+ The Strengths and Limitations of Oral History

In the words of Samuel Johnson in 1773, “all history was at first oral”. Originally, history did not involve pen and paper, but a roaring fire and family tales. For example, the Ancient Greek myths and the legend of King Arthur are believed to have originated from oral tradition.{5} Additionally, Thucydides and Samuel Johnson both used eyewitness accounts of events in their histories. This practice was overshadowed by a long period of western historiography based mostly on written sources, until the twentieth century when technological innovations led historians to record oral histories using tape recorders.

Oral history does not present a ‘top-bottom’ historical narrative given that it can give any person a voice, particularly those from marginalized groups which might otherwise be neglected in the historical record. This thus bestows oral history with the power to democratize historical study. Furthermore, oral history gives wonderful insight into an interviewee’s character, unlike most written sources, and can even reveal subtleties in dialect or terminology that are no longer existent.

It must be noted, however, that in this article, excerpts from written transcripts are used instead of the original audio from the oral histories. This inevitably removes all the emotion and intonation initially communicated by the original speaker, which may distort the message which they aimed to convey. Additionally, the full interviews are not presented in this article: only excerpts. This thus removes the words from their original context. Finally, as is expected, interviewees may mis-remember events or accidentally misspeak. This is certainly a common occurrence in the ‘Medicine in Worcester’ collection. In the oral histories, interviewees cast their minds back from 2001 to as far as the 1930s, which inevitably led to some confusion over dates, places and names. Also, there are sometimes gaps in the oral history transcripts where the audio is incomprehensible, or where there is an unexpected break in the tape. These interruptions can often arrive at rather crucial moments in the interviews.

Yet, it is these imperfections which make oral history so important. It is truly one of the best ways to capture a moment in time, flaws included. Unlike immaculate government documents or case law, for instance, oral history provides a raw form of history. Instead of feeling frustrated towards an interviewee for forgetting something, it is important to ask why they forgot it. Was it unimportant at the time? One story from the collection particularly highlights this. A Sister remembered working in the Ronkswood Branch of Worcester Royal Infirmary in 1959 when a black man was to be appointed as a registrar on her ward:

“[A gynae consultant] came round one day because he was going to employ a new registrar and he’d been interviewing and the one that he thought was the best was actually a very tall, a very black young man. Er, he assured us that his skills were quite good, but he wasn’t quite sure how the ladies down in the gynae and the obs department would take having a black man examining them, because we didn’t get many black men in Worcester in those days. So, I gather he did a quick survey around the wards and the general opinion was if was good at his work they didn’t mind what colour he was. So, this young man, I forget his name, was employed and he was quite competent.” - R.2001.001.0032

The fact that the interviewee forgot the man’s name is perhaps quite significant. Generally, interviewees in the collection tended to remember the names of doctors and consultants, so why didn’t the interviewee remember the registrar’s name? Was it because his race meant that he was treated as an outsider on the ward? This is linked to one truly frustrating limitation of the 2001 collection: the interviewees were mostly British and white. As a result, the Birthing Stories project aims to eventually conduct more interviews with people from a wider range of cultural and ethnic backgrounds.

+ Hospitals In Worcester

In the oral history collection, there are three main Worcester hospitals which are mentioned for births in the twentieth century: Worcester Royal Infirmary (both the Castle Street Branch and the Ronkswood Branch), Shrub Hill Hospital (a former workhouse and smaller hospital), and South Bank Hospital (a private hospital).

Worcester Royal Infirmary, which opened on Castle Street in 1771, is the hospital most frequently mentioned in the oral histories. The Ronkswood Branch was opened in the Second World War for convalescing soldiers but was used after the war to cope with an increased number of patients in Worcester due to the baby boom. As a result, in September 1952, a maternity department of 49 beds (housed in four existing wards), and an ante-natal clinic and classroom were opened at the Ronkswood Branch. The department contained both normal and abnormal midwifery, as well as General Practitioner midwifery later on (this was housed in a separate unit). Subsequently, no midwifery was carried out at Castle Street, and Worcester Royal Infirmary closed its doors in 2001.

The Castle Street Branch thus had a maternity department until around the mid-twentieth century when units began to be transferred to Ronkswood. One interviewee recounted how the Castle Street Branch was laid out in the 1930s:

“We had the medical and accident ward, Rushout ward as it was then on the ground floor then above that was Ganderton, then the women’s ward Wheeley Lea, and in the middle was a private block and the maternity block, and beyond that an extension was by the same sister er private and ear nose and throat, then there was an old cottage block, down in the garden past the mortuary, and on the other side of the block there it was out patients and a bit of x-ray department there, above that was the children’s ward which was Bonaker ward and above that was erm Garlick ward which was women’s medical” - R.2001.001.0028

Interestingly, a surgeon stated that in around 1947, the Castle Street Branch had few gynaecological beds and midwifes:

“I think we had 6 gynaecological beds, and as many midwifes as the whole of Worcester. And south bank was the private hospital, in those days a very primitive affair indeed, but that was all they had in Worcester.” - R.2001.001.0018

It is therefore not a surprise that there was not enough room to accommodate patients after the Second World War. As a result, Ronkswood started to provide hospital services, primarily serving as a maternity unit. A GP remembered performing the first delivery at the new Ronkswood maternity unit. At this point, there were no consultants at Ronkswood:

“A new maternity unity, general practitioner maternity unit opened at Ronkswood and Sister [X] was the sister in charge of that, and she was very keen that I should deliver the first baby there [laugh] and it was a bit of a put up job. We got a girl in and I actually started her off interrupted the membrane very early in the first morning the blooming places was open. And I thought she would be fine, but [?] me she needed a forceps delivery and I had to do a forceps delivery. The first patient to be delivered in the new Ronkswood unit was a forceps delivery. But of course, this is rather technical. In those days we didn’t have an anaesthetist; I did it with a what’s it called, I did it with a dental block and that worked very well.” - R.2001.001.0020

Gradually, consultants started to arrive during the mid-1950s, allowing for more complex procedures, such as caesareans, to take place:

“Chalmers came as the first gynaecologist. And so for a long time there was only one gynaecologist, of a new school you might say, and then the infirmary gave way in fact the had to just um bend, and we’d out patients at the infirmary, and a share of our patients base […] And we began to settle down, into the uh, germ you might say what we are today, that’s to say the infirmary began to, deal with us, share the, duties, of emergencies and medicines, and surgery […] by 1955, looking ahead for a few years, the two hospitals working in tandem.” - R.2001.001.0018

In 1963, the Worcester Royal Infirmary Education Department was transferred to Ronkswood. A senior midwife enjoyed training obstetric nurses there:

“I went up to Ronkswood three days a week […] I can honestly say it was the, happiest time of my nursing career. I had an office overlooking the Cathedral […] and it was a joy, to, teach and train those young obstetric nurses, they looked upon me as a mother, and confided in me, when perhaps they couldn’t confide in their mother” - R.2001.001.0038

Some were not so fond of Ronkswood. One father from Worcester remembered when his children were born there, and how the building was quite primitive:

“The building itself was absolutely frightening there was an asbestos roof on it the they were huts that were built just after the no during the first err second world war […] so it’s been an awful long time in in in very poor surroundings” - R.2001.001.0044

Shrub Hill Hospital, a workhouse from 1794, was opened for hospital services from 1926 until 1978. From 1948, with the introduction of the NHS, it was used primarily as a maternity hospital. In the late 1940s, at the young age of 26, Dorothy A. Higgins was put in charge of a new maternity unit there. With “about twenty beds on the unit” and lots of stairs, the work was very tiring:

“It had stone steps and it was on three floors and, erm the bottom floor, there was a delivery room in case you had someone who couldn’t get up the stairs! There was a bathroom and there was a post-natal ward down there. And, then on the next floor was the kitchen and then another bathroom and the nursery and Sisters’ office, sterilising room- the milk room. And, on the top floor was a labour ward and more post-natal beds. Patients were kept in bed for seven days, so if we had to move them at any time there was a cry went out for Pickfords. And, we had canvas stretchers and we use to have to carry them up and down these stone steps. It was hard work – you had to be tough! And, we also had to carry the babies up and down – the babies were kept in the nursery, they weren’t kept with the mothers in those days. And, so, every four hours they got carried upstairs to go to their mothers for feeding.” - R.2001.001.0046

Helen Shirley Brice, who gave birth at Shrub Hill in the 1960s, claimed that unlike Ronkswood, Shrub Hill was less ‘specialized’ and performed lower risk deliveries:

“[Shrub Hill] was a very old place as you can imagine because years ago it was used as a workhouse and people used to laugh when we’d say we’re going to have our babies at Shrub Hill because they instantly thought of it as a workhouse. But I must admit it was very nice in there and comfortable and I had no problems about having [my daughter] born there […] Ronkswood Hospital was more specialized in, er, trauma, whereas Shrub Hill was just a normal hospital.” - R.2001.001.0014

South Bank Hospital was a private hospital housed in a nineteenth-century building, and is still in operation today. Eileen Roberts gave birth there in the 1960s:

“South Bank it was very old, there was brown lino on the floor, the rooms were huge, very workhouse type furnished, not the sort of thing which I remember cost 70 pounds for the week which doesn’t sound a lot today but in 1960 it was a great deal of money […] It was three times my husband’s salary […] it had erm, a very old lift with wrought iron huge wrought iron things with brown lino on the floor” - R.2001.001.0042

Hopefully, this overview of the three main Worcester hospitals available to expectant mothers in the mid to late twentieth century will bring the following discussion of birth and obstetrics to life.

+ Pregnancy In Worcester

As previously mentioned, the medicalization of obstetrics and birth in the twentieth century meant that pregnancy was increasingly governed by midwives’ or doctors’ appointments. Yet, pregnancy was still socially influenced. For example, social norms regarding illegitimacy, gender roles, and employment all directly influenced a mother’s decisions, sometimes with tragic results. On the one hand, medical innovations did mean that mothers were in contact more with healthcare professionals. For instance, Helen Shirley Brice remembers having frequent doctors’ appointments throughout her pregnancy in the early 1960s:

“I was four months, I suppose, four, five, six, once every three weeks I suppose or something like that and as you get nearer it was once a week. Sort of, erm, at eight months, about eight months it was once a week. But up till then it was two to three weeks, depending on yourself”- R.2001.001.0014

Interestingly, this does not vary much from today, with pregnant women typically having check-ups every two or three weeks. Yet, the tests and scans available in the twentieth century were not as advanced. For instance, ultrasound scans for pregnancy were not used widely in Europe until the late 1960s.{6} Helen reflected on the impact of the lack of tests in the 1960s:

“[HSB] We never had any special tests to find out if there’s Downs Syndrome around, and any other things that could go wrong. And er, it’s changed a lot, I mean er, so erm, I suppose it’s all for the best really, but when me and my friends and my relations were having babies, we never had any of this [..] [SP] Do you know of anybody who had problems whilst you were having children? [HSB] Oh I knew two or three people who had miscarriages and one lady I knew from our church who had a miscarriage, and that was very sad because the baby was born, you know, sort of nine months and it was like born […] Dead, yes.” - R.2001.001.0014

In mainstream culture, pregnancy is quite often depicted as happy, perfect, and simple, with expectant mothers gliding effortlessly through the process.{7} The reality is that, more often than not, this is not the case: sickness, anxiety and even miscarriage are just a few of the realities that are usually ignored in the media despite their commonality. For instance, about 1 in 8 pregnancies end in miscarriage. One interviewee had a miscarriage in 1961, three months into her pregnancy, and was treated at the Ronkswood Branch:

“I er had lost it by the time I got to hospital but I had to go in to have what they had a called it a dear something scrape… but um… yeah that’s right, I didn’t stay in very long then… that’s all I can remember to tell you (chuckles) […] dunno what caused it. I said to my doctor afterwards, “Do you know what happened?” He said, “Just say ‘God knows best.’” That’s all he said to me so I thought, “Must have been something wrong with it.” Might have been a girl ‘cause I had all boys you see so (chuckles) could have been a girl, don’t know” - R.2001.001.0034

Here, the doctor’s Christian application of medicine suggests that pregnancy was still socially influenced during this period. Indeed, in Worcester, community groups and classes were important for expectant mothers. For example, Helen Shirley Brice attended keep-fit classes in the early 1960s, with limited hospital appointments:

“Well I guessed I was pregnant but I didn’t get to the doctors until I was nearly four months, and he said I was in very good health and from there, er, I went and visited him periodically and eventually I was sent to erm, the keep fit classes, and I don’t think I went into hospital at all” - R.2001.001.0014

Furthermore, gender norms dictated that women would often not return to work after having children, as Helen argued:

“Naturally in those days if you didn’t have a proper professional job, usually once you started having your children you just stayed at home and brought the children up because even then it was very expensive to have a nanny or put the children into care, so most people just stayed at home and looked after their children.”- R.2001.001.0014

This view aligns with one interviewee’s memories of being a midwife in the 1950s:

“In those days if any nurse dared to get married, oh heaven forbid, even to have, get pregnant they were shown the door very rapidly, you were not allowed to, to er, indulge in that sort of thing, it was just not the done thing, you were supposed to be one of these wonderful vocations where you were supposed to have no life other than your nursing career.”- R.2001.001.0032

It seems that in this period, raising children and being employed were not harmonious lifestyles. For instance, one pregnant midwife was working tough night shifts at the Ronkswood Branch in 1964:

“Now that was a very, very cold winter. Dreadful, erm, and we had a lot of elderly patients and they were dying like flies because of the cold. Coming in hypothermic or they just sort of given up, the death rate seemed to go up, I don’t know whether it did in actual fact but it seemed to me that practically every night somebody was dying and I used to get home in the morning feeling quite depressed, erm. I was on, I went on to general night duty then because I couldn’t stand at the table a lot, because I was what six months pregnant” - R.2001.001.0032

Importantly, this extract blurs the divide between healthcare professionals and patients, and thus the split between the medical and social spheres. Another story which achieves this is a particularly tragic one. A midwife tells the story of a night nurse (whom she shared a flat with) in the Castle Street Branch in around the 1930s:

“The top four beds [of the Cottage] were for four venereal gonococcal patients, male, and the bottom four beds were for, female gonococcal venereal patients. This girl was a night nurse. I didn’t know she was pregnant, I shared a room with her, in Britannia Square we had to walk to the hospital every day to go on duty and back again. This unfortunate girl was on night duty in Rushout ward, a male ward, she pulled the door down in her agony, she had a terrific injury, erm, in the birth canal, she, strangled the baby with, full-term baby, with the cord, she put it in her night nurse’s suitcase, and walked back to Britannia, Square, and put the baby and her suitcase in my wardrobe ‘cause I was away for two days. I can honestly say I did not know she was pregnant […] The baby was fathered by a gonococcal patient in the Cottage, and the girl was sent back, to the Welsh village where she came from where she died, from gonococcal endocarditis.”- R.2001.001.0038

Rather unexpectedly, some argue that the stigma of illegitimacy was even more potent in the twentieth century than in the past. Historian Nadja Durbach asserts that the expansion of the benefits system in the early twentieth century meant that birth certificates became essential documents.{8} This meant that the details of a birth became public – including whether or not the child was legitimate. Instances such as these exemplify the need to view the twentieth century not as a period of consistent progress.

One major development was the legalisation of abortion in the UK through the NHS with the 1967 Act of Abortion. The Birthing Stories project aims to look at difficult cultural and religious approaches to pregnancy and birth. One example of this in the oral history collection is when a doctor was working at a Worcester practice from 1949. The practice was growing, so they employed another practitioner, who was Polish and Roman Catholic:

“When [the practitioner] joined us, he was Polish and Roman Catholic, and he had almost all the Roman Catholic community, particularly the foreign community which was quite a big Polish and Italian community in Worcester available at the time were patients of his. And I very much was concerned, and I talked to our partners about this, that if we saw his patients we must be very careful; if they are Roman Catholic not to be tactless about the question of contraception and above all termination of pregnancy.” - R.2001.001.0020

The above oral history excerpts therefore demonstrate the centrality of socio-cultural factors in influencing a woman’s pregnancy, whether it be gender norms, religion, or social stigmas. For this reason, the Birthing Stories project has both a social and medical emphasis, aiming to help women feel both medically informed and emotionally empowered within their own birthing choices. When future oral histories with a more diverse range of interviewees are hopefully recorded within the Birthing Stories project, more of an insight will be gained into the ways that pregnancy is influenced by religious and cultural traditions amongst people of different nationalities and ethnicities.

+ Birth In Worcester

The overlap of the social and medical emphasis of birth is particularly evident in the twentieth century, with a significant proportion of home births still taking place until the end of the century. Nearly 80% of births in England and Wales were home births in 1930, in comparison to around 2% by 1980.{9} One interviewee had all her children at home in Worcester, with her first child born in 1958. Her doctor seemed to be quite relaxed about her home birth:

“Even if-after I’d had the miscarriage I had to go and see a doctor up at Ronkswood and check me over and… that was when I was having the next one I think and I said um, “I’d like to have this one at home if I may?” And er he said, “Well if… that what you’d like,” he said, “I’m sure it’ll be alright.” So, I had the next one with no problem you see so… and the next one after that”- R.2001.001.0034

For some women, home births could be empowering and comforting. During her fourth birth, which was at home, Helen Shirley Brice enjoyed being surrounded by her family:

“All three of [my children] ran into the bedroom excited to see their new baby brother and a lovely experience and I think this is one of the lovely things about having a baby at home because you’re amidst the whole family and again my husband was able to be at the birth of [my son].” - R.2001.001.0014

Indeed, husbands were not encouraged to being present for hospital births until the 1970s.{10} One can thus see why home births were sometimes preferred by women during this period. Additionally, women often liked giving birth in familiar surroundings. This was certainly true for Eileen Roberts, who gave birth at home in around 1967 and told the following amusing story:

“I knew I was going to have the baby next morning so I got up in the middle of the night and I did a bit of housework and sat down and I did a bit of tidying round I put the Christmas tree right, I busied myself through the night which made the time go […] Then the midwife came, and I remember trying to think “I think I have time to make steak and kidney pie” […] And it was all cooking and she arrived... she left at ten past ten, in the morning, and at twenty past ten I knew I was going to have this baby fairly quickly so at twenty past ten I went upstairs she arrived five minutes later and our third child [..] was born at twenty to eleven.” - R.2001.001.0042

Home births were not always this straightforward, however. Firstly, home births meant that mothers often had to care for their new-born with limited help, as there was no statutory paternity leave until 2003. Eileen commented that after giving birth in the mid-1960s, she depended on friends and neighbours for help:

“I haven’t got a family being an only one and no mother or father, and no maternity leave for fathers in those days my husband had to go to work […] But I had very good friends who came and took the washing, and neighbours who were very good, but basically without those I really would have been in a mess.” - R.2001.001.0042

Some women were also frightened to give birth at home with limited medical assistance. Until the 1970s, if an upcoming birth was deemed low risk, a home birth would usually be encouraged. Eileen first became pregnant in the 1960s and did not want to give birth at home, so paid to give birth privately at South Bank Hospital:

“You weren’t allowed to go into hospital to have your first child if there were no problems [..] I was rather concerned about this because my mother had lost two babies before I survived. Her first one was born dead, I think because the cord strangled it the second one she lost at six months, and then I was born so I was rather concerned lest this would happen to me so I decided although it cost us a lot of money to go and have my baby at South Bank, privately.”- R.2001.001.0042

Eileen’s concern was not without reason. Home births often occurred with only the basic equipment, as Dorothy A. Higgins found out when she gave birth at home in the early 1950s:

“We didn’t have am electric light in those days, and I had her as I said at home and it was just a gas light on the side of the wall […]I had to have three stitches you know they, they had instruments and that, they had to boil ‘em here on the gas stove, proper primitive, on the gas stove”-R.2001.001.0046

Furthermore, telephones were not always at hand, meaning that if something went wrong during the birth, it could take a long time to fetch help:

“Just the nurse [was present], and if she thought that she needed the doctor, my husband would have had to have phoned, and unfortunately in those days we didn’t have a phone in the house, so he’d have had to walk about 200 yards to the telephone box to phone the doctor, and then the doctor would come to us, because midwives didn’t carry phones around” - R.2001.001.0014

One story particularly reveals the risks of home births during this period. Helen had her fourth child at home, but her midwife was only recently qualified, causing Helen to suffer a haemorrhage:

“I said to [the midwife] “have you got on your notes” I don’t know why I thought about this “that I had a prolapse when I had Susan” so she said “Oh, thank you for telling me” she said “now I know what to do” and of course when I started pushing, she obviously lifted the skin and that helped and [my son] was born, and I can honestly say by then I’d run out of gas and air so he was really, I really gave birth to him as a natural birth without any gas and air this time. And of course she was surprised by what a big baby he was, as well, and through that procedure of pushing and not getting anywhere, I had a haemorrhage, and of course she said to me “you’ve got a haemorrhage” so I said “well what you going to do about it?” well she said “I’ll give you a couple of injections” […] she said “If you lie in bed with your legs tightly crossed and don’t move” she says “I’ll get the doctor to come and see you as soon as he can” and both my husband and I were frightened to death in case my haemorrhage continued flowing” - R.2001.001.0014

In situations such as these, a Worcester ‘flying squad’ would be sent out, as Dr David Lees remembered:

“I remember as a house man erm, (laughs) having to go out on the flying squad, and you had to phone the consultant who was on call […] it took him rather longer to get to you. You had to get all the equipment out at the front entrance of the obstetric unit. There was no dedicated ambulance or van even, it all had to go into the boot of the consultant’s car […] All the obstetric instruments, sterilised instruments, and erm the blood and fluids that were needed for intravenous use. Giving sets, the lot. So you knew this was going to take you half an hour to get to the patient and if you were on the other end and a woman was bleeding or she had a retained placenta or something you were absolutely terrified.”- R.2001.001.0019

Contrastingly, studies from the 1980s onwards concluded that a home birth could be safe for a woman with a low risk birth.{11} It must, however, be pointed out that the definition of ‘low risk’ became more restrictive as new knowledge was harnessed. Giving birth at home in the mid-twentieth century was very different, therefore, to the end of the century, with improved communications, medical knowledge, and scans to mitigate risk. In other words, a teleological approach cannot be used with modern home birth studies.

During this period, births in hospitals tended to be for higher risk births. For example, with her second child, Helen was sent to the Ronkswood Branch to be induced, given that her baby was three weeks overdue:

“[Mums] had to put our legs up on the hammocks as we call it, our waters get broken and within about four hours [my son] was born […] I mean this is to start a baby off because it’s like a pully on the side and your legs apart and they break your water.” - R.2001.001.0014

The twentieth century was a period of dramatic change in medical birth practices, which has been associated with a decreased maternal mortality rate during this period.{12} Firstly, hygiene standards were improved. A GP recounted working in maternity units in 1950s Worcester, where doctors did not wear gloves, and bandages were washed and re-used:

“You never wore gloves, you didn’t have gloves there was no such thing as gloves and I must say when we had to wear gloves I didn’t like it, I didn’t, I felt I could handle the case much better without gloves […] In hospital never threw away a bandage, I mean certainly if it was very bad of course you had to throw it away but it would be washed […] Throw away things, the throwaway society hadn’t come.” - R.2001.001.0012

From about the 1960s, this ‘throwaway society’ arrived and disposables were used in medicine. Dorothy reflected on the changes in midwifery over the course of her career (from her initial training in the 1940s until her refresher course 22 years later). She remembered the introduction of the drug pethidine for pain relief during childbirth, which was a used widely.{13}

“Erm, and the medicines were different, there were none of the medicines that were the same, except for one which we used to use, a week, but I mean pethidine we didn’t use generally, now it’s a common drug in childbirth […] I know people used to say “How you getting on?” I’d say, “If the babies didn’t come out at the same place, I’d be all at sea.”” - R.2001.001.0046

Furthermore, one Sister at the Castle Street Branch saw the introduction of the Ventouse extraction, which was used regularly from the late 1950s to help with foetal distress or a prolonged second stage of labour, for instance.{14}

“[Mr Chalmers] started when I was there, using er, equipment which was called the Ventouse, V-E-N-T-O-U-S-E, Ventouse and it was like a suction cup, which was put on the baby’s head, if a woman got stuck in labour we could put this suction cup on the baby’s head and as she pushed, he pulled […] These babies would be born with a sort of, a large pimple on their heads, which alarmed the mothers rather but we assured them it would go down and it did literally within an hour or two, this sort of bulge had gone, but I believe he did write up, he did some sort of research programme on this and it was written up in one of the British Medical Journals and on the strength of this he would go off to all sorts of foreign parts for, to give lectures”- R.2001.001.0032

Mr Chalmers did indeed write several articles on the Ventouse extractor, one of which has been referenced in this article. One of the biggest changes in birth and obstetrics was the discovery of blood groups in the early twentieth century. This led to the performance of blood transfusions, particularly when a woman was losing too much blood whilst giving birth. A senior haematologist at Worcester Royal Infirmary talked about the benefits of blood transfusion in 1958:

“They used to have this flying squad [the pathologist] was interested in blood, he instigated this blood transfusion and they would take the blood to the house and transfuse the lady, once the lady or the doctor, midwife said “oh gosh this girl’s bleeding to death” the, the lab, the erm, blood transfusion staff would come to the house, and they’d transfuse this girl and all the rest of it and be fine by the morning and one tale was they came out of the house one day and all the neighbours had gathered round, and as they came out they gave them a round of applause, erm I mean for saving this girl’s life” - R.2001.001.0010

Dorothy’s comment that “If the babies didn’t come out at the same place, I’d be all at sea” seems to illustrate the drastic changes that took place in birth and obstetrics during this period. Indeed, only a handful of the changes made have been discussed in this section.{15} In her 1993 book, ‘Pregnancy: The Inside Story’, Joan Raphael-Leff stated that “There is irony in exploring the emotional processes of child bearing at this point in time, when the facts of life are changing more rapidly than our unconscious capacity to keep abreast of them”.{16} This seems to perfectly summarize twentieth century birth and obstetrics. New discoveries were constantly being made which in turn influenced women’s personal birthing choices, again revealing the overlap of medicine and emotion. Most importantly, the oral histories demonstrate that the assumption that home births were social affairs and hospital births were medical ones is entirely unfounded, given that women had emotional reasons for preferring one or the other.

+ Post-Natal Care in Worcester

“Birth is an uncoupling. To some it is a welcome release…to others a wrench, a loss”.{17} For a woman, the post-natal stage can be just as delicate as the birth, especially from an emotional perspective. As is evident in the oral histories, both physical and mental care was provided for new mothers, ranging from immediately after the birth, to local baby clinics. After giving birth, women would spend a long period (usually 10 days) in hospital, with strict rules on visitors. One interviewee found being in hospital for a long time very important to her recovery:

“Years ago I don’t think they er, they could go and visit children because of upsetting them […] nowadays well, if, if there’s a ba, a baby born seems as though all the relations have got to go and have a look at it whereas it wasn’t allowed in those days, at all […] they’re keep ‘em in for a night or something like that but in those days you stopped in for about ten days, and erm, erm, I can’t see why they can’t wait to get them home before they’ve gotta see them, without the filling the ward, I mean everybody colds and coughs and it’s all going into the ward isn’t it, which don’t seem right to me, you know when they talk about these babies being snatched, well if they didn’t have so many visitors they wouldn’t be able to do it, would they?” - R.2001.001.0039

Alternatively, Helen Shirley Brice believed that as little time as possible should be spent in hospital in order to make the adjustment to home easier:

“When I got home after ten days, and I think in [my daughter’s] little mind, because she was only fifteen months old, not seeing me for those ten, well ten days, she sort of, was a bit hesitant coming towards me when I got home with this new baby […] How births are given today, I think it’s a lot better perhaps in case there’s any complications, but and also, the mother’s get back home within a day or two so it’s not that long a period if they’ve got a little one waiting for you” - R.2001.001.0014

Until the later twentieth century, babies were not kept with their mothers in hospital. Mothers thus only saw their babies during feeding time and washing time, as one mother remembers at Shrub Hill:

“They used to bring him in when it was feeding time, hmm, and erm, then later on, after two or three days you had to go down and see them being washed, you know, and treated down there, but er, that was all, you didn’t have them all day, like nowadays they have a cot by the side of the bed”-R.2001.001.0039

As previously mentioned, husbands were not encouraged to be present for hospital births until the 1970s. Helen remembers the anxiety her husband felt whilst she was in hospital without him in the 1960s:

“[My husband] came with me to the hospital and made sure I was received by the nurses and they said to him “we’ll get in touch with you in the morning; because we don’t think the baby will be born much before then”. But like most husbands he obviously phoned the hospital to find out how I was, but the husbands didn’t have very much contact as they do today. I mean today he’d have stayed with me all through the labour, whereas, not then”

For reasons such as this, some women, such as Helen, preferred home births because they allowed for more family time after the birth. Furthermore, infectious diseases in hospitals occasionally put a mother and baby in danger: one male nurse remembered working on the TB ward at the Ronkswood Branch in the early 1960s:

“It was difficult to tell a mum who’d got a newborn baby that her baby’d got to be taken away from her ‘cause it was male and female wards y’see, and there was men at one end and ladies down the other and offices in the middle. And er, to tell ‘em that they were going to be there six months and couldn’t see their baby ‘cause you could not bring a baby anywhere near TB, it was virulent the TB for them y’see, and they would kill ‘em. Er, and so er, there was a lot of heartache for a lot of the patients.” - R.2001.001.0008

After the early post-natal stages, there were several support systems available to mothers and babies in Worcester. One mother had her baby weighed at a parish room on Bransford Road in the early 1950s (which could have been the Catholic Church of Our Lady Queen of Peace, opened in 1953), and collected rationed tins of milk, cod liver oil, and orange juice in Lowesmoor:

“Up at erm Bransford Road, there was a parish room and every Friday they used to have clinic as you might say for the babies, well I used to take [my baby] there as well. The first time I took her, they str, I had to take all her clothes off, and then they weighed her clothes you know, the napkin and vest and ma coat and goodness knows what, and then, er, it come to about twelve ounces or something like that, whatever she had on ten or twelve ounce like that, every time I went after, every time they weighed her, they deducted the weight of the clothes off you see, yeah. Used to take her up there, and before that you had to go to a place down in Lowesmoor, it’s still there, there’s some steps going up and you had to go and get your milk and or cod liver oil and orange juice” - R.2001.001.0039

Helen Shirley Brice walked from Warndon to Brickfields to go to a baby clinic in the 1960s:

“We used to have to walk all the way to Brickfields, which I would imagine a good mile, and er, no doubt it was good exercise for us, and see the nurse there and if you weren’t breastfeeding they sold you the tinned milk and encouraged you to have cod liver oil tablets. And also, at that particular time babies were encouraged to have orange juice or rosehip syrup, which now I think they don’t encourage that because of the teeth situation. Too much sweetness, but it was interesting but invariably met up with some of the parents who were in the hospital with you, and it was a bit of a social afternoon as well.” - R.2001.001.0014

Baby clinics such as these were therefore important for both physical and mental health. Indeed, new mothers could often feel isolated, as a health visitor in the early 1970s discovered on newer housing estates in Worcester:

“Different sorts of problems on the private estates, of course, because you had young mums with up and coming young fathers who were working long hours, so the mums were feeling a bit neglected and being a new estate, nobody knew anybody. […] we set up mother and toddler groups if we could find a suitable, you know, place to run them. We ran clinics, where a lot of the mothers would come from a particular area and we also supervised the playgroups which was taken over by social services later on […] We did antenatal classes so we got to know the mothers before the babies arrived and sometimes friendships started in antenatal classes” - R.2001.001.0032

The interviewee also remembered how emotionally exhausting her job as a health visitor was:

“I used to get home sometimes and I was really drained […]it was very hard work emotionally because you were carrying everybody’s problems, not just mums and new babies, marital problems, single mothers’ problems, er, mothers with alcoholic husbands, mothers with drug problems, you know, a whole range of problems, and a lot of marital disputes that went on, on some of the estates. I remember particularly being in the middle of a husband and wife, literally in the middle, husband was one side and the wife was the other, they were really going, having a little verbal at each other, because the husband was after the wife of the lady who lived round the corner, and the wife had already gone off with somebody else’s husband” - R.2001.001.0032

Once again, it seems that the divide between medicine and emotion is indistinct. Indeed, it must be remembered that on either side of healthcare, there is a person: whether that be the patient or the healthcare professional. Emotional needs thus influenced medical decisions, and vice versa. For example, when Helen Shirley Brice walked to a baby clinic, her baby benefitted medically, and she socially, given that she could meet other parents there. Equally, health visitors were ensuring that both the mental and physical health of mothers and babies were stable. Becoming a mother was therefore as much a physical process as it was a mental one.

+ References

1] R. Johanson, M. Newburn, and A. Macfarlane, ‘Has the medicalisation of childbirth gone too far?’, The British Medical Journal, 324:7342 (2002), pp.892–895.

2] D. C. Paige and W. Beckerman. ‘Births and Maternity Beds in England and Wales in 1970’, National Institute Economic Review, 22 (1962), pp.22-37, p.22.

3] I. Loudon, ‘Obstetrics and The General Practitioner’, British Medical Journal, 301: 6754 (1990), pp.703-707.

4] J. Ohrnbergera, E. Ficherab, and M. Suttona, ‘The relationship between physical and mental health: A mediation analysis’, Social Science & Medicine, 195 (2017), pp.42-49

5] W.F. Hansen, ‘Greek Mythology and the Study of the Ancient Greek Oral Story’, Journal of Folklore Research, 20 (1983), pp. 101-112; M. Williams, ‘King Arthur in History and Legend’, Folklore, 73:2 (1962), pp. 73-88, p.74.

6] S. Campbell, ‘A Short History of Sonography in Obstetrics and Gynaecology’, Facts Views Vis Obgyn, 5:3, pp.213–229.

7] L. Freidenfelds, The Myth of the Perfect Pregnancy: A History of Miscarriage in America, (Oxford, 2020), p.8.

8] N. Durbach, ‘Private Lives, Public Records: Illegitimacy and the Birth Certificate in Twentieth-Century Britain’, Twentieth Century British History, 25:2 (2014), pp.305–326.

9] I. Loudon, ‘Obstetrics and The General Practitioner’, British Medical Journal, 301: 6754 (1990), pp.703-707.

10] For more information, see Dr Laura King’s project ‘Hiding in the Pub to Cutting the Cord’

11] ‘No Place Like Home?’, British Medical Journal, 282: 6277 (1981), pp.1648-1649.

12] I. Loudon, ‘Obstetrics and The General Practitioner’, British Medical Journal, 301: 6754 (1990), pp.703-707.

13] J. A. Chalmers, ‘Relief Of Pain In Midwifery’, The British Medical Journal, 1:4552 (1948), pp. 661-662

14] J. A. Chalmers and R. J. Fothergill, ‘Use Of A Vacuum Extractor (Ventouse) In Obstetrics’, The British Medical Journal, 1:5187 (1960), pp.1684-1689

15] S. Al-Gailania and A. Davis, ‘Introduction to “Transforming pregnancy since 1900”’, Stud Hist Philos Biol Biomed Sci, 47 (2014), pp.229–232.

16] J. Raphael-Leff, Pregnancy: The Inside Story (London, 1993), p.1.

17] J. Raphael-Leff, Pregnancy: The Inside Story (London, 1993), p.109.

Figure 2 Credit: Wellcome Collection

Figure 5 Credit: Science Museum, London.

Figure 8 Credit: Science Museum, London