Title
Maternity and Midwives
Subject
Public Health
Description
An audio clip featuring different speakers talking about maternity provision in Leicester in the 1930s.
Source
EMOHA
Publisher
EMOHA
Rights
You may use this item in accordance with the licence https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/
Language
English
Duration
2 min 19 sec
Transcription
There are also two midwifery hospitals in Leicester, which were: one belonged to the municipal and the other one was a partially endowed, but virtually, in inverted commas, private maternity hospital, and then those hospitals, in fact, continued until nationalisation of the health service in 1948, and there was at the maternity hospitals, an assessment of means to see whether one could pay something towards the upkeep, and there were also many empty beds.
It cost money to go in hospital then. Might have only, I think, really it was a Guinea (£1.05) then to go into hospital and be looked after. But then you see, if you've got a whole lot of children, who's going to mind the children while you're in hospital? And they don't, they never liked the idea. They like the idea of being at home in with the family so that when the baby was born, everything was happy and everything would go straightforward. But they had a lot of faith in the midwife, of course. Looking after the children, I mean, they saved from one baby to the next. Everything was usually in a drawer and beautifully clean, although perhaps we wouldn't have anywhere to put the baby, only in a box or a drawer, when the baby was born. But everything was always beautiful and clean. And yet for the new baby, everything was saved from the one before. This is how they went on.
But these old midwives told me, now, when you go be quite sure you don't dirty the woman's night dress because probably that's the only one she's got. And try not to dirty the sheets, cause probably they're the only pair of sheets, or she's got a pair that she borrowed. We were trained also, when we got to the house, you got a chair and you took it away from the wall and you took your own newspaper with it. You put the newspaper on the chair and you took your coat off and you folded it with the outside outside and put it on the chair, and you put your hat on top of that. That was routine so that you wouldn't come in contact with any of the bugs.
I left the City General to take my midwifery at the old Bond Street Hospital and I worked from there on the district. This was part of my training as a midwife. Of course, it was mostly night work when we did our midwifery, it didn't matter whether it was night or day. If we were taking our cases, we had to be up, see, even in the night. And of course, they'd be getting the trams, the tram lines mended and everything. We had to put up with all the road works, and we walked everywhere.
It cost money to go in hospital then. Might have only, I think, really it was a Guinea (£1.05) then to go into hospital and be looked after. But then you see, if you've got a whole lot of children, who's going to mind the children while you're in hospital? And they don't, they never liked the idea. They like the idea of being at home in with the family so that when the baby was born, everything was happy and everything would go straightforward. But they had a lot of faith in the midwife, of course. Looking after the children, I mean, they saved from one baby to the next. Everything was usually in a drawer and beautifully clean, although perhaps we wouldn't have anywhere to put the baby, only in a box or a drawer, when the baby was born. But everything was always beautiful and clean. And yet for the new baby, everything was saved from the one before. This is how they went on.
But these old midwives told me, now, when you go be quite sure you don't dirty the woman's night dress because probably that's the only one she's got. And try not to dirty the sheets, cause probably they're the only pair of sheets, or she's got a pair that she borrowed. We were trained also, when we got to the house, you got a chair and you took it away from the wall and you took your own newspaper with it. You put the newspaper on the chair and you took your coat off and you folded it with the outside outside and put it on the chair, and you put your hat on top of that. That was routine so that you wouldn't come in contact with any of the bugs.
I left the City General to take my midwifery at the old Bond Street Hospital and I worked from there on the district. This was part of my training as a midwife. Of course, it was mostly night work when we did our midwifery, it didn't matter whether it was night or day. If we were taking our cases, we had to be up, see, even in the night. And of course, they'd be getting the trams, the tram lines mended and everything. We had to put up with all the road works, and we walked everywhere.
Interviewer
Various
Interviewee
Various
Location
Various
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