The Midwife's Tale

by Billie Hunter

  ‘We went to a little village near Leicester, it was, and I was there for about a fortnight. The matron there had previously been in charge of a district up there and she wasn’t used to ration cards or anything like that and she was a bit lost. She didn’t know quite what to do, so I think I was a great help to her because I’d been used to ration cards on the district before I went up there. She said, “Oh, I am glad you came, Miss H., because I don’t know anything about it. But there was nobody else that would take the job on”. It was only a small home. They were going to have about twelve mothers and babies. It was a little country house that somebody had given up. They’d gone away and left it for us.

  ‘When I’d been there about a fortnight – I was running around with bedpans – the Medical Office of Health came and asked me to go and run a small maternity unit so I went and I was there for five years. It was part of a big estate that belonged to the C. family. The man, Mr C., was gone to the war, and his mother still lived there and they turned part of it into a hospital for mothers. That’s what I mean, people were ever so good. In the war, everyone was marvellous. You never heard of anyone who wouldn’t give you a helping hand. Really marvellous, they were. And the people of London, especially the East Enders, they were marvellous people. They used to come up and stay a fortnight. We used to try and get them billeted afterwards at Lockington or Derby, or somewhere near there, but they’d say, “No, we’ve got to go home. We might be wanted there”. So they went home with their new babies!’

  Air raids

  Women’s memories of the Second World War often revolve around air raids. Here, Alice F. describes conditions during air raids in London and the effect on her and her new baby:

  ‘When the war came and there were air raids, you’d have to grab your baby and run. It happened one morning with the baby in the bath, and I had to grab him, throw a towel round him, and run up the garden and get in that shelter. And of course, I’m worried sick, and I’m thinking, “Oh, this baby, will he catch a cold”, you know … but it was a good thing that we did get in there because they bombed us two doors away and they were all killed. We were lucky that we had this shelter built right down into the earth – and I bought a bed, proper bed, mattress to go on it and I fixed his little bed up in the corner, and me dog come down with me … and I think that saved us …

  ‘It had a steel gate on the door. And when the fireman called in, “Are you all right in there, 31?” “Yes, quite all right.” “Don’t come out, there’s a time bomb in your garden.” I thought, “Oh! What?” He come back and he said, “The time bomb is … an alarm clock! But you’ve got no street doors and no windows, all blown off up the main road. And I think your street door’s completely blown off. Boom!” Yes, nobody knows what that war was.

  ‘I met a young girl. It had just stripped her of everything that she stood in. I took her indoors and I wrapped her up in a blanket. And I said, “You’d better stay with us, love.” And I said to my friend, “Oh, what a life, but I am worried about my little Malcolm.” So she said, “Don’t worry, I think he’s a strong baby.” But it was all that sort of thing that used to worry me. And I used to try to do my bathing at a different time, but this blasted Hitler! He bombed us all of one day, 24 hours, non-stop. You couldn’t go out, you couldn’t do anything. It was frightening.

  ‘We used to have a big sort of case to put your baby in. What they’d given these things to us for was because they always thought we were going to be attacked by gas. This was to stop the baby breathing it in like those poor souls over there in Russia [Chernobyl] at the moment. That’s what would have stopped them and that’s why we had the gas masks, too. You had to pump it to keep the air going to the baby. BUT, the point is – which I don’t think the government had thought of – if the mother, or whoever had got that baby, left off pumping, it would die! Now what was the point of that! S’pose the mother got hit, where was the baby?

  ‘Of course, my baby christened it [laughing]! When my mother saw it, she said, “Oh dear, has he got to go in there?” So I said, “Get him in.” And he loved it! Laughing away. And there was me at the side, pumping and pumping the thing. It was like a big box with a cover on, all fixed in, and you could see your baby, there was a lovely opening. Oh, he loved it, kicking away, wee-ed in it and all!

  ‘And I’ll always remember it. My husband had come home at one time from France and he said, “You haven’t got one of these boxes?” And I said, “Well, we’re going to get one.” He says, “Well, I’ll pull the bloomin’ town hall down if you don’t get one!” And of course there was no end of mothers all lining up for one of these things when we heard what it was for, that the Germans had started using gas. Of course, naturally, the government gave them out. And of course we had to return them … and all the rest of it …

  ‘It used to be very funny because you’d get a policeman riding on a bike with a notice on his back – “ALL CLEAR” … Oh dear!’

  Midwives described their experiences of having to go out to home births during air raids in the blackout. Mary T. described for us with pride her friend Elsie Walkerdine’s bravery in going out to births in Deptford during air raids:

  ‘Four foot ten inches, she was, but she coped with the biggest. One man came round one night during the war. He said, “Nurse, as soon as the ‘all clear’ siren goes, come and see the wife. She is bad.” She said, “I’ll come along now, Father. You’ve come along for me, I’ll come along for you.” And he had a saucepan over his head!

  ‘She went one night during a raid, and she said it seemed as though the plane was almost following her, gunning her. Nothing kept Nurse Walkerdine at home.’

  Changes brought by war

  The war affected midwifery in many different ways, and its repercussions were felt by midwives for many years afterwards. One interesting change – in postnatal care of mothers – came about as an indirect result of the war experience. Margaret A. explains:

  ‘Back in the early ‘30s we’d keep ‘em in bed for at least twelve days, then gradually it went down to ten days, but when I did my first refresher course, there were two sisters there from the Salvation Army hospital in Hackney – the Mothers’ Hospital – and they told tales of getting their mothers out of bed after delivery as soon as the mothers felt like it, during the bombing in London. They’d been doing it all through the war. The mothers were allowed to get up, pick their babies up and run. And they’d had such success that they kept on with it! – “Early Ambulation”. Well, as soon as I heard that, I came home here and I started “Early Ambulation”, without any reference to the doctors or anyone. Of course, it cut down on DVTs.’ [Deep vein thrombosis: blood clots in the veins of the leg that can be caused by keeping women in bed after childbirth. DVTs can move throughout the bloodstream and block vital organs such as the lungs, causing death.]

  Wartime spirit

  Midwives and other women whom we interviewed waxed lyrical about the way in which people were brought together by the ‘wartime spirit’. Midwife Esther S. remembers:

  ‘I think the thing about the babies and mums was the happy atmosphere about it all. I mean, the war to me was the happiest years of my life – terrible thing to say it, but it was. I mean, nobody had a grudge about anybody else. You were wonderful together. Everybody smiled … (and there was nothing to smile about sometimes) – but you knew that today you were here, tomorrow you were gone, and you couldn’t afford to fall out with anybody because you never knew if we’d meet again. It was wonderful. Everybody would say, “The war years were the happy years for the way that people lived”. No bickering, no nothing. I mean, they all got down into the shelters and the child was as important as the mother, I mean, nobody said, “I was in ‘ere first”. Everybody moved up a bit nearer for somebody else to push in. You know, everybody was for everybody else. Marvellous! I loved all that spirit in the war.

  ‘Mum in the war – she had a hard time really when she was pregnant. There was the awful worry of Dad being at war and th
ey never knew when their letters were going to come – all those long silences. It was terrible. You were often in tears because somebody said, “Have you heard the news? Well … we’ve heard a rumour … and …” It was terrible really, so you had to keep them up, you know, keep going with them. They were lovely people.’

  Many of the midwives we interviewed intimated that during the war they had taken on a new role of authority within the community; namely the one that was usually accorded to men. Mary W. explains:

  ‘Then of course there were a lot of men away and we liked to think we were holding the fort for them, you know, looking after their wives.’

  In a similar vein, Esther S. describes her wartime involvement with families:

  ‘In the war you found that not only did you do your midwifery, you were their friend as well. You had to be. You had to be their moral support because the dads weren’t there and sometimes if the families were all separated, they looked on you as the figurehead almost. You’d do all sorts of things for them. And you know … talk with them. In fact, I found that visits got very long, but you didn’t mind because there was no social life in the war really. Only dances if you could get together with the troops when they were in … But you see, you just made your life in your families and homes, because half the time you were in the shelters. We used to talk together about all sorts of things. They all listened to you, and they liked your ideas.’

  One of the recognised problems in recording oral history is that of selective memory. People tend to tell the stories they want to remember, and nowhere, it seems, is there such a vested interest in remembering the positive than when it comes to the topic of wartime. All the women we interviewed, including the midwives, tended to gloss over or omit the unsavoury aspects of living in a country that could, at the very least, be described as suffering from severe disruption.

  It is important to place oral history in the context of its sociopolitical background and whilst women’s positive memories of wartime may well be due in part to the coming together of people in the face of a common enemy, plus the aforementioned improvement in diet and living conditions, it is nevertheless worth remembering that war also brought with it a whole lot of factors that induced misery and despair. Books that we read about the period make it clear that illegitimacy, venereal disease, rape, prostitution, marriage and divorce rates all soared during both the First and Second World Wars. We found that women did not want to be drawn into discussion about such things.

  ‘My first delivery’

  It seems fitting to end this chapter with Esther S.’s enthusiastic description of her first single-handed midwifery experience. The event took place during an air raid in the Second World War:

  ‘I was getting to the end of my training in Croydon out on the district. I loved it; I really loved it. I was beginning to know midwifery a little bit – I don’t think you ever do until you’re a midwife out on your own …

  ‘My midwife was called Mrs Treasure and I think she thought I had a little bit of sense. I don’t know but she used to leave me a lot on my own, anyway. The biggest thrill of my life was when I knew I was going to do my first delivery on my own on the district.

  ‘Of course, now it wouldn’t be so bad, but it was the times we were living in. You didn’t only have to cope with mum and baby, you had to cope with, well, everything. Keep yourself safe, so that you arrived – I mean, no good you pegging out on the way there, was it! You had to get there. You had to go through the middle of the night with all the flying bombs, on a bike with a cover over your headlamp. It was the blackout. And you wore navy blue, which I thought was dreadful because there were no lights anywhere. It was pitch black. You get a very dark night with no moon and there’s nothing anywhere, absolutely pitch black!

  ‘Well, this particular delivery of mine, which was really the highlight of my life, I’ll never forget it. To me it was wonderful. Mrs T. sent me out one day and she said, “Now, I’m not going to give you any work to do this morning. I’m going to do the work, but you’ve got to go round to three mothers that might deliver and you’ve got to get very familiar with how you find the roads in the night because, as you know, it’ll be pitch black. Really get familiar with it. Find the house, knock on the door, see the mum and tell her that you’ll be coming in the night should she want you, and that they’ve got to ‘phone you. And tell them all what they’ve got to do.”

  ‘That took me a morning to do those three because I had to find them and get really familiar with the roads and thinking, “Now, if it’s lightish, what will my landmarks be? If it’s not light, how will I find it?” – you know, little tiny bits of paper with a little torch so I could just see! Write meself little notes – no one else to ask – usually there wasn’t a soul about!

  ‘So that particular night I went to bed all apprehensive. Now, the bed was underneath a Morrison shelter, d’you know? A table shelter – they were sort of iron, you see, dark green and very strong. Down the side there was more metal and then a little bit of strong mesh for air, and then there was a hole where you got underneath and the back was all filled in and then more mesh at the other end. Well, you were supposed to lay two people lengthways in those, but of course where I was billeted out there was “Mum”, “Dad”, and Pam (lovely girl). They were doing an important job and didn’t have to go to war, but her brother and sister had gone out. They were fighting.

  ‘So there was four of us, you see, so what could we do? So we decided that as we had a great big huge table in that room as well, “Dad” would get under that every night – though, what protection it would be I dunno! And “Mum”, Pam and I got underneath the Morrison. But we couldn’t lay lengthways because it wasn’t big enough so we had to lay widthways – that meant to say our feet were out so we each took a two-hour stint of being awake to call the others when the raids come on and you all had to lift your legs in – ‘cause we said it would be no good if you got your legs chopped off! Say it would be my stint; you had to sit up to keep awake for two hours. We did this in turn each night.

  ‘Well, this particular night when the ‘phone went, I was asleep and Pam said, “Nurse, the ‘phone’s ringing. I expect it’s for you.” And when I answered the ‘phone it was one of these three patients.

  ‘Well, I had to get all round the back of the house to get me bike out and lock it all up, get meself out, take a bag and that. And I had to ride alongside of the park and there was a warden and he said, “Get off the bike. They’re falling fast. Listen to them, all coming over!” I said, “Can’t. Maternity case …” And rode on ever so cocky! I went on and them doodlebugs kept stopping. They’re terrible, when they stop. They swish on down, you see, and then they fall, and of course they shatter roads – a road went like a pack of cards! The devastation! You’d hear them coming, the plane’s noise, and then they stopped – swish – and when they stopped you had to do something because they’d drop anywhere.

  ‘Many of a time I’ve been near them and you just laid down flat on the road, so I just fell off the bike, laid down – there’s no traffic about but say there had been, they wouldn’t have seen you on a dark night in the middle of the road – they’d have rolled over you …

  ‘Well, I got to this house finally because it was a shocking night, one of the worst they’d had. I got to this house and I moved along, fumbled me way along and found the door and put me bike in the gate, took me lamp off to check it was the right number and I knocked and nobody came. And I was ever so frightened. So I pushed the door and it was open so in I go and I fumbled around to try and find Mum and I couldn’t find anybody! Suddenly Dad came in from the garden and he said, “Oh good. I’m glad you’ve come, Nurse, we’re all in the shelter. What a terrible night!”

  ‘So he said, “Come in”. So I get into the kitchen. And he said, “We can’t have any of her nice stuff. That’s all upstairs and I’m too frightened to go up and get it.” I said, “Oh, never mind, we’ll have all the bowls and stuff from the kitchen. Don’t worry
to go upstairs, for goodness sake!” Because he’d got four children, four little girls.

  ‘Down the bottom of the shelter he’d made it that there were like two shelves and there were two little girls on one shelf and two on the other, one either end. Lovely little girls. Anyway, there was Mum lying on the bunk and there was another bunk entrance, so I just got in and looked at her, you see, and I said “Well, I think what we’d better do is get everything to the shelter that we can think of. Then we won’t have to go out. If the water’s cold, it’s just cold and that’s it.” So he said, “Well, before it got too bad I brought down that great big jug you put cold water in.” They hold eight pints, you know, the old jugs and basins on the old washstands. Marvellous. Great boon. Well, they had one of those jugs, didn’t have a basin. So I said, “Well, fill that with water and I’ll get down in this Anderson (you know, they were dug right down) and you pass everything down to me and I’ll take it and then when you’ve finished you come on down.” He said, “There’s an upturned bucket. You can sit on there for a seat.”

  ‘So I sat on it – had a bit of a rim round me! He got ready to give me that water, and just as he was about to give it to me the doodlebug had stopped and it was coming down – swishing – any minute it was going to drop. I mean, you didn’t know where it’s going to land. And so what did he do? He was so frightened he fell and he tipped eight pints of cold water over me! From head to foot, I was absolutely drenched! Right, of course, he cried, he was in such a state. Me dripping wet from head to foot. Well, what could I do, I just laughed! And it was all mud underneath, you see. It was earth and it just made it into all slosh!