Past Lives and the NHS.
I posted yesterday on the different attitude between France and the UK to families being present in a hospital and helping nurse their relatives. I hadn’t appreciated until the comments started coming in – and a couple of e-mails overnight from the continent, that the UK attitude seems to be exclusive to – the UK!
I have done a little Googling and cannot find any other European country that keeps the family so firmly at the outer door of the hospital. It set me thinking, and about 3am I was hit by a thunderbolt…as you are.
Crikey, but I’m slow on the uptake I thought. As I do frequently.
I have said before that what you get by way of a post each morning is whatever is on my mind when I wake up – so it is today; forgive the personal nature of this post – there is a sound reason for it.
Half a century ago, said Methuselah, for it is I, I had a very useful attribute. If I arranged myself so that my head was lower than my body, my cheek swelled up in a perfect imitation of a gumboil – a fashionable affliction in those days and mighty useful for getting out of PE on a freezing morning. Eventually I was rumbled, and packed off to the Doctor by my Father. I had a tumour in my saliva gland and it was removed – in rather rudimentary fashion. It left me with a hideous scar on the side of my face.
I had never had a ‘relationship’ with my Mother. No one knows why, those who did are long since dead; I suspect post natal depression myself, being some 13lb at birth I don’t suppose it was happy experience for her in those post war days, and she took to her bed and refused to have anything to do with me.
I had gone off to boarding school at 3, the Frobelian residential kindergarten run by the Sisters of the Sacre Coeur in St Peters Port. It solved my Father’s problem of caring for me and maintaining his job, but did nothing for my non-existent relationship with my Mother.
‘Disfigured’ five years later, was the last straw for her, and I was packed off to the John Radcliffe hospital for plastic surgery. (Yes, that photograph of me on the contacts page is post plastic surgery, so let’s get the jokes over and done with!)
I was all of eight years old, and had already spent a month in hospital away from my family – the notion that children might want their parents around when they were sick was light years in the future. Now I was looking forward to months in another hospital – plastic surgery was a long and tortuous process in those days, many months as grafts healed. 50 years later I still remember being tied to the bed to prevent me pulling out the various tubes. Give me a modicum of stress and I can have a decent nightmare about it to this day.
My Mother was only too happy to comply with the restricted visiting, she had no wish to be distressed by witnessing my appearance, and I, too young to have knowledge of the fact that the hospital discouraged visiting, was only too happy to accept that I was just not fit to be seen. Besides, she was busy getting pregnant again, yet another excuse to languish in bed.
By the time I was pronounced ‘cured’ and due for release, it was to the news that she was about to give birth and I was to go to my grand-mother’s house in Liverpool. From there I went back and forth to boarding school, interspersed with stays with various friends of my Father’s in the school holidays. Visits ‘home’ were the occasion to have beds made up specially for my appearance, never again was there to be a room known as ‘mine’. I didn’t belong there; I was a ‘visitor’.
It was, you can see, a mightily fractured relationship. One that I firmly accounted for by my physical ‘appearance’.
When I was 12, another phone call from my Father to my boarding school alerted me to the fact that I had just acquired another brother, and I despaired of ever returning home. So much so, that I am ashamed now to admit, I swallowed a bottle of aspirin to be done with the whole ghastly business. I could see no future for myself.
It is hard to speak of these things, even now, but this was before the Suicide Act, a time when you were either ‘mad’ or ‘bad’ for such actions. I guess no one had the heart to decide that at 12 I was actually ‘bad’, so ‘mad’ was the only other option. I was packed off to the Long Grove Mental Hospital in Epsom.
There was no such thing as a children’s ward, they didn’t exist. It is hard to put into words how grim it actually was. One day I may get round to writing about it; today is not the day.
It didn’t last long, about two months I think – one day a chink in their security appeared and I legged it – in the company of another patient who was to be my only friend for some years. I did get caught once, and sent off to a children’s home, but that didn’t last long either – a first floor drainpipe held no terrors for me after the experiences I had had so far.
The point of all this is not to detail ‘what a terrible childhood’ I had, but that I realised last night what a huge impact the NHS system of not allowing, not wanting, not encouraging, families to be part and parcel of life in hospital can have on a person. My parents are long since dead, but to this day I have no relationship with my two younger brothers, nor did I ever have again with my parents. It certainly left its mark on me – and turned me into a Libertarian long before I ever knew such a word existed.
Wild horses wouldn’t persuade me to rely on the State to care for me, or support me – and as I thought that, came the blinding flash of insight.
Of course, who brought in the NHS? The Fabians, the Socialists. The exclusion of families from hospitals is nothing more than an early example of the Fabian ideology that wishes to see families torn apart and everyone turning to the State as chief carer, I had never connected ‘visiting times’ with politics before.
Probably because I had never realised before that other countries did it differently.
*No, the picture isn’t me – it was the only one I could find of a similar vintage hospital bed!
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September 12, 2014 at 11:02 am -
I remember, in the 1960’s, seeing an otherwise beautiful girl about my age waiting at a bus stop in Portsmouth. She had the scar you describe. I sometimes think of her – it clearly wasn’t you, and I don’t obsess about it, I just have a very good memory. For a boy, this would have all the social cachet of a duelling scar, but for a girl in her mid teens it must have been devastating. Inequality starts at an early age.
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September 12, 2014 at 12:13 pm -
Very, very true. It’s not completely universal in the NHS now, but it does seem to be the default position. Why the people wielding this ‘authority’ enforce rules they wouldn’t apply to their own nearest and dearest is utterly beyond me.
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September 12, 2014 at 1:48 pm -
My hat Anna, you are a tough nut. The Fabians, amongst other matters were quite keen on eugenics I understand, it is all about “control” ultimately.
I hope life honours you from now onwards.
Thanks for the candid recollections.Geoff.
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September 12, 2014 at 1:52 pm -
Like you I spent time in an NHS ward when a child. In my case it was at age 5 or 6, on two separate occasions for operations to correct an eye squint. The atmosphere was exactly as you describe it, verging on the brutal, as was my father’s barely concealed delight at being allowed to visit for only a short time each day, that being the “rules”. It never occurred to anyone to question the rules – how convenient for the powers that be in those days.
The hospital almost force-fed me the ubiquitous cup of industrial-strength heavily sweetened milky tea, something I had never experinced at home. I choked on the large tea-leaves surprisingly (to me) lurking at the bottom of the cup, and was promptly put off tea for many years, until my 20s I think. Even now, the stench of stale tea can make me retch. Who could possibly disagree that the NHS is the envy of the world?
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September 12, 2014 at 5:58 pm -
I have only resided 3 times in the care of the NHS, once at 18 months for 10 days (some very slight recall) and twice at 8 years of age, each for 3 days (vividly remembered), all in the early-NHS 1950s. It was basic, production-line stuff, somewhat brutal by modern standards and the food was industrial at best, but all medically successful – I’m still here.
My anxious parents were limited to the regulation one-hour daily visits, not a minute more not a minute less, as soundly signalled by the Sister’s bell, but I didn’t ever feel neglected. I was quite happy with the arrangement, it was something new and different, some different people to meet and different kids around. I can’t think my condition or recovery would have been enhanced in any way by a parent sleeping alongside me; that would merely have disrupted their working lives and the functioning of the ward for no benefit to anyone. I knew I was in hospital for a reason and had been given confidence that the outcome would be worth it. Maybe I was lucky, maybe I wasn’t demanding enough, maybe my parents were too grateful for the new ‘free’ NHS fixing their poorly child; whatever the background, it delivered the required medical result each time, so I couldn’t complain, that was the objective achieved.
But that was all more than 50 years ago, maybe it’s different now, or maybe just the people are different, with changed expectations of the overall experience as service provider or recipient. Whenever my next time comes to sample more than half a century of ‘progress’ in person, I shall then be able to compare and contrast objectively to conclude whether I am still a happy customer.
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September 12, 2014 at 7:45 pm -
I have said it before and I will say it again NOBODY but NOBODY writes so evocatively about being a child in post war Britain as you do Anna —brings back to me that era when children were treated as if they were no different than animals —- to be trained to perform and if they were not amenable to training and performing they were to be marginalised —The Fabian vision of Utopia is responsible for many things including the notion that family ties were irrelevant to ones identity —-little wonder that most immigrant culture have proven to be more durable than our own —the law of unexpected consequences when social engineers set to work.
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September 12, 2014 at 7:58 pm -
——–I posted yesterday on the different attitude between France and the UK to families being present in a hospital and helping nurse their relatives. ——–
Where? I can’t find that.
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September 12, 2014 at 8:37 pm -
I don’t know, but I suspect there may be a cultural difference here as well. My brother had to spend a period of time in an NHS hospital in N Ireland in the 70s – same system as the rest of the UK – and you could not keep the families out
“Visiting hours” were a notional concept. One of the great benefits of the NHS was it was 100% non-sectarian, and practically nothing else in NI was at the time: certainly not education (it still isn’t). My little brother made a great friend of a slightly older boy “from the other side”, and I can assure you at that time and place, they wouldn’t have met at all except under those circumstances. Our version of the NHS is still a world away from the English experience, and I’ve seen the inside of hospitals on both sides of the water – but for how long I wonder, as the cuts to the Health budget kick in? In the late 80s, living in Spain, I was amazed that I was allowed to stay day and night with a very sick friend in hospital, who had pneumonia, but all became clear when I realised, in the absence of family, I was expected to feed her, wash her nightclothes, and generally take care of her. No one else was going to, though she had the services of an excellent doctor. I am sure this is no longer the case, but it certainly was then. The funding didn’t stretch any further. I didn’t object at all – but I wondered what happened if you didn’t have someone to step up?
Children in hospitals generally had a rough old time 50 years ago and earlier, which is not to pooh-pooh your story, Anna – it’s dreadful. A relative of mine spent the years from 5-9 in a TB sanitorium in Wicklow, the Republic of Ireland, and in all that time, he saw his family only once. This was the late 40s. But he had it better than the previous generation – if they had TB, and they did , in their thousands, they died. And they died in squalour, for the most part. Even the meager resources of the Irish State, which had very little to offer by way of publically-funded health care, was an improvement on the situation before.
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September 12, 2014 at 9:29 pm -
There is a possible alternative?
Given how potentially horrible parents can be in the UK with regard to the way in which they they treat little Jack and Jill, even as this post tells us, might our somewhat enlightened medical and nursing staff in the mid 20th century, and maybe even now, not have been as stupid as not realise – after all, they did see, and know, the relatives more closely, and there was none of this ‘patient access’ to either GP ar hospital notes so there was a much more free transfer of information – and consequently take the view that, if you want the patient to improve, the last group of people you really want to be around is the relatives?
I realise that that’s not going to be universally true, but if you had to pick and choose, Anna, and make your decision based on what you know, and can see with your own two eyes, would you want a French mum and dad looking after their little one in hospital, or a British one? Then? And now?
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September 12, 2014 at 10:09 pm -
I wonder if the Fabians Peter Mandelson, Harriet Harman, Tony Blaire, Ed Balls, Gordon Brown… etc., ever use the NHS? Seeing that they have little record of using comprehensive schooling for their spawn, I presume these luminaries for social equality, all use Bupa. Not stupid, just evil.
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September 13, 2014 at 11:29 am -
@Jimmy Giro —Do as I say not do as I do –it a repetitive theme in History but I see Fabians as being very much the successors to the Calvinists with notions of the Elect . Stupid or Evil? that depends on where you come but either way they are dishonest to themselves and others in that however they may start out, at the wire it is about the importance of themselves rather than the welfare of others…..wots that adage something about power corrupting ? but in a democracy (or when we join a church) aren’t we the gullible punters who place our bet for salvation be it spiritual or material on such people?
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September 13, 2014 at 12:35 pm -
In short, the difference is that Christians believe that the individual person has to be regenerated in order to fully love his neighbour, where Socialism has to fall back on the legislation of the masses to try to force them into similar.
You can have Christians who believe in the same ideals as Socialism, and vice versa.
Neither group, as individuals will be perfect. Indeed, a ‘perfect’ Christian is an oxymoron.
But Socialism is doomed to failure, as long as the route to the perfectionist ideal requires mass manipulation and compulsion, just as much as the individual brands of ‘Christianity that fall back on ritualistic compulsion, or avoid individual regeneration, will likewise aslo come up short
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September 13, 2014 at 1:21 am -
Anna
Crickey, You’ve brought some memories of half a century ago!
I contracted some strange infection when I was 8 which meant I was put in an isolation ward of a hospital. I recall a very strict regime – some seemingly pointless rituals (why wake up an eight year old at 6.30 to give him a cup of tea when you are going to be lying in bed for the whole day?). The visiting times were strict – only an hour in the evening, except Sundays when it was in the afternoon , which meant more than 24 hours before the next visit from parents – which I found deeply distressing never having been separated from family before. The other thing which comes to mind is that some staff (mainly older) were really strict and unsympathetic , but others, mainly younger (and especially the immigrant cleaners – yes, even then) were very kind to a sick, lonely young lad. In a microcosm an example of the changing times between the authoritarian, ordered world before the sixties and the relaxation of attitudes and barriers – in retrospect, an invaluable part of my education.
But one thing I will say – it was clean, and as other commenters have said – successful!
The other thing was transport – the hospital was off the beaten track (not so far from your Long Grove hospital, Anna!) which meant that family would have been unable to help/assist even if willing – they couldn’t get there until my dad got back from work, and he had a car (not common back then). How others managed I don’t know.
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September 13, 2014 at 7:29 am -
Anna the Raccoon I read your posts from the other side of the world. I would like to say that you are a splendid writer and an inspirational person. Keep in mind that I have to wake up at an upside down time to read your latest posts.
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September 13, 2014 at 12:23 pm -
I recall, as a student nurse in the fifties, that parents were not allowed by the bed of a sick child for any other time than strict visiting hours. I do not know why this was the rule. It was plainly very cruel. I recall one child of parents who had fled Hungary who screamed for hours at the end of his cot. Understood no English; yet this rule was rigorously applied. It was heart rending. Children could not visit mothers on maternity wards. They stayed in 10 days and some toddlers did not recognise their mums when they met outside the ward. We used to hold the babe in the background, if we could, while mum and dad persuaded the tiny tots to recognise them, then the baby was introduced. Mum’s bums only scuff the bed these days, so not a problem…but then children have been allowed to visit for a long time now. I suppose it all changed as research showed that humans recover better when visiting is more generous, but not noisy hoards all day long. It is devastating for a mum who dotes on a cuddly toddler, to discover she is forgotten in 10 days flat!!!!!
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September 16, 2014 at 12:01 pm -
I have since thought that there was a good deal of oppressive paternalism about the NHS that jibed with the whole 60s ‘New Jerusalem’ ethos of the UK at the time. ‘National’ orange juice? ‘National’ dried milk anyone?
I well remember aging relatives with serried bottles of medication – each one labeled ‘THE TABLETS’ or ‘THE MEDICINE’ in bold type above their dosage instructions. Information on what compounds such things contained? I don’t know. Probably not as an ungrateful pleb would simply be told to take ‘THE TABLETS’ three times per day etc.
“Visiting hours” were a notional concept. One of the great benefits of the NHS was it was 100% non-sectarian, and practically nothing else in NI was at the time: certainly not education (it still isn’t). My little brother made a great friend of a slightly older boy “from the other side”, and I can assure you at that time and place, they wouldn’t have met at all except under those circumstances. Our version of the NHS is still a world away from the English experience, and I’ve seen the inside of hospitals on both sides of the water – but for how long I wonder, as the cuts to the Health budget kick in? 
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