Sixty Years a Nurse

by Mary Hazard

  There was a more tragic death one night, however, which made me very sad and again made me realise how important it was to be thorough and observant as a nurse. A young lad of about fifteen was brought in after having a fall on the Common; it wasn’t clear how, but he was probably larking about with some friends and had fallen out of a tree and broken his ankle badly. He was taken to the men’s medical ward, but mysteriously got worse, as he developed a very high temperature. His ankle was set, but still he worsened, and we discovered he was dying from tetanus (lockjaw), which was incurable at the time. However, it was only when he was examined during the post-mortem that it was found that he had a deep graze on the back of his head. This has gone horribly septic and had done for him. It was appalling to us all that this injury had been missed. More importantly, it felt terrible that such a young life was snuffed out so quickly from something that should have been dealt with at the time, and which, today, would be so easily treatable with antibiotics. This kind of tragic incident affected me deeply, as I was only a teenager myself, and made me feel that life was somehow, sometimes, hanging only by a very fine thread. It also made me realise how important it was to be thorough in the medical profession, and how the smallest thing could turn out to be important, especially if it was neglected. This made me feel much more responsible, and assiduous, when dealing with wounds after this experience.

  Sister Tutor, who was a very kindly woman, could see that we were deeply affected by this kind of encounter with death – a boy who had died too soon out of both an accident and human frailty. She would tell us that we would have to get used to seeing all sorts of things in our hospital lives, and that dealing with death was a major part of it all. Sometimes we would see things that would upset us for days, other times we’d see something that would stay with us for life. Even though some of the sisters and staff nurses were quite callous and hardened, and barely paid any attention to the dead and dying, they nonetheless respected that there needed to be a dignified way of dealing with the passing of life.

  Helping people to die was seen as an important aspect of the job, and so Sister Tutor taught us how to approach it with human kindness and thoughtfulness. One day, shortly after the incident of the youth dying from the hidden head injury, she sat us all down and said, ‘Don’t ever let someone die alone. We didn’t come into this world alone, and we should never leave this world alone. When someone is approaching their final hours it’s so important to sit and be with them as they go, especially if they have no family.’ Indeed, she taught us to sit and ‘mop their brows, comfort them’, she would say, ‘hold their hands and soothe them’. She taught us to care, to spend time with people, to make them comfortable, to talk to them and to ease their passage into death. She was a wonderful, sweet influence and a nice woman, to boot, and her important lessons about something that had frightened me a great deal, at first, have stayed with me all the rest of my nursing life.

  5

  Yes, Matron; No, Sister

  Putney Hospital was a totally matriarchal regime, similar to the Presentation Convent and, obviously, to my own family, where Mother Superior and my mother were both ‘the boss’. Matron, who was a rather snobbish, upper-class woman, was at the top of the hospital’s hierarchical tree, and lived on the job, day and night. She literally had a little flat upstairs in the hospital, with a kitchen, a living room and a bathroom. Sometimes Matron entertained ‘at home’ and we would sneak upstairs and try to peak through the glass in the door to see what was going on, like naughty schoolgirls spying on ‘Miss’. We often failed miserably as we always starting giggling or lost heart or thought we heard the ‘click clack’ of Sister’s shoes coming along the corridor which made us scarper, in fits.

  Matron’s life seemed to be entirely limited to the hospital, and, like the nuns, she always seemed to be there, on the job, with her watchful, grey eyes taking in everything, steering her large ship through the daily turbulent seas of hospital life. Her spacious office was right in the middle of the hospital, like the hub, and had an enormous wooden desk, a stripped wooden floor and a large grey plush carpet. Her windows overlooked Barnes Common, and Matron would sit with her back to them bolt upright, at her desk, in her large chair, looking very formidable. I knew that view out of the windows as well as the view back home from my house over the River Suir, as during my three main training years (1952–5), and qualifying year (1955–6), I stood on that carpet, in front of Matron’s desk, numerous times, staring at her neat piles of papers, her pens in a pot and her small, white hands folded neatly in front of her on her blotter.

  Matron was a compact, busy little woman, whom I feared totally. She was quite dumpy and plain and wore an extremely neat and spotless dark navy uniform with a pleated skirt (no one else wore this style). There was no apron but there was a little crisp white hat, perfectly folded, pinned to her iron grey, tight curls. She had white cuffs and collars and always looked utterly immaculate. Matron wore no make-up, of course, but would peer at me through her round wire-rimmed glasses, perched on her somewhat beaky nose. Whenever she looked at me, I would feel intimidated straight away, as if I had done something terribly wrong (I usually had, to be fair). It was so uncomfortable that it reminded me exactly of the sort of penetrating glare I would get from Sister Margaret or Sister Angela, when they were reminding me that God could see into my terribly sinful, blackened soul. Or was rather like the glare my mother would give me when I had scrumped some apples and had hidden them up my jumper. Matron and Sister Margaret, my mother and God all merged into one all-seeing, omnipresent eye, and somehow I was always its beady focus: I was always in the wrong and needing to do penance as a sinner.

  Of course, I contributed to my own reputation for being a little bit giddy, a bit of a ‘trouble-maker’. I didn’t mean to, but I was always, somehow, the one to be up for a bit of a lark, or the one to be laughing loudest, or falling over something or dropping something, under the steely gaze of an older woman in starched uniform. One day, during our very first term, the kind nice Sister Tutor (she was the nicest one of the lot) was teaching us to dissect rats and mice. We were in the school room, which had foetuses in formaldehyde on shelves, which really disturbed me at first. And also good old Araminta laid out, with all her innards spread around her, ready for action. Being the class clown, I picked up one of the mouse’s testicles with a pair of forceps and started off scampering round the lecture room, scaring the life out of the other trainees. I was just swinging them past the nose of a terrified Irene, another Irish nurse, when the usually calm Sister Tutor walked back in, alerted by the shrieks: ‘Nurse Powell, what are you doing? You are here to learn, you are not here to amuse these girls!’ She was red-faced with fury and I felt so embarrassed at being caught out, especially by her. It was supposed to be a bit of fun, but, as usual, I went just a bit too far. I was mortified to be in Sister Tutor’s bad books as I badly wanted her approval.

  On that occasion I got a good telling off, along the lines of ‘You are here to absorb the serious art and craft of being a nurse, and you will have to knuckle down and do things properly, if you want to succeed.’ Sister Tutor commanded our respect and would administer her own justice. She was usually right – and fair. Her word was law, and I respected her, so I would be straightened and would be saying a meek ‘Yes, Sister,’ to all of her edicts after any of my hare-brained escapades or mistakes. The other sisters were more scary, more punitive, and I was really terrified of them. Home Sister, who looked after the nurses’ home, was the most scary of all. She could be nasty, and many a time I ended up not only in her office, saying ‘Yes, Sister,’ in a tiny little voice, but also I would then be moved on seamlessly to Matron’s office, for the final ticking off, to teach me a lesson, to make me come to my senses, and so on. There I would be on the carpet, yet again, saying, ‘No, Matron, I won’t do it again, Matron,’ and then would creep out, tail between my legs, usually in tears and red-faced, well and truly scolded.

  One of the worst night sist
ers was the Beetle, who was incredibly fierce and scary. She was a spinster, witchy like, and had a tight black bun at the back of her little round head, on top of a thin, bony body. She would literally rattle round the wards at high speed, at night, trying to catch us all out. One night one of the exhausted Dutch nurses climbed into one of the giant wicker laundry baskets and went to sleep. We tried to wake her up, and three of us were shaking her legs and rattling the basket when the Beetle scuttled into view. Of course, me being the tallest and the most voluble, I got it first: ‘Powell, whatever are you doing? Stop that immediately.’ It was only when she peered into the basket and saw a bundle of legs and stocking tops that she realised there was a nurse buried deep within the mounds of dirty linen and towels. As a consequence, we had to create our own ‘early warning’ system when we were on nights. We would scatter some granulated sugar along the corridor and we would relax until we heard the crunching and knew Night Sister was coming. Then we would hiss ‘It’s the Beetle’ and jump to it, smarten ourselves up and look very ‘busy’ once she scuttled into view. Once she arrived we’d all look very innocent, folding towels, smoothing beds or writing on charts or tidying up. However, true to form, she was constantly picking on us: ‘Nurse Powell, that bed is not made properly. Change the sheets and do it again,’ and I would know better than to say anything other than ‘Yes, Sister,’ and go to it. I knew better than to argue – and I don’t think I ever saw her laugh. I’m not sure if she knew how.

  I was always in fear of both Matron, the Beetle and Home Sister, but some of the nurses were made of stronger stuff. One of my friends, Jenny, was a third-year trainee, a tough Northern Irish girl from the rough end of Belfast. Being a third year, she was older than me, obviously, and she told me a lot about how to survive the hospital regimen. Her family had had a real tough time during the war years. I liked Jenny; she was great fun, and we often tried doing new hairstyles for each other, talked endlessly about clothes (we both loved fashion), and what we would buy if we ever came into money or saved enough, as well as boys (I hadn’t had much experience of them yet), and who we fancied at the pictures. Jenny and I also talked a great deal about the issue of the huge sense of responsibility that came with training as a nurse and how we felt about it all. Both of us had been the youngest rebels in our families, and we both had spontaneous natures that could get us into trouble. Jenny was a senior, in her final year, and couldn’t care less. She’d had a back-street abortion (she confided one night over the Merrydown), as she was a real one for the men. She couldn’t resist, especially after a few drinks. My eyes opened wider and wider as she told me her amazing stories about her life and loves.

  Anyway, Jenny and I also smoked liked chimneys. She liked her Woodbines, as did I. One night, in the sluice, we were cleaning out bedpans with scrubbing brushes. Always a lovely job. I was still a greenhorn and struggling to do everything right, but Jenny was quite rebellious by now, and used to bucking the system, and I was amazed to see her light up a Woodbine whilst we went on to the next horrible job of scrubbing poo, vomit and wee off some sheets. It was a disgusting job as they smelt to high heaven and we had to do the work with carbolic and elbow grease. I felt like retching several times over. Anyway, I just stood there open-mouthed at her smoking on the job, and looked around, terrified someone might come in and find her – smoking was completely forbidden by nurses, despite the patients being able to smoke on the wards. I thought ‘She’ll be in for it,’ and I was right.

  We didn’t hear her coming, but suddenly the Beetle appeared in the sluice behind Jenny. ‘Nurse, you are smoking!’ snapped the Beetle. I held my breath and waited for it, but Jenny didn’t miss a beat. She carried on rinsing her sheet under the tap, fag hanging out of her mouth at an angle, and said, ‘Yes, I fucking am.’ Well, I nearly fell through the floor. For a start I’d never heard the ‘F’ word said out loud before, let alone heard a nurse say it – and let alone heard a nurse say it to a superior. I expected the sluice ceiling to come crashing down on our heads, or a lightning bolt to come shooting through the windows and take off Jenny’s head with a single blast. The Beetle was silenced momentarily. I dared to peek up at her from under my lowered eyelids and all I could see were her eyes popping out of her head with apoplectic rage. I thought, ‘Sweet Jesus, the Beetle will kill her now.’

  ‘You’re to go straight to Matron’s office, nine sharp,’ hissed the Beetle through clenched teeth, her eyes like burning black buttons. ‘Put that thing out right now and get back to work.’ And cool as a cucumber, Jenny finished her rinsing, put the fag end under the running water and threw it in the bin. Then she dried her hands and sashayed out of the sluice deliberately slowly, turning to wink at me mischievously as she passed. I thought the Beetle’s head was going to explode right off her shoulders there and then, she was that furious. I was frozen to the spot, as I’d never seen anything like it and had a secret admiration for Jenny’s guts. ‘Stop gawping, Powell.’ The Beetle’s ire was now unleashed on me. ‘Get back to your work this minute, and let this be a lesson to you.’ ‘Yes, Sister.’ I knew better than to answer back, but I wasn’t sure, exactly, which lesson I was supposed to be learning. Later, after her carpeting, where she was grounded for a month, Jenny said to me with a wicked wink, ‘Don’t let the fuckers walk all over you, Mary. Learn to stand your ground.’ I think this edict became my motto over the next sixty years, and I never forgot Jenny as she was a damned good nurse, even though she was a rebel.

  There was a constant tension between meeting the needs of the regime, so that rules were followed and things were done perfectly, and meeting the needs of the patients, who needed time, nursing and care. The kind sisters and staff nurses were the ones who understood, like Sister Tutor, that we nurses needed to spend a bit of time with people, making them feel comfortable, relating to them, comforting them as well as doing the usual things like taking pulses and changing dressings. This was an aspect of the job that I really loved, and wanted to do. But this had to be counter-balanced against the needs of keeping things constantly clean and spit spot, and there were sisters who were real dragons and staff nurses who were total pains. At first I was horrified by some of the diseases I encountered. Things such as diabetes, which had side-effects, like gangrene or blindness, meant the poor people (very often men) suffered terribly. There was often nothing that could be done to cure them, back then, so I felt it was my job to make the patients feel as comfortable as I possibly could. And they were often grateful for any little spark of human kindness to relieve both their symptoms and their boredom.

  I remember one dear old boy, a Mr Jones, who was in his sixties and totally blind. He was in the men’s medical ward when I was in my first year. He had a bit of Brylcremed hair combed over on top and a big fluffy moustache, and used to smoke a pipe (amazing to think of this now). He used to sit up in his stripey blue and white pyjamas and call me as he heard me go past, ‘Nurse, Nurse, put a bit of baccy in me pipe, would ya?’ Or he’d say, ‘I was wondering if you was on today. Fill me pipe fer me, will ya, m’dear?’ He couldn’t see a thing, poor man, so I’d sit on the chair next to his bed and fill his pipe for him. But as I’d be doing it, Staff Nurse would come along and snap at me, in front of him, ‘Powell, what are you doing? There’s bedpans to empty. Get a move on, nurse.’ ‘Yes, Staff,’ I’d say, but be seething inside as I felt sorry for the old bloke – it was all the pleasure he had left in the world. When she’d gone, Mr Jones would whisper, ‘Sorry I got you into trouble, girlie,’ and I’d say, ‘Never mind. Enjoy your pipe, Mr Jones.’ I’d feel like it was the least I could do to give the poor old man a break from his misery. I thought Staff was behaving like a bitch at the time, but I had to hold my tongue (unlike Jenny, I wasn’t that brave, yet). It didn’t stop me filling Mr Jones’s pipe for him, though. I felt it was the least I could do.

  When I met Staff in the corridor afterwards, I must have looked angry, as she came up to me and said, pointedly, ‘When you’ve been here as long as I have,
nurse, you won’t be fussing over him like that.’ I opened my mouth to argue with her, but checked myself. ‘Yes, Staff,’ was all I said, but inside I felt upset. The poor old geezer just wanted a bit of baccy for his pleasure and it seemed so mean not to help, so inhuman. Some of the other nurses were very hard, but I have to say I was always a bit of a softie, and I was often in tears over the state of people. I guess the reason I wanted to be a nurse was my compassion for their suffering. However, I could always hear my father’s voice in my head teasing me: ‘Oh, there she goes again. Her bloody bladder’s in her eyeballs, crying over everything.’

  However, some of the trainee nurses found out during our first year that nursing was not for them. Some of them took to the profession because, like me, they felt they had a vocation to follow, while others had sort of fallen into it, or were pushed into it by circumstances beyond their control (like poverty) or family pressures, and really struggled with the whole thing. There was one of my friends, Wendy, who had been a ballet dancer earlier in her life, and was very glamorous and beautiful. She had decided to train as a nurse because the ballet world had a short age limit, and she knew that by the time she was in her twenties she would be past it. She needed to find a way of earning her living as her family wasn’t well off, and had thought that nursing might be it. However, right from the start it was clear she was not really cut out for the life of scrubbing toilets, emptying bedpans and taking temperatures.

  On our days off she was always the first out of the Nurses’ Home, dressed up to the nines, and on her way ‘up West’ as we called it. This meant a long double-decker red bus ride up to Piccadilly and then hitting the coffee bars in the West End of London, especially round Soho. Hanging out in coffee bars was very daring in those days, as they were full of ‘Beatniks’, young men in Sloppy Joe sweaters down to their knees, and with beards, longish hair (over the ears, anyway) and horn-rimmed glasses. Wendy would whisper to me, while she put on her red lipstick, ‘Christ, I’m fed up with this boring place,’ and she’d be off to find intellectuals and arty types in dives like the Macabre, a famous coffee bar in Wardour Street that had skeletons on the walls and coffins as tables. Wendy was no more a nurse than I was a policeman. Inevitably, she soon met a suave publishing type ‘up West’, Peter, and it became a full-on wonderful romance (she told us over the Merrydown at night). Indeed, Wendy was always falling in love and clambering into our lodgings, through an open downstairs window, late at night. But now she was telling me that Peter was ‘the One’, or so Wendy thought. Very soon Wendy disappeared and got married, and Sister ‘tutted’ at the waste of time she had been as a trainee. It was heavily frowned on by the sisters to give up your training before you had finished, a real letting the side down. Yet there was a tinge of envy at finding a man, and having the option of making a family, as so many of the sisters and Matron seemed to be diehard spinsters.