‘So he said, “Well, she says she’s not going to have a baby, but we think she is …”
‘So I said, “Ooh, we’d better ring Sister upstairs.” So Sister Cramp came down and she said, “Ridiculous! You must know you’re going to have a baby. Don’t be so silly girl!” (She had got a tummy out here anyway).
‘So the girl said, “Well, I don’t know anything about it, I don’t know when it happened, I don’t know anything about it.” So Sister said, “Oh well, never mind my dear, come on upstairs.”
‘So they carried her up the three flights of stairs – everything was jolly hard work in those days – and then Sister said to me, “Well, you’d better keep an eye on her while I go and see all about her.”
‘I stayed with this girl, so I said, “What’s your name dear?” So she said, “Venus.” (Crikey! What a name!)
‘So I said, “Oh well, Sister says you’re going to have a baby.” She said, “Well, I don’t know anything about it.” So I said, “Well you must do, surely?” Though I myself didn’t know much about it because, you know, in those days our parents never used to tell us. And when I went into hospital, honest to goodness I had no idea where a baby came from. I was 21. I had no idea where a baby came from or how it got there, or anything! I mean, I just thought they came! So, I thought, “I s’pose she’s the same.”
‘Any rate, Sister came back and she said, “Well, I’ll show you what to do to get her ready to have her baby.” Well, in the meantime this girl had said to me, “I really don’t know anything about it.” So I said, “Well, I don’t know dear, it’s no good telling me because if Sister says you’re going to have a baby, you are.”
‘She said, “Well, I really don’t know anything about it.” So she was crying and carrying on you know, like anything. I suppose it was when she had a pain but I didn’t realise then. She said, “Oh dear, Oh dear, I don’t know what I’m going to do …” So I said, “Well, just keep calm. There’s no good shouting.” I said, “You’ll be all right in a minute, dear. Sister will be looking after you.”
‘Sister came back and Venus had the baby and it was a lovely baby. It’s interesting because when I saw that baby coming, I really couldn’t believe it. You know, I thought, “Oooh, I wonder how it comes out of there …?”
‘So then she said, “I want to see John …” So Sister said, “Well, who’s John?” She said, “We live on a barge, you see, on the Thames, and these people live on the barge next to me.” Well, then we found out that John was the father of the baby. But I don’t think either of them really knew what had happened. I really don’t, because they were so innocent. I s’pose they had … you know … been … together and … done … what they wanted to do … but they didn’t realise it… that they were going to have a baby. They really didn’t. She was only young. She was about 18, I think.
‘Anyway, she confessed to Sister afterwards that she had something to do with this young man because she said, “He’s nice and we like one another. My mother used to grumble and say I shouldn’t go over there to the other barge but I liked going over there to see him.” So I s’pose that was real love, wasn’t it? I’ve never had real … well, I did really. I had a young man but he was killed in the First World War. He was only 19 and I was 18 so I didn’t want to get married then. I was quite happy not to …
‘So that was the first baby I saw being born and I was ever so interested. But I couldn’t work out how it got there even then! When I think of how daft I was! I really was silly, you know! But then, if you don’t really know about men and boys at the time, well, then you don’t really know, do you? Well, at the time I thought that they must have just been kissing and cuddling. Well, that’s OK. I don’t see how that’s going to bring a baby! It was real funny. By the time I started to do my midwifery training I’d woke up a bit!’
During the first half of the twentieth century midwives may have gained access to information about ‘the facts of life’ through their training, but the vast majority of women suffered from an extreme lack of knowledge and dire level of misinformation. It caused difficulties in their sex lives and pregnancies and also had major repercussions for women trying to control their fertility.
‘From handywoman to professional midwife’
A lantern slide showing the local midwife, ‘the woman you called for’ and the emerging professional midwife. Date and origin unknown – probably 1890s. (Royal College of Nursing Library)
Midwifery Education
Alice Gregory and Lelia Parnell in the garden of the midwifery school they founded with Maud Cashmore in 1905. (The Independent Photography Project)
Lelia Parnell lectures students at the British Hospital for Mothers and Babies in Woolwich, London. (The Independent Photography Project)
Sister Wilkinson and pupils in the nursery c.1938. ‘We aim at cultivating a spirit of vocation among educated women for the noble profession of district midwifery, so that their less fortunate sisters may no longer cry in vain for help’ (From the BHMB and School for the Higher Training of Midwives 6th Annual Report, 1920). (The Independent Photography Project)
Fresh air activities at the British Hospital for Mothers and Babies, Woolwich
‘The more time spent in the open air the better; in good weather an outdoor life is often possible’ (Mabel Liddiard, The Mothercraft Manual, 1948). (The Independent Photography Project)
‘It is a well-proved fact in baby hospitals and homes that even the most sickly infants thrive best when kept in the fresh air’ (Mabel Liddiard, The Mothercraft Manual, 1948). (The Independent Photography Project)
(Top) Garden party. (Above) New mothers on the verandah: ‘Research work is proving that sunlight is essential for true growth and development, as well as for the prevention and cure of certain diseases’ (Mabel Liddiard, The Mothercraft Manual, 1948). (The Independent Photography Project)
Wartime midwifery
Evacuation of pregnant women to the country during air raids: ‘Every week they used to bring a carload of expectant mothers up’ (p. 117). (The Independent Photography Project)
Sheltering together during air raids: ‘They all got down into the shelters and the child was as important as the mother’ (p. 122). (The Independent Photography Project)
Going to work
Midwife starting off on a visit, 1946. ‘Midwives should be provided with small cars to avoid the waste of strength in bicycling’ (p.14). (City of London, London Metropolitan Archives)
‘You missed a lot when you came off the bike … you knew all the people on the way … On your old bike, trundling along’ (p. 56). (Royal College of Midwives)
City midwifery: Midwife coming out of the London Underground. (Royal College of Midwives)
Birth at home
‘I still think there’s a lot to be said for home deliveries … You’re so much more relaxed at home’ (p. 154). (Royal College of Midwives)
‘You was always told to lie on your left side and “Steady…, steady…, that’s right – now bear down slowly, slowly…”’ (p. 165). (Royal College of Midwives)
Katherine L. and Margaret A. at work on the district in 1967
(Personal Collection: Billie Hunter and Nicky Leap)
Elsie Walkerdine, midwife at the births of over 4,000 babies in Deptford, South East London
‘I remember when she had triplets down Hyde St. She never called the doctor in till after. So he says, “Sister you should have let me in on this”… So she says, “Why? What for?” She says, “There was nothing wrong. It was all straightforward. If I’d have called you in, I would have frightened the patient”. Three girls they were’ (p. 150). (Private Collection: Mary Thorley)
‘Elsie was always cheerful. She was chirpy, very sociable but she wasn’t rowdy… She was thoughtful and she looked after the women. There was never a cross word’ (p. 183). (Private Collection: Mary Thorley)
Until 1937, Elsie Walkerdine worked independently and thereafter for the London County Council. ‘Elsie loved the bab
ies. Her babies were her life’ (p. 67). (Science and Society Picture Library)
The people of Deptford wave goodbye to Elsie Walkerdine on her retirement in 1957: ‘The women loved her. Really and truly she was idolised. The description of them people was, “She’s an angel”’ (p. 62). (Science and Society Picture Library)
From the photo albums of contributors
Mary W: ‘There’s a lot to be said for being an independent practitioner’ (p. 47). (Private collection)
Esther S: ‘Practical, down-to-earth knowledge is important, but it’s having the right attitude that’s important too. You have to be their friend’ (p. 183). (Private collection)
Ruby C. with her first baby. Ruby had four children, all born at home. ‘It’s true, childbirth, you do forget don’t you? I think it’s nature’s way, or you’d never have any more’ (p. 140). (Private collections: Moyra and Barry Weston)
Photos of midwives when we interviewed them
Esther S: ‘If you can befriend a mother and get her on a level with you, there’s an understanding and you’re both far better off (p. 183). (Personal collection: Billie Hunter and Nicky Leap)
Elsie K: ‘You have to be in sympathy with the woman. And patience and love of the job’ (p. 183). (Personal collection: Billie Hunter and Nicky Leap)
Katherine L and Margaret A: ‘The most important thing is liking the mother’ (p. 183). (Personal collection: Billie Hunter and Nicky Leap)
Handywoman Mrs G: ‘I’d get called at all times of the night and day. It was either to get one in or take one out’ (p. 24). (Personal collection: Billie Hunter and Nicky Leap)
Alice Wright, who worked as a handyman in Great Yarmouth
‘She saw you into the world and she saw you out the other end … it was just the thing that you called for her’ (p. 17). (Personal collection: Lyn Wright)
‘My mother was this little Geordie woman and she was a fighter you see …’ (p. 36). Ken was only 5ft 1in, so Alice must indeed have been a little woman! (Personal collection: Lyn Wright)
‘My mother was a real personality, this tiny little Geordie. She was a go-getter’ (p. 40). (Personal collection: Lyn Wright)
Alice’s son Ken, one of her 13 children: ‘As a little boy … I can remember her being called out and it was either for laying people out or going to a birth’ (p. 38). (Personal collection: Lyn Wright)
Alice’s daughter Florence W and Salvation Army training school colleagues in 1939 (Florence is front left): ‘Florence won a scholarship. My mother couldn’t afford to let her go to the hospital. Couldn’t afford the uniform or the books. And that’s how she got into midwifery’ (p. 43). (Personal collection: Lyn Wright)
Florence W became a Brigadier in the Salvation Army. She is seen here (on the left) in mufti’ at her brother Ken’s marriage to Lyn in 1955: ‘I never lose sight of my humble beginnings’ (p. 46). (Personal collection: Lyn Wright)
The contents of a midwife’s bag (Nursing Notes, November 1923). (Royal College of Midwives)
5
Birth Control
‘You just took what come, didn’t ya? Just took a chance, didn’t ya?’
If most women knew little about sex, they knew even less about contraception. Couples who wanted to limit the size of their families had difficulty finding out how to do so. In the 1920s and 1930s, there was little effective and safe birth control provision for working-class women. The first birth control clinics, such as the Marie Stopes clinics, were set up by voluntary organisations in the 1920s, but there were no state-run clinics until 1931.
Mabel P. trained as a midwife in 1912, having been refused entry to medical school. Eventually, she managed to train as a doctor and worked as an obstetrician and gynaecologist for the rest of her professional life. She described how she helped set up a birth control clinic to alleviate some of the hardship caused by repeated pregnancies. She had witnessed the problems while working as a district midwife in Somerset:
‘In Bristol we started up a birth control clinic for the poor women in Bedminster, and the city took it over once it was working well. Mainly, we fitted caps there. It was a very poor area.’
Outside of the clinics, few family doctors saw it as part of their job to give advice on birth control, and they were often discouraged from doing so by both medical training schools and their professional bodies.1 The bulk of medical opinion was opposed to birth control in the 1920s, as this extract from a letter by a distinguished female gynaecologist to the British Medical Journal shows:
‘The people and nations who practise artificial prevention of conception and who therefore have no restraint in their sexual passions are likely to become effeminate and degenerate. The removal of the sanction of matrimony and the unhindered and unbalanced sexual indulgence that would follow would war against self-control, chivalry and self-respect.’2
According to handywoman Mrs G. (who tended to be somewhat disparaging about doctors), working-class women did not consider turning to their family doctor for help with birth control. She laughed heartily when she commented:
‘What’s the good of going to the doctor? He could only put another one in there couldn’t he!’
Birth control became part of the political agenda in the 1920s when women in the Labour Party fought hard to get their party to support birth control provision. They were to be disappointed though. In 1924, the newly elected first Labour government refused to accept state responsibility for such services.
Battles around the issue of birth control continued throughout the 1920s and 1930s. Much of the resistance to contraception was on moral grounds. Contraception was seen as a temptation to promiscuity. In the 1930s, such concerns were summarised in the handbook, The Modern Woman’s Home Doctor. A chapter entitled, ‘The Modern Practice of Birth Control’, begins:
‘The harm that might possibly be done by giving people the knowledge of how to control conception can be summed up under three headings – namely, sexual excess, intercourse between those who are unmarried and an increase in the number of those who are childless.’3
Edie M., a working-class London woman, remembers the prevailing attitude that assumed contraception was for use only in extra-marital relationships:
‘See, I mean, we never knew how not to have ‘em. Besides, a respectable husband wouldn’t have thought of using a French letter with his wife. Only I s’pose with outside women he might have done. But they were never mentioned inside a marriage – working-class married homes anyway.’
Marie Stopes did much to initiate changes in attitudes towards contraception by setting birth control within the context of marriage, thereby rendering it more respectable. In 1926, she published a series of articles in the popular magazine, John Bull, which elicited over 20,000 requests for abortion information alone!4
The philosophy behind fertility control, however, was not necessarily altruistic. Marie Stopes, for example, was a eugenicist. Her interest was in curbing the breeding of the working classes so that the British race would be of ‘better stock’. June Rose, who has researched the life of Marie Stopes, comments:
‘Marie was a radical, but she was a right-wing radical… Her birth control clinics were set up to alleviate the burden of working-class women who otherwise were destined to have large families bred in extreme poverty. But one shouldn’t lose sight of her motives – the creation and preservation of a system of breeding, which is in many respects similar to that advocated in Nazi Germany.’5
After the First World War, there was a great fear that contraception could lead to a devastating depletion in the numbers of the British race available to defend the Empire:
‘Those who have as many enemies as the British Empire must for their own safety have plenty of children and meet those enemies at the gate.’ [Quote from a judge in 1920 when sentencing a professional abortionist].6
With the reduction in population following the First World War, there was great emphasis on ‘re-building the nation’ so women were encouraged to have more children –
not fewer. In women’s magazines of the inter-war period, there were often references to the patriotic role of mothers. In a Woman’s Own article, ‘Building an A1 Nation’, Nurse Vincent proclaims:
‘A healthy mother produces a healthy baby and the mothers of the Nation must be kept in A1 condition if we are to have A1 children.’7
In 1930, the government partially gave way on the issue of birth control by allowing existing maternity and child welfare clinics to give advice on preventing pregnancy to expectant and nursing mothers whose health would be injured by further pregnancies.
Four years later, in 1934, local authorities and regional health boards were given the power to set up birth control clinics or assist voluntary organisations in so doing. However, this was not compulsory. Provision varied from area to area, as indeed it does today. There was still much opposition to initiating birth control provision, and outside the cities, clinics were non-existent.
The Midwife's Tale Page 13
