Sisters of the East End

by Helen Batten

  I sat with her as the day darkened and the room became lit by a solitary light. Her breathing grew shallower and eventually the breaths came further and further apart. I stroked her pale, fragile hand and prayed. I was struck with the similarities between helping someone to leave the world and helping someone enter it. Birth and death, two huge transition points in the soul’s journey. It felt so important to be there alongside Flossy; to help her make this transition with courage and hope. I do believe that just as you can have a good birth, you can have a good death. It’s important if you are with someone at these most profound moments of existence to be intuitive, to form a bond quickly, even if you have never met before so that you can say what needs to be said. (And of course hearing is the last sense to go, so even if it seems like they have sunk very low, it’s important to keep on talking. Many is the time I have carried on talking when it seems they have gone to sleep and a slight squeeze to my hand will show they are still with us.)

  It’s important to assess where the person is on their spiritual journey, whether they have travelled to the destination they are supposed to reach and are therefore ready to die. And it’s not necessarily got anything to do with how old they are. I’ve been present at the deaths of quite a few young people, who are ready to go and at peace, and similarly, older people who have lived many decades and yet are terrified. But old Flossy was ready to go; I sensed her peace and readiness to take the next step. I carried on praying and talking quietly to Flossy, telling her I loved her and how many people loved her, thanking her for being with us, telling her to have the courage for the next stage and my hope that she would soon see her sons and her husband again. I assured her she was loved and that her journey was going on. ‘Can you see the light, Flossy? Walk towards the light.’ This was the first of many times that I felt as if I was walking with the dying patient. I was walking alongside Flossy and I had to go as far as I could with her. But there came a point where I could go no further, but I had gone far enough that there were those on the horizon (angels, loved ones who have already died, I don’t know), that she could see and they could see her and would be waiting for her, arms outstretched.

  I have no idea if this is actually what happens, but this is what I like to think. Now, years later, I have met quite a few people who have had near-death experiences and all of them say they no longer fear death, that they go towards the light, feel an incredible peace and joy, and an awareness of the presence of others.

  We can never start thinking about death soon enough. None of us knows when it will come, but we hurtle through life with our hands over our ears singing loudly. I’ve seen good deaths and I’ve seen bad deaths, and the good deaths are where a person has thought and prepared. Where they are surrounded by people who love them, they have found meaning in their lives, and made peace with their Maker; they have some sense of where they might be going. They have given instructions how they want to die and, most importantly, said the things they want to say to the people who matter to them.

  I realised Flossy hadn’t breathed for a while. Suddenly I felt alone, as if while I had been praying her soul had picked up its suitcase and quietly left the room for its next destination. I felt tremendously privileged to have sat beside her on this most important of journeys, zipped up in her shroud, totally ready for what was going to happen next. In that peaceful, darkening afternoon I was blessed with a sense of the human journey, from the dramatic moment we enter this world to the moment we exit it, and how important these moments are.

  And when I got back to the Mission House I started to write my application to take my life vows.

  About six months later we received word that baby John Divine had been adopted. After the conversation with Flossy, I hadn’t been surprised that the search for his relations had proved fruitless. We continued to pray for John Divine for a long time after. Indeed, on the anniversary of the day he arrived on our doorstep, we often still say a prayer for him. He must be well into his forties by now and I guess no longer called John Divine, but I hope and pray he is living a good life and feeling the love of God.

  He is a person we have never forgotten over the years.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  * * *

  THE WINDS OF CHANGE

  I was amazed to discover during my nurses’ training that every cell in a person’s body is renewed within seven years. This means that there is not one bit of my body that now exists that was on this earth seven years ago. We are, literally, physically reborn many times during our lifetime. It’s no wonder then that societies as a whole are never static. But sometimes the pace of change becomes more intense. Just as at critical points in a person’s life – childhood, adolescence, pregnancy, old age – this rate of change speeds up, so the Sixties was one of those moments in this country’s history when the pace of change became turbo-charged.

  I became aware of this while doing my rounds on the district. The new tower blocks that were going up on the old bombsites or replacing the tenements instantly changed the whole nature of our area. Suddenly the material well-being of the Poplar housewife was transformed. There was an end to the communal outdoor privies, instead there was a lavatory and indeed a proper bathroom for every family. Out with rugs and lino, in came fitted carpets (they seemed the height of luxury!). The women of Poplar started to have things that their grandmothers and their mothers could only have dreamed of – washing machines, telephones, vacuum cleaners. But in the midst of this something was lost, something that money couldn’t buy, something that might have been more precious.

  I had an inkling of this the first time I visited Ivy Bucket in her flat in the new high-rise tower block by the Blackwall Tunnel. Before this Ivy had been living in what to an outside observer these days might look like something close to medieval squalor. The house was always a tip – dirt, dust, insects, you name it. There were clothes drying everywhere, plates piled up, broken toys on the floor, her countless cats and children getting under everyone’s feet.

  Because Ivy’s friends and family lived in the surrounding streets (sister one door along, Mum the street behind, cousins on the corner) there was always another Cockney companion putting forward an opinion on every antenatal visit, and there had been quite a few because Ivy was on her fourth child. It felt overcrowded, but friendly. However, at the back of the house she always kept a special room for her newest baby. It was clean and warm, with a cot and perfectly pressed clothes all laid out neatly. I found it touching. As her fourth pregnancy advanced she received word that the council had found her a place in the brand new Balfour House tower block. Ivy was very excited.

  ‘Bloody marvellous, Sister! Imagine, getting away from all this,’ she said, sweeping her arm across her tiny, tatty kitchen, ‘Everything brand new and even me very own loo.’

  So for my next antenatal visit I had to cycle across the length of the district, which was no mean feat. The area we covered was a long ribbon stretching for miles. Gosh, it kept me fit, going backwards and forwards every day with my sturdy black bike and a bag complete with oxygen tank strapped to the side. Ivy’s new flat was at the far end. When I got there I realised I hadn’t a clue how to find it. The collection of high-rise tower blocks formed a rabbit warren of grey, dark concrete staircases. The streets were usually full of people; but this was a ghost town. Where was everybody?

  I finally found Ivy’s staircase but I was faced with a problem. How on earth was I going to get my equipment ten storeys up? And I didn’t like leaving my bike. Normally I wouldn’t think twice because our bikes never got stolen, but I sensed an unusual threat in the air and I didn’t even carry a bicycle lock with me so I just had to prop it against a wall. I also felt self-conscious in my Sister’s habit. It seemed to fit with the terraced houses but it looked ridiculous here. I picked up my equipment and looked around for a lift.

  After a bit of wandering, I found the lift, but it wasn’t working. I struggled back to the staircase and started the long climb up. I arrived rather ruffled and
panting at Ivy Bucket’s door. It wasn’t very welcoming. No bell, no knocker, no window, just a number on a grey door. I rapped on it and Ivy opened the door, ‘Come in, Sister. Oh lordy, what a heavy dirty slag! I bet you ’ad trouble getting that up the apples ’n pears.’

  ‘Yes indeed, what happened to the lift?’

  ‘Bleedin’ thing is broken. It’s been broken ever since we moved in. It ain’t ’arf difficult getting up and down while I’ve been carryin’ this.’ Ivy pointed at her not-too-small bump.

  ‘Yes, not designed for a pregnant lady. Designed by a man, of course – must be.’

  ‘Too right, Sister. And ’ow on earth am I goin’ to get the Fireman Sam and the chuffin’ shopping up and down?’

  ‘Oh gosh! Of course, the pram. That’s a real problem. Why didn’t they think of these things? Have you asked the council about the lifts?’

  ‘Well, they won’t fix ’em becos the kids play in them and breaks them again.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘I ask ya, what a rathead situation.’

  I could see Ivy was getting worked up and I didn’t blame her, but I was worried about her blood pressure.

  ‘Well, the flat looks nice, Ivy.’

  She smiled.

  ‘Yes, Sister, it is. ’Ave a butcher’s at this.’

  She waddled through the small hall and flung open a door and switched on a light.

  ‘Me very own bathroom, like the Queen.’

  There was a small sink, bath and loo, all in white with new fluffy pedestal mats embracing the bottom of the ceramics. It didn’t look like it had been used.

  ‘And look at this, Sister.’ She waddled through to the kitchen. A cooker; again so shiny and new and clean. Was she using it, I wondered?

  After I had done my routine examination, Ivy seemed reluctant to let me go. She made me a cup of tea (with Carnation milk) and pressed a biscuit into my hand and nattered on. She seemed a bit lonely so I said, ‘It seems very quiet, Ivy. Where are all your children? Shouldn’t they be home from school by now?’

  ‘Well yes, Sister. Thing is, they don’t come straight home now. They miss their friends and there’s nowhere for them to play. They’re back down the street, I guess.’

  ‘Oh. It does seem very quiet out there.’

  ‘It’s bleedin’ quiet in ’ere and all.’

  I suddenly realised her toddler was missing too.

  ‘Where’s Lizzie?’

  ‘Oh, Mum’s got her. She won’t come ’ere ’cos she says she can’t find me and she can’t climb the stairs so I leaves her there.’

  ‘Oh gosh, Ivy! This must be a bit difficult for you.’

  ‘It is. I’m almost wishing I never came. I’m bleedin’ lonely. Stan don’t come home ’till late because he stays in the pub drinkin’ with his china plates. He don’t know no one round here.’

  I nodded. The East End communities were so insular in those days that a trip to Whitechapel was seen as a bit of an event. Some people never left Poplar. It was what made the web so strong. But these new tower blocks were breaking up the threads of the web very quickly. Families were being split up and juggled around; new people moved in. The tower blocks were not conducive to people getting to know each other; and actually, people didn’t want new friends, they wanted their old ones. It struck me that it took generations to build that sort of a community; it could only happen organically over time. But goodness, how quickly it could be dismantled. A community needed to live close to each other, constantly bumping into each other. Now geographical space was creating emotional distance. It was terribly sad.

  Family ties were also loosening because women didn’t need each other in the same way. Children, or rather the abundance of them, had kept women at home and relying on each other to help out. Of course there have always been ways of not having babies, coitus interruptus is the oldest form of contraception and condoms made out of animal intestines were being used by the early Egyptians. But these were either pretty ineffective or relied on the compliance of men, who let’s face it, as they didn’t have to look after the consequences, didn’t have the same incentive to sort it out.

  All this changed in 1961 when the contraceptive pill became available on prescription. At first it was given only to married women. They had to bring a letter from their vicar or some other such worthy to say that they were a suitable candidate to receive it, meaning they were respectable, married and in need of legitimately limiting their family numbers. But like an unstoppable force, once the water started to leak, the dam broke and soon thousands of women, married and unmarried, started to get the Pill. Within ten years a million women were using it. Now, for the first time, women had a highly effective form of contraception that didn’t involve the cooperation of men and this meant that the birth rate dropped dramatically in places like Poplar.

  Women were much more able to go out to work, and they did so because the traditional men’s jobs in the docks were disappearing, and they needed the money. It also meant that without the threat of pregnancy women were able to have sex without getting married, so they started to marry later. Young Molly didn’t have another baby for a long time after the one poor Brenda delivered. She carried on working and only started a family ten years later, when she finally married. This meant that the women didn’t need each other’s help in the same way. They didn’t meet handing over small people; they were off in their places of work most of the time.

  I noticed it on the streets. Fewer bumps, fewer prams, and less work for us. In the space of a few years the number of babies we delivered declined dramatically. Instead we had to learn new skills. Gradually, during the course of the Sixties, we started to routinely give advice about contraception as part of our post-natal care. At first it was something that I would bring up in conversation according to whether I felt it was an issue – for example, with a mother who already had five children. Faced with a mother who’d had two babies within 12 months of each other, I would say things like, ‘You know you can get pregnant while you are breastfeeding, don’t you?’ (It’s amazing how that myth persisted, and believe me, it is a myth!) Or if a woman had suffered damage I would caution her about resuming sexual relations before she had healed and then encourage her to insist that her husband was gentle (in those days so many women had to be given permission to be assertive with their husbands when it came to physical relations). But at some point in the mid Sixties it became one of the routine questions on our post-natal checklist, ‘Have you thought about how you are going to prevent another pregnancy before you are ready?’

  However, it became apparent that there was a growing need for family planning services, not only for those women who had just had babies, and that this was something it would be appropriate for us to provide. People often assume that because we are Sisters, we do not approve of contraception, but of course this is quite wrong. They are confusing us with nuns from the Roman Catholic Church, who will be guided to follow the papal line that artificial methods of contraception are against God’s will. However, the Church of England has a different view of contraception, and having witnessed the suffering that came from backstreet abortions and the poverty that often came from having large families, we believed we could help.

  In 1967 Sisters Alice and Dorothy were sent off on a training course and we started holding a family planning clinic one morning a week. It became a popular service, although one day a few years later, I was helping out when two young girls came in and looked rather shocked, stunned into silence in fact, to be facing a Sister in full habit in a family planning clinic. They sat there and stared at each other, blushing, and then stared at me. One of them nudged the other.

  ‘You ask her.’

  ‘No, you ask her.’

  ‘No, you ask her.’

  They sank back into a crippling embarrassed silence. I decided to put them out of their misery.

  ‘Is there anything you’d like to ask me, girls?’

  One of them piped up.

  ‘Yes,
miss. You see, we was wondering – is it true what they say, that you can use clingfilm as a contraceptive?’

  ‘Well dear, that depends what you put it on, doesn’t it?’ I replied.

  It felt rather a strange time to be doing something as medieval as becoming a nun when all around me the world was becoming frightfully post-modern. I was pondering the whole incongruity of it as I knelt in the chapel at the Mother House while I waited for news of my application to take my life vows. A full Chapter meeting of the Sisters had been called at my request, to deliberate my application. It didn’t happen very often. I was the first applicant in years and it required every life-professed member of the Community to be present.

  In a slightly party atmosphere we had all climbed on the train to Hastings. Well, I say party; I wasn’t in a party mood. I just felt sick. In order to be accepted into a lifetime commitment, I had to be receive a majority of the vote and I couldn’t for the life of me see the likes of Sister Julia giving me the nod. In fact I thought it might give her the utmost pleasure to trip me up just in front of the finishing line. Why were they taking so long? I looked at my watch. Actually it hadn’t been that long, only half an hour. There was also a worrying precedent. The last Sister to apply had been turned down for first profession. Sister Victoria had been told she wasn’t suitable and had had to leave pretty much straight away. We had since heard that she had very quickly met a vicar, married and was pregnant with her first child, which in a way seemed to bear out the wisdom of the Sisters’ decision. But still, I had no desire to be out in the world looking for a husband and ending up as a vicar’s wife. Walking on the moon seemed a more likely scenario. With this thought, I found my prayer.