Sisters of the East End

by Helen Batten

  I think the Christian ethos brought something special to the patients too. We used to ask the new parents if they would like to have a little thanksgiving service for themselves and their babies. Most mothers were delighted, even if they weren’t Christian.

  It was just a little service in the chapel if the mother could manage it, or beside her bed if she couldn’t, and it replaced the old service of ‘churching’, which can still be found in the Book of Common Prayer. Childbirth used to be such a risky business for both mother and baby that a special blessing would be said over the mother 40 days after she had given birth. The traditional service has elements of ritual purification and echoes of the ancient rule that a woman could not go back to church until she had been ‘churched’. In the old days a mother would often come into the church wearing a veil and carrying a candle, and would sit on a special ‘churching’ seat at the back. She would be expected to make an offering and then the priest would bless her as she knelt at the altar.

  Our service was much more straightforward – a couple of readings, a special prayer and a special blessing. I think we dismiss our ancient rituals too readily. Bringing new life to the world is still the most extraordinary event in a woman’s life, probably the most important event, and to mark it in some way, some official way, with thanksgiving, where those closest to her can participate, is precious. Our service of thanksgiving always seemed to be much appreciated.

  Another much-loved part of the life at the British Hospital was our annual nativity tableau. Eight evenings before Christmas, the hospital staff would tell the Christmas story through Bible readings, acting and singing. We tended to use the same script – as one of the more ‘mature’ ladies on the staff, I always played Elizabeth, the mother of John the Baptist. Students and midwives played Mary, Joseph and the shepherds and kings, and the baby Jesus would be one of our babies that had just been born. It was a great honour for your new baby to be asked to play Jesus, and I don’t remember any mother ever refusing!

  So the British Hospital was a special place where I felt at home and I have to say these were the happiest days of my life. After a few years I had worked my way up through various tutoring posts and eventually I became the senior midwifery tutor. I had arrived back from Malawi with no idea what to do next, but I felt as if my patience and faith in God had been rewarded. In the words of the famous hymn, ‘God works in a mysterious way His wonders to perform’.

  However, the winds of change were continuing to blow and the National Health Service was evolving at a pace. As the Eighties progressed, the government was pursuing a policy (which of course it still is) where the various small, often specialist, hospitals which had sprung up piecemeal over the years were gradually closing and merged with larger, more general, hospitals. Of course there were advantages to this. Just as an example, at the British Hospital we had a special-care baby unit, but there was a limit to the amount of equipment we had at our disposal and we didn’t have the money to be able to give our babies some of the more complicated treatments or expertise they could get at a bigger hospital and sometimes they had to be transferred. So it wasn’t a surprise when there was an announcement that the British Hospital was to be merged with the Greenwich District Hospital. In practice this meant that the hospital had to close and we would all have to move to Greenwich. We were devastated. While we knew there were obvious advantages to the merger, our community and ethos would be diluted in the huge pool of a secular general hospital. Also, we had the impression that the feelings were mutual. Some of the staff at the district hospital were not really looking forward to having us either.

  This feeling was shared by some of our patients. Mrs Miller had had her two sons at the British (one of whom I had been in charge of) and visiting one day, she mentioned that she and her husband were thinking of trying for another baby in the New Year.

  ‘Well, you’ll have to get a move on if you want it here,’ I said, ‘This hospital will be closed by July.’

  Mrs Miller obviously went home and rethought her timing with Mr Miller because almost exactly nine months later, and a week before the hospital closed, I delivered Mary Miller.

  So with great regret in the summer of 1984 we had our big final service in the chapel and I found myself working on the maternity wards of Greenwich District Hospital. But the British was not forgotten. One day, as I was looking at a noticeboard, I felt a tap on my shoulder.

  ‘Excuse me, Sister Catherine Mary, isn’t it?’

  ‘Yes, dear.’

  ‘Do you remember me?’

  I gave her a thorough inspection.

  ‘Well, I think I do recognise you. Did you have a baby at the British Hospital?’

  ‘Yes, that’s me. I’m Clare.’

  ‘Hello, Clare, how can I help you?’

  ‘Well, I’m a bit embarrassed to ask.’

  ‘Don’t worry. Go ahead!’

  ‘Well, you didn’t deliver my baby but you did a service of thanksgiving for him, and it was really good. I wondered whether you could do the same again for my new baby girl? Doesn’t seem right him having it and not her. Only I asked and they said they don’t do it here.’

  ‘Well, no, they don’t. Not normally. But I don’t see why we can’t have one anyway. Leave it with me.’

  So I went and talked to the hospital chaplain and later on that afternoon, we did a special thanksgiving for Clare and her new baby. It was a happy moment, but also a sad reminder of what we had lost at the British Hospital.

  However, there was something, or rather someone, that I found as a result of the move to Greenwich. I was waiting at the reception desk when I became aware of a nurse standing next to me. I turned and looked, and I nearly passed out. Beside me was a ghost. I was looking at the profile of Cecilia. She didn’t notice me, but as I stared, I was sure I was looking at a slightly aged (but not that much) Cecilia, dressed not in a habit, but in the uniform of a district nurse. As I paused, the thought crossed my mind that I could just slip away. I touched her arm instead.

  ‘Cecilia!’

  She turned and the colour drained from her face.

  ‘Catherine!’

  And then I found myself all overcome and hugging her.

  ‘Oh, I never thought I’d see you again! It’s so good to see you!’

  ‘It’s so good to see you too, Catherine. I think of you every day and wonder how you are. And here you are.’

  She drew back and looked at me, and then looked at my girdle and habit.

  ‘So you’ve taken final vows?’

  ‘Yes – some years ago.’

  ‘I’m so glad.’

  ‘Are you?’

  Suddenly the conversation seemed to be getting into dangerous territory; it hadn’t taken long. How quickly that unresolved bit of anger about her departure could rise to the surface, as fresh and dangerous as the day she’d left! I needed to ask her some questions.

  ‘Cecilia, can we go and talk? There’s lots of things I want to know.’

  She looked concerned, but she said, ‘Yes, I think that would be good.’

  There were all sorts of things I was supposed to be doing, but I thought this was one occasion where God would forgive me putting my own needs first. In fact, as we walked to the hospital canteen, I wondered what God’s purpose might be for Cecilia and I to meet again now.

  We sat down with an ordinary cup of tea and piece of cake and started to have an extraordinary conversation. I had to get the big one out of the way straight away, almost just in case she disappeared again.

  ‘Why did you leave?’ I asked.

  She took a breath and sighed.

  ‘Because I couldn’t carry on any longer. I didn’t want to be a midwife. As you know, I’d never wanted to be a midwife, but I felt that I had to give it a go. I prayed and prayed, but the answer came back the same. My calling was to be a district nurse.’

  ‘But it was so sudden. Why didn’t you talk to me?’

  ‘Perhaps I should have done, but I suppose I didn
’t want to interfere with what definitely was your calling … and I was in shock.’

  ‘Shock?’

  Cecilia then told me how she had been sent to deliver a baby at short notice. When she went into the room her instincts were telling her that something was seriously wrong. In the event there was something terribly wrong – the baby was lying in a breech position and had died. She had never seen a stillborn baby before and no one had prepared her for what to expect.

  ‘I handled it really badly, but the last straw was when I bumped into Sister Julia in the corridor afterwards and she said, “I hear you had a breech birth today. That was good experience for you.” I felt she hadn’t understood the emotional impact this had had on me and the poor mother.’

  I nodded. I could picture the scene only too well. Cecilia then told me how she had gone back to the Mission House and been unable to do anything but go to meals for two days. Her predicament wasn’t helped by overhearing Sister Alice talking about a lady in the parish whom she’d had to make a post-natal visit to, despite the fact that her baby was stillborn, and this lady had told her how the inexperienced midwife did not know what she was doing and had panicked.

  ‘That was me,’ Cecilia said. ‘It confirmed what I had always believed – I did not want to be a midwife and my calling was to be a district nurse, something the Community was not prepared at that time to let me do.’

  We sat in silence for a few minutes. I felt the enormity of what Cecilia had just told me. Then she continued.

  ‘I searched my soul but I felt my time in Community had come to an end and I had to leave. In the end, it really wasn’t a choice.’

  ‘No, I can see that. You know I needed to hear you tell me this.’

  Cecilia looked at me intently for a second and then said, ‘I have never regretted leaving the religious life but I have regretted the way I left, and particularly the way I never had the chance to explain or say goodbye to you and the Sisters.’

  ‘Well, I guess God has given us the chance to make up for that now,’ I said and we embraced.

  I never saw Cecilia again, but we started to write to each other and we are still in contact. It really did make a difference, meeting her again. I no longer felt angry towards her – how could I after hearing her story? But meeting her only added to my feelings of discomfort with the some aspects of our Community life, not just the fact we were not allowed to say ‘goodbye’ properly and the thinking that lay behind it, but also the weight that was given (or not given) to our own feelings about where God was calling us. But for the moment I kept those thoughts to myself.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  * * *

  REVOLUTION

  Sometimes I did worry about the future. I could see that there was a fundamental crisis looming for the religious life. The world that had given birth to monks and nuns was rapidly becoming history. The most obvious symptom of this crisis was the fall not just in numbers of people going to church, but also entering and remaining in the religious life, and our Community was no exception. No new Sisters had joined since Sister Marie-Louise.

  But this fall in numbers was mirrored by an identity crisis. Many felt that to cling onto a lifestyle created in the last century seemed inappropriate. But what should take its place? Each Community had its own way of engaging with the changing world and we were no exception. Although I continued working as a midwife tutor in hospital and living in a Community House in London, things began to move within the Community itself.

  Mother Sarah Grace could be quite secretive sometimes. One day in 1976 she announced she was off on a day trip.

  ‘Where’s she off to?’ the Sisters asked each other, but no one seemed to know the answer.

  When the Reverend Mother got back late in the evening, she summoned Sister Rachel and Sister Julia into her study and waved a piece of paper at them.

  ‘A week ago I received this letter and it’s been burning a hole in my pocket. It’s from Mother Theresa Mary in Birmingham. Their House there is now far too big for them and they want to rejoin their Mother House in Oxfordshire. Mother Theresa Mary was wondering whether we might be interested in taking it over.’

  ‘Oh Mother, not Birmingham!’ Poor Sister Rachel exclaimed before she could stop herself.

  ‘Well yes, indeed Birmingham. However, I’ve been up there today and I think it might suit our purposes perfectly.’

  ‘Really?’

  ‘Yes. And that’s why I want both of you to go up and see it with me soon.’

  Sisters Rachel and Julia exchanged pained glances but to no avail. A week later they had to pile into the Community car with the Reverend Mother, muttering darkly to each other about how they could have understood London, but Birmingham? None of us came from the Midlands and the Community had never worked there. We had absolutely no connection whatsoever with the city, and no particular desire to form one.

  However, as soon as the Sisters had got out of the car and gone over the threshold of the Birmingham House, they knew they had found our new Mother House. It was a large eighteenth-century farmhouse, complete with a garden and a chapel, set in a deprived area of the inner city. This would be an oasis of peace, in the middle of a busy, needy community, with lots of things for us to do. It was a cunning move by the Reverend Mother to take Sister Rachel and Sister Julia with her because they were respected representatives of both the modernising and conservative factions within the Community; with the support of them both, she knew she would carry the other Sisters. Within the year we had said goodbye to our Mother House in Hastings and moved from the quiet, enchanted forest to an urban jungle in the middle of Birmingham.

  This move wasn’t a total shock. Every five years religious Communities receive a ‘visitation’ from their Bishop. This is a kind of audit of the Community’s life and work, where every member of the Community is interviewed about what they do, and their thoughts about the Community’s future. In 1975 the Bishop of Chichester spent some time looking at the Mother House and at the end of it, he took Mother Sarah Grace aside.

  ‘Look, I’m the last person who wants to see you leave my Diocese,’ he said, ‘but you need to get into the thick of it. This nursing home is taking up all your energy and has a stranglehold on your future. You need to find a new home and a new purpose.’

  And the Bishop was right: we were facing a crossroads in the life of the Community. To understand the depth of it, you have to go back to the years immediately following the Second World War. Two pivotal things happened. In 1945 the Sisters were finally allowed to take life vows. Up until this time they had not been allowed to enter the religious life in the fullest, most permanent sense, although they had been living it.

  Because the Community of St John the Divine had been set up primarily as a nursing Community, and an Anglican one at that, the religious element had originally only been a means to a more professional nursing end. In fact, because of the anti-Catholic feeling in the British establishment, any attempts by the Sisters to become more formally religious had been strenuously resisted. It was felt that this would both deter women from entering the Community and end in popery.

  In reality, most of the women who had joined the Community were deeply religious and longed to be able to express this more formally. They were living the life of the fully professed and wanted to make a public commitment to God. Finally, with great rejoicing among the Sisters, they managed to persuade the church authorities to let them take their life vows. On 2 October 1945, the Feast of the Holy Guardian Angels, most of the Sisters took their life vows. Three Sisters did not, but all of them stayed living in the Community for the rest of their lives, abiding by the three vows, even though they hadn’t publicly professed them.

  Meanwhile, in 1947 the National Health Service Act was passed and came into effect in 1948. However, it took a long time for the big, overarching beast that we now know as the NHS to emerge. Rather than a revolution and takeover, it was more like a slow expansion and creeping colonisation of the services that
were already there. This meant that our work as nurses and midwives carried on as it had done for many years, with the funding that previously came direct from our patients or charitable donations gradually being taken over by the NHS. Then in 1974 the Sisters started to become individual employees of the Health Service. Looking back now, it was obvious that the writing was on the wall.

  Well, Mother Sarah Grace didn’t shirk from this new challenge: she knew the Bishop was right. Although we were doing good work in the nursing home and would have quite happily carried on, the rising cost of staff and supplies meant that we could only look after the relatively comfortably off, rather than the people who really needed us. After much discussion and prayer it was decided that the Mother House should be sold and we should look for somewhere that we could start a new ministry. We had no idea what this ministry should be except that perhaps it could still involve health and healing, but in a wider, more holistic sense.

  And it was not only our Mother House in Hastings that had to close. Our work in London seemed to be coming to an end. In 1978 our lease on the Mission House was up for renewal. It had originally been given to us for a token rent by the Diocese in 1945 after our Bow Lane house was destroyed by the bomb that killed Sister Margery. Now the Church wanted a more economically realistic rent, which we had no means of paying. As the NHS expanded its midwifery training, the numbers of pupil midwives coming to train with us dwindled and we had no option but to close down the Mission House.