Читать книгу Sixty Years a Nurse - Mary Hazard - Страница 9

When I arrived in 1952, Putney Hospital was a rather handsome, red-brick Edwardian sprawl on leafy Putney Common in south-west London. The three-storey nurses’ home was at the back, on the north side, and when I got there part of it had only just finished being rebuilt after being firebombed during the war in 1944 (it was the first incendiary bomb to land on London, in fact). I also found out, soon after, that there was supposed to be a ghost of a man dressed in a convict’s uniform (including broad black arrows), who had apparently drowned in a pond, and now glided across the common on dark nights, seemingly intent on committing a crime. The story was he had been in Putney Hospital and now local people spoke of his haunting the place from time to time. But even further back it seems the hospital was built on old plague burial grounds, where people who died of the ‘Pest’ in 1625 were taken out of London and buried, so the link between Putney Common, illness and death seemed to have a long, tragic and mysterious history. The place was green and spacious, but could also feel a bit eerie at night.

Anyway, by day there were nurses and sisters scurrying everywhere, being briskly busy in their starched, neat uniforms. It did strike me as ironic, momentarily, that I’d finally escaped the overly strict and pious regimes of home and convent in Ireland, only to end up with women wearing very similar outfits, albeit overseas and in a different context. However, I told myself, sternly, if I wobbled in my resolve, that I had battled to get here, and this was my own new adventure, so I was going to make it work, whatever I had to do – or wear. And no matter what anyone was like (they surely couldn’t be worse than Sister Margaret). A recent memory of fighting with my mother was still ringing in my ears, with her screaming, ‘You’re not going!’ and me shouting back, ‘Yes, I am, I am, I AM going to England. You can’t stop me!’ (accompanied by another walloping and loads of tears). We were like two cats in a bag, with my sisters and father needing to intervene before we drew blood.

My first few days in Putney went by in a blur: it was all a bit like going to boarding school (or so I imagined). First, I had to be fitted out for my uniform. On the ground floor of the nurses’ home, at the back of the main hospital, away from the road, there was a sewing room, with three middle-aged women stuck in it all day, sewing away happily at their Singer treadle machines. Lily, Gladys and Grace had to measure me up. They also worked out what each nurse needed individually, and then made it on the spot. It was a real home from home, for me, as I could imagine my mother being there, too, tape-measure round her neck, pins in her mouth, peering critically at their handiwork and ‘tutting’ at their sloppy stitches (‘Will you take a look at that – really!’). The women’s job was to actually make our uniforms, and then adjust them or re-use them, passing them on from nurse to nurse (definitely familiar ‘make-do-and-mend’ territory for me, especially reminiscent of the lean war years).

I was to be issued with three uniforms, so I would have one on, and one off in the hospital laundry, which was also on site, and one spare (as they always got dirty somehow). The dresses were pale-blue and white fine pinstriped, thick cotton, and down to our ankles nearly. We were also issued with seven white, starched aprons, one of which had to be pinned at the bib, at the front, and tied round the waist (I’m proud to say that mine was a tiny sixteen inches then). There were also starched collars and cuffs, which we had to keep absolutely spotless. Both aprons and cuffs had to be changed immediately they got mucky, which they obviously did on the ward, as we didn’t have plastic aprons or rubber gloves back then. Also, if we rolled up our sleeves to the elbows, we had to put on elasticated white cuffs to keep them up and smart.

Underneath the uniform we were to wear thick black Lyle stockings, which had to be darned immediately if you got a run or snag (we did the darning at night, ourselves). This was all finished off by black lace-up sensible shoes, which had to be buffed until they shone. There was an absolutely ‘no jewellery’ rule, except for a brooch-style Smiths watch that I pinned on my right apron breast. This was to be used for taking patients’ pulses. Also, definitely no make-up allowed, and our nails had to be inspected daily for cleanliness. Then hair had to be scrimped back tightly under our hats and any wayward hair (and mine was extremely wayward, like the rest of me) had to be pinned tightly into place. In fact, I’d cut off my beloved black plait, which reached nearly to my waist, in Ireland before I came, to my mother’s horror, so I had a newly manageable short style with a fringed bob.

Most importantly, our belts reflected our status: a virginal white belt for our first year, a royal blue one for our second and a serious black one for our third. This last belt had a special silver buckle which denoted we’d made it through, once we’d passed all our exams and had qualified – and survived. But what I really loved, most of all, were the outdoor capes. We had waist-length navy-blue woollen capes with a fabulous crimson lining, which we wore over our uniforms. It was a real Florence Nightingale touch and I felt wonderful in mine. They had red cross-over tapes to keep them in place – oh, I did feel like a proper nurse as I flounced along, my cape swishing in the wind. Very heroic, like something out of a film like Gone with the Wind.

But, horror of horrors, there were the hats. At first, making my hat correctly (which I had to most days) seemed like trying to climb a mountain like Everest (which wouldn’t be conquered until the next year, in 1953). We were given a fiercely starched square of white linen and we were taught by Sister Tutor (our lovely teacher, Angela Frobisher, who was kind, motherly and stocky), over and over, how to fold it into proper nurse’s attire. It seemed a total impossibility at first and I was all fingers and thumbs. I was half waiting for Sister Margaret’s ring to grind itself into my fumbling fingers or thump me in the temple, as I struggled to fold the blasted thing into a butterfly shape resembling a pukka Putney nurse’s hat. I had to fold it on my knee, and then pleat it, and it had to be pinned to my head, perfectly. The air would turn blue while I struggled, at first. In the third year, when we became staff nurses, we got two strings and a bow under our chins, as did the sisters, so the hats looked like little bonnets. The hats also changed in shape according to status: so staff nurses’ hats were different from Sister’s, which was different from Matron’s, whose was the most elegant and refined. We did look a sight, but I was secretly pleased and proud at finally being eligible to wear a trainee nurse’s hat at all.

The nurse’ home was at the north end of the hospital, and was three storeys high. We first years were on the middle level, with the second and third years on the top floor, and the doctors’ on call and sisters’ night duty sleeping rooms (separate, of course) on the ground floor. Our own bedrooms were small, cell-like but pleasant; clean, but very basic. I could see a large rambling lawn out of my window and, beyond it, Putney Common’s trees and bushes and local red-brick terraces. There was a single bed, with a wooden headboard, a tiny gas fire (no central heating then), an ottoman (storage chest), wardrobe, a little basin under the window and a small brown dressing table and mirror. I had two pairs of flowery winceyette pyjamas and a vest, which my mother insisted on me wearing to keep warm.

I had to learn a whole new routine. A maid knocked on the door at six thirty every morning, and I had to get straight up, spit spot, no messing. In the winter, it was tough to get up to no heating and in the dark. I had a quick wash at the basin, then it was on with all the uniform, and a clean apron (which crossed over at the back) every day. There were no tights then, so the Lyle stockings were held up with suspenders which hung from a suspender belt, which we wore over our knickers. When we lost our suspenders, we used buttons or pennies which we twisted in the tops to keep our stockings up. We were allowed silk as we got more senior, and tights (American Tan, of course) didn’t come in until the early 1960s – so thick, mendable stockings were the rule. In my pockets I always had to have a pen and a pair of scissors – and my only allowed adornment was my little pinned-on watch. When our clothes were dirty we put them outside the door, in a marked laundry box, and they were taken away and laundered and brought back crisply starched and ironed in a week. It all had to be absolutely perfect.

Then I had to make my bed, using ‘hospital corners’ at the ends with the sheets and blanket, folded over tightly like an envelope shape, to keep everything in. Then I had to tidy my room for daily ‘inspection’. There was no privacy at all, as Home Sister would suddenly burst in, unannounced, and if your room was not tidy, or the bed corners not made properly, she would rip off all the bedding and throw it on the floor and shout, ‘Do it again, nurse, not good enough!’ Or she would throw open my dressing-table drawers and, if things were not tickety-boo, tip the contents out onto the floor, and snap, ‘No, no, no, this will never do – now tidy it up, nurse. Jump to it.’ I was actually quite tidy by nature – my mother had trained me well – so I was pleased when Home Sister pronounced after a couple of weeks, ‘Tidiest drawers in the whole place, Powell. Well done.’ It was like one of those Carry On films, very Hattie Jacques. It was hilarious. After so many years with the nuns I felt there was nothing I couldn’t handle, although Home Sister was very scary at first.

On Sunday mornings we went to church. So it was up at seven, and then we would be trooping down the road together to mass. We had to put money in the collection, but because we were broke most of the time we’d put in our stocking buttons or anything else that came to hand, much to the Father’s disdain. Then we had to be in bed by ten o’clock at night and there was official ‘lights out’. It was a complete institution and there was no messing about it. It was certainly like my home all over again. In fact, the nurses’ home was like I imagined a strict boarding school would be like in the kind of Angela Brazil book that I had loved reading back home. I’d run away from the overly pious and unforgiving strictness of Ireland only to land in another fierce regime.

We earned ten pounds a month while we were training. Right from the beginning we needed to buy Woodbines from Bert the porter. I had learned to smoke surreptitiously at thirteen, and, sad to say, smoking had already become an essential part of my life, ironically for someone concerned about health. Of course, we didn’t make the connection between smoking and health back then, as doctors often recommended cigarettes to patients to relax them. It was seen as a sophisticated pastime and almost everybody did it, without thinking. Plus, I was always hungry and tired, so smoking was a way of quelling my appetite and exhaustion. Buying the Woodbines, which were fiercely strong, was a total secret, of course, but we knew when we got our wages the first person we paid was Bert – and at four old pennies for a packet of eight, it soon mounted up. Bert would keep a tab when we didn’t have any money, and we’d have to cough up (literally) once our wages came in. He would also get us the Merrydown cider that we liked to drink illicitly after lights out, to relax and have a giggle, so we could easily spend a third of our wages without even going out of the nurses’ home. Our daily food was served in the hospital dining room. It was cooked on site, and was very basic. It was always quite plentiful and hearty, but stodgy: pies, puddings, potatoes, lots of starch. I remember we were always starving, and always demolished what was on our plates.

In 1952, Putney took in about twenty new trainee nurses – mostly from Ireland, like me, but also from Holland, Germany, Hungary, Italy and England. There were strong unresolved post-war feelings and I’m sorry to say that racism abounded, unchecked. Matron, a small, intense woman called Miriam Sturgeon, said quite baldly to us that ‘I’ll take the Irish, because I need you, but I don’t have to take the coloureds.’ However, the Dutch would not sit down with the Germans, even if they were Jewish, and there was a hell of a lot of strife between them then, which I found quite bewildering at first. One of my first new trainee friends was a lovely Dutch girl called Hanse. She was nineteen and from Amsterdam, and she told me the most terrible story which explained her attitude towards the Germans. She said her family had been starving during the German occupation, and had had to beg, borrow or steal anything to eat. She had a twenty-year-old brother who would go out and forage for food, scavenging round the fields around Amsterdam or even dustbins. To disguise himself, he would put on one of Hanse’s dresses and a headscarf, and get on her sit-up-and-beg bike, and go and scrounge turnips from the fields for the family to eat.

Then one day he was actually stopped by a German soldier. The Nazi asked what ‘she’ was doing, then tried to rape Hanse’s brother, but when he discovered very quickly that ‘she’ was a boy, he shot him and left him in the gutter to die. As a consequence, Hanse would not sit down with the German nurses in the canteen, and hated being anywhere near them. She would stand up and eat, her back to the wall, and Sister would command, ‘Sit down, nurse,’ and Hanse would retort, saying, ‘No, Sister, I’m fine where I am.’ I’d be thinking, ‘Oh, sweet Jesus, she’s in for it,’ and I’d entreat her to sit down next to me. ‘I’m not sitting next to a verdammte Deutsche,’ she’d spit. I didn’t really understand the depth of her feelings or the reasons for them then at all. I was so naïve back then. But Hanse would say, ‘You know, Mary, the Germans killed us in Holland, just because we were hungry, so I’m not sitting down.’ Another Dutch girl, Christe Lemm, would say, ‘I’m also not sitting down next to those Germans. You can’t make me,’ and would stand staunchly next to Hanse. Infuriated by this insubordination, Sister would stride off and get Matron, telling her there was a war still going on with the prelim nurses; Matron would then march back in, alongside Sister, and snap at the Dutch protesters, ‘Have you no dignity, girls? Sit down.’ Unperturbed, Hanse would say, ‘Gott verdammt the lot of us.’ Matron would bark, ‘Well, you’ll all have to learn to rub along together. The war is over now.’ Indeed, on the wards she would not settle for anything else, despite Hanse’s and Christe’s painful feelings. We were told over and over we all had a job to do, and we had to get on and do it, regardless of any personal grudges or feelings. But the Dutch and the Germans were red rags to a bull, while the Irish were stuck in the middle with the English, for a change. For me, this was a real turn-up for the books.

My training as an SRN would take three years, with each year including three months of day duty, three months of night duty, and experience on specialist wards, such as tuberculosis (TB), which was rife at the time. I was also to do a three-month stint in theatre and I would have to do dreaded annual exams. For the first three months I was at school daily being trained, and then I ‘observed’ on the wards for a day a week. We were only unleashed on the wards, to do some basic or minor tasks with real patients, under the eagle-eyed gazes of staff nurses and sisters, after the first three months were completed satisfactorily.

Even then, once on the wards, a lot of my time was spent cleaning: swabbing, washing, scrubbing, wiping everything down scrupulously. There was an unrelenting fixation on cleanliness and disease prevention, so we disinfected and scrubbed everything in sight. It was second nature. One of my first jobs was cleaning a toilet, without a brush or rubber gloves, which was disgusting. I was crying all the time, and Sister snapped at me to ‘Stop blubbering and get on with it.’ I said, ‘My mother wouldn’t make me do this,’ and she said, ‘Well, tough, nurse. You’re not with your mother now, are you?’ My hands became raw from washing and scrubbing all the time, immersed in carbolic and disinfectant, but there was a zero tolerance to infection as little could be done, otherwise, to stop it spreading. We didn’t suffer from MRSA or C. Diff, which are the modern killers, but I’m convinced it’s because we were on our knees wiping down the beds, even the chair feet and bed wheels, cleaning taps, washing down walls, even light switches, door knobs and bed springs, night and day.

Men and women were segregated into separate wards back then, and there were two main categories: medical (which was general and covered lots of things) and surgical. Each long, rectangular ward had up to thirty patients each, in beds down the sides, with the nurse’s table at the double door end. There was usually a table for mobile patients to eat at down the middle of the room. The floors were wooden, and scrubbed constantly. There was a little side kitchen, where the nurses could make tea and toast, or squash, or fill vases and jugs with water. Also, there were balconies with iron railings outside the windows, and ‘isolation’ patients would be pushed out there in their beds to get fresh air (in which there was a great curative belief) during the day. There were a few side rooms for extremely ill or even private paying patients. Then, off the ward, there was the huge sluice, a big tiled room with huge sinks, for the metal bedpans and men’s glass wee bottles to be washed and disinfected in. We also did diabetic urine testing there.

The women’s medical ward, Corry, had patients in together with all sorts of different conditions from broken femurs with patients strung up on huge metal traction frames, to appendectomies, tonsillectomies (which were popular then), stomach ulcers and even women being treated for failed abortions. I was really amazed to see these poor women, of all ages, both married and single (which was shocking then), in with everyone else. Sister would ‘tut tut’ all the time, showing she did not approve of them, and they could be ostracised. Some of them came in in a terrible state, it was so cruel to see, with metal back-street abortion implements still stuck in them. But they got no kind words from Sister, no arm round the shoulder: she disapproved and she didn’t mind showing it. They’d be given Ergometrine, a drug to put them in labour, and they suffered dreadfully, poor things.

Then we would be told to swab the women down with Dettol, and we’d have to shave them ‘down there’. I’d never seen anything like this at all. The poor, bleak women would be rolled away to have a ‘scrape’ in theatre and then shoved back out by a very snooty Sister, as soon as she could discharge them. Then their ‘incomplete abortions’ would be lined up in metal bowls in the sluice for doctor to inspect. I was horrified. I’d see something baby-shaped, lying amid large liver-like clots of blood. She made the poor women feel very guilty about wasting her time and effort, and the Health Service money. It was a very bad business, a real eye-opener, and it made me feel very wary about getting pregnant, I can tell you.

The men’s surgical ward, Lancaster, could be equally as grim. Among the broken legs and car smashes were the hernias, appendectomies and the constipated men (‘who couldn’t go’). The men’s Lancaster Medical Ward was next door, and they had those ‘incurable patients’ with ‘growths’ (what we would now call cancer). It seemed so undignified and unnecessary to me for simple cases to be next to fatal ones. Then, if a man had to be shaved ‘down there’, I learned to beg Percy the porter to come and do it with a wet razor. Imagine my horror at being asked to exfoliate (yes, standard practice in disease prevention or pre-operative) a man’s privates, when, as an innocent seventeen-year-old, I’d never seen a boy naked at all. But there were times, during those first months, when I had to do it all alone, and I was a quivering wreck, hoping and praying to God that my hand wouldn’t slip at the wrong moment, and in the wrong place (I could hear Sister Margaret shouting at me that I was a ‘clumsy oaf and a silly girl’, which made it all so much worse).

So for the first three months in training school, being taught by Sister Tutor, I sat and took copious notes and absorbed as much knowledge as I could. It was all anatomy, physiology, hygiene and everything else thrown in. We had a large school room with a pink rubber woman dummy called Araminta that we had to practise all sorts of unspeakable things on. The walls were lined with shelves with things like a twenty-foot tapeworm suspended in formaldehyde, or miscarried babies in bottles. It could be a bit gruesome. But I soon got used to it, as I soon got used to everything else about hospital life. I can honestly say these months were spent swimming in blood, poo, vomit, wee and absolutely everything else that comes out of the body: it was a real baptism of bodily fluids.