Читать книгу Lost Voices of the Edwardians: 1901–1910 in Their Own Words - Max Arthur, Max Arthur - Страница 13

When my brother was three days old, my mother had milk fever. That's when a baby can't suck the milk from the mother and the milk goes to the brain where it causes something like meningitis. It came from worry, anxiety and unemployment. My mother was unstable. She didn't know what she was doing. She smacked my brother's bottom till it was blue, and he kept crying. The more he cried, the more she smacked him, and she couldn't feed him because we hadn't any milk. My father went to the Board of Guardians in Dalston. They sent a doctor to the house and the doctor made an order that my mother should be taken to Homerton Infirmary. So my mother was taken away with my brother strapped to her side on a stretcher. At the same time, a nurse carried my youngest sister downstairs because she was found to have double pneumonia. That left the rest of us with my father.