  ‘Oh no, she wasn’t my midwife. You mustn’t mix pork and beef – never. No … [confused] pork with pork [contradicting herself] … The last baby I delivered was Sandra, my granddaughter. House opposite. I delivered two of my grandchildren. Oh yes, I believe in keeping it in the family.’

  Any romantic ideas we might have had about handywomen were quashed by Mrs G.’s accounts of how she supported women and their families during labour, all of which were interspersed with hearty laughter:

  ‘Some say, “Oh never mind dear, never mind”. That’s no good at all. You have to say, “Come along. Course you can get it out. Course you can. Don’t be stupid. I’ll put your head in a bucket of water if you don’t shut up!” They used to laugh. It used to pass the time, you see. It’s the only way to keep them cheerful. ‘Cause of course, some people are terrified. I think it’s other people talking to them before the baby’s actually going to be born; they frighten them you see and that’s it.

  ‘Now fancy a midwife, when the woman’s crying with the pain, she’s sitting there, wiping her own tears! That’s stupid! I used to say to them, “You’re not ready for the asylum yet mate! Shut up!” I’d say, “Any more of this and I’m gonna leave yer! Get on with it”. “Oh no, you won’t, will you?” and I’d say, “Won’t I? Just you try me.” And I’d say, “You’ve ‘ad yer sweets, now you must ‘ave yer sours …”