A vanished age of nursing

Matron ruled. Nurses learned on the job – not at university. Caring, NOT paperwork, was the order of the day – along with dodging amorous patients (and doctors). A glorious evocation of nursing in the 1970s

LEANING forward to straighten the patient’s sheets, I put on my most winning smile. It was my first day on the wards, and I was determined to make a good impression.

‘Oh, go away, you stupid girl,’ snarled the old man in the bed, kicking his legs around and rumpling the bed linen all over again. ‘I’ve got socks older than you.’

At the next bed I tried again. ‘How are you today, Mr Cartwright?’ I asked brightly as I smoothed his sheets and blankets. ‘What’s it to you?’ he said. ‘Sod off.’ ‘Can I get you anything?’ I persisted. ‘A cure would be good,’ he replied. I laughed. ‘That wasn’t meant to be a joke,’ he said. ‘Now go and annoy somebody else.’

Oh dear. It wasn’t going well, but I looked the part, at least. My brand new King’s College Hospital student nurse’s uniform included a paper hat attached to my strawberry blonde updo with hairgrips, a long blue-and-white striped dress, and a starched white apron that could stand up on its own.

‘First day, love?’ asked Mr Clegg, one of the kinder occupants of the infamous male geriatric ward, as I handed him his tea. ‘ Yes, it is,’ I said. ‘ And I can’t seem to get anything right.’

‘You’ll be fine,’ he assured me. ‘And don’t mind old Snape,’ he whispered, nodding at the patient who had told me I looked younger than his socks. ‘He’s had Hong Kong flu and now he has bronchitis. He was a prisoner of war and he got the cholera. And his wife is dead. That doesn’t do much for his sense of humour.’

Poor Mr Snape. How terrible. One of the other nurses had told me that morning that nearly all of the ward’s 24 occupants were poorly educated working-class men who’d had their lives torn apart by war, injury and the Depression.

Not only that, but the catchment area of King’s covered some of London’s most deprived areas. We shouldn’t judge them too harshly, she’d said, even when they were cantankerous, difficult and abusive. Which they mostly were.

My thoughts were interrupted by a plump staff nurse. At around 20, she was just a couple of years older than me.

‘Johnson (as my name was then), go and bed bath Mr Gribble in bed four,’ she instructed.

‘Righty ho,’ I replied. Now for some proper nursing, I thought, where I could put the skills I’d learned during two weeks in the classroom to the test. ‘ “Yes, Staff Nurse” will do,’ she said sternly. Ouch!

mRGRIbbLE had large staring eyes and seemed delighted by the news that I would be giving him a bed bath on my own.

Enthusiastically, he began undoing the rubber buttons on his regulation National Health pyjamas. ‘Good grief!’ I blurted out as he whipped off the jacket to reveal a magnificent tattoo, the first I’d ever seen.

Covering Mr Gribble’s chest, arms and back — in fact every spare inch of skin — was an intricately drawn scene of a fox hunt, complete with horses and riders, bugles and hounds.

‘Pretty good, eh?’, he said, holding out his arms and proudly surveying his body. ‘And you should see where the fox is hiding!’

before I could stop him he flipped athletically on to his side and pulled down his pyjama bottoms.

I gasped. The foxhounds, their eyes blazing and tongues hanging out, were racing across Mr Gribble’s bottom, emerging from which was the splendid plume of a fox tail.

blushing profusely, I busied myself with organising towels, flannels and soap. As gently as if I were icing a wedding cake, I washed his face, arms, chest and back.

Throughout all this anointing, however, I noticed that there were frequent outbursts of laughter from the other side of the curtains.

Hang on a minute. Patients who needed a bed bath were usually critically ill and incapable of washing themselves. but this man was as agile as a cat.

Oh, marvellous. This was one of those new girl tricks — like being sent to the store cupboard for a ‘fallopian’ tube. I’d fallen straight into the trap, and the older nurses were in hysterics at my expense.

‘I’ve been had, haven’t I?’ I said glumly to Mr Gribble.

He nodded. ‘Never mind, ducks,’ he said. ‘better me than one of those other grumpy b******s.’

Later that day, I sat on the grass in a churchyard near the hospital and wept. What on earth had I let myself in for? It was just too awful for words. I DON’T think I’d ever particularly wanted to be a nurse. but as a teenager I’d been hell-bent on getting away from my home in Hampshire to the bright lights of London, and nursing seemed a good way to do it. This was 1970, and what I wanted most in the world was a Vidal Sassoon haircut, an Ossie Clark dress and a fantastic boyfriend in the capital.

Now, several weeks into the job, I still wasn’t sure I wanted to be a nurse. but London? London was bloody marvellous.

On our days off we’d put on our bright pink lipstick and turquoise eyeshadow and catch the bus from the nurses’ home up to the West End.

There, we’d try on clothes we couldn’t afford in Harrods, smoke black Russian Sobranies and hunt for bargains in Carnaby Street. We lived together, played together and learned together.

back then, training was on the job, not in college, and overseen by a succession of ferocious ward sisters, some of whom seemed to think public humiliation delivered with a Gatling gun was the way to go.

The rules were endless: no eating on wards, no chatting to patients, no sitting on hospital beds, no chewing gum, no nail polish and most definitely no talking to doctors.

Marriage, we were reminded, was not allowed if we wished to continue our training. (but those of us in the know giggled to ourselves when we heard this, casting our eyes towards Adele, a pretty brunette whose husband, Fraser, shared her bed at our nurses’ home.)

So much of our everyday routine was grim — including life on the dismal and aptly named Dickens ward, where I’d begun.

but it was there I learned the value of real nursing care, thanks to an old man named One-Ear Jones.

NObODYknew his age, not even him. Somewhere around 70, One-Ear Jones lived in an alleyway behind an Indian restaurant in Peckham Rye. When he was brought into us, he’d been on an alcohol-fuelled bender for five days and was barely conscious.

The old man smelled eyewateringly horrendous as I pushed him in a wheelchair towards the bathroom.

To stop us retching, my friend Rosie, a glamorous second year, produced a bottle of Yardley English lavender scent and we dabbed it under our noses.

Suddenly Mr Jones, who seemed to have perked up, grabbed the bottle from me, took a hearty swig and wiped his mouth with the back of his hand.

‘Hey!’ cried Rosie. ‘That costs money, you know!’

‘Sorry, Nurse,’ said One-Ear, not looking at all sorry.

‘Won’t that make him sick?’ I whispered to Rosie.

‘I doubt it,’ she said. ‘He has likely already swallowed a bottle of methylated spirits this morning, so a bit of lavender water isn’t going to hurt him.’

I had another question. ‘ Apart from being drunk, what is the matter with him?’

‘Oh, don’t say that,’ she chided. ‘He’s just a homeless old man who needs looking after.’

‘but he’s taking up the bed of someone who is genuinely ill,’ I protested. ‘It’s his own fault he’s like he is.’

Rosie looked horrified. ‘ He’s a human being, Maggie,’ she thundered. ‘It’s not for us to make judgments. Everybody who comes through this door deserves respect, no matter who they are or what state they’re in.’

Chastened, I turned back to my work. ‘I’ll keep my undies on, if you girls don’t mind,’ said

Mr Jones as we helped him into the bath.

The poor man was a mess. In addition to scabies, he was covered with weeping sores, scabs and caked- on who -knows-what. His hair was matted and his beard long and full of dirt. His nails were so long they curled under . And his threadbare pants simply fell apart in the water.

Later, after we’d cleaned him up, we spoke to the junior doctor who had admitted him, Dr Freeman.

‘How is he?’ he said. ‘Cleaner replied Rosie.

‘Do you nurses know his history?’ he asked. We shook our heads.

‘He was a GP in London before the war,’ said Dr Freeman. ‘His house and surgery were bombed during the Blitz and he lost his mother, wife and three children.’

Shocked, I asked: ‘Is that how he lost his ear? In the Blitz?’

‘No,’ said Dr Freeman. ‘That happened when he lit a cigarette while he was drinking methylated spirits. The explosion sent his ear halfway across South London.’

Out of the corner of my eye I saw Sister Morag, the most ferocious of them all, bearing down on us. Clapping her hands as if we were children, she scolded: ‘Enough chatting! And I’ll thank you not to lean on the furniture, Dr Freeman.’

‘I tried to lean on the nurses,’ he replied, grinning , ‘ but they wouldn’t let me.’

I apologised to Rosie for thinking that Mr Jones was taking up the bed of someone who genuinely needed it. ‘It wouldn’t matter if he was a thief or a prince, Maggie,’ she said. ‘ Everyone deserves respect. It’s what’s right.’

I can’t recall a precise moment when I realised how much the job meant to me. But that morning was certainly a turning point.

Don’t judge. Just care. WE WERE having a feedback day with a nursing tutor, Mrs Clemens. Several girls were finding the work too demanding, and the frailties of our patients challenging. One said she was thinking of leaving. ‘If you don’t want to work hard,’ warned Mrs Clemens, ‘then you are embarking on the wrong profession.’

A few minutes later there was a phone message for Mrs Clemens. ‘Nurses!’ she announced sternly. ‘I have received disturbing news. One of you advised a patient that his wife could bring their dog to the ward during visiting hours. F ortunately the animal was intercepted before it entered the building.’

Everyone looked round to see who the evildoer was, but nobody owned up. There were murmurs about infection, dog bites, rabies and how could anybody be so stupid.

But I didn’t think it was stupid as I was the culprit — lovely Mr Clegg, who had been kind to me on my first day, had asked me so nicely.

I got away with it that time, but eventually, a few weeks later, I did smuggle Mr Clegg’s beloved dog into the hospital grounds when the staff nurses were at lunch.

After covering him with blankets I’d warmed on the radiator and checking the coast was clear, I got one of the ward orderlies, Klaus, to push the old man outside in a wheelchair while I walked along - side pulling his oxygen cylinder.

The weather was on our side — not too chilly. I removed the oxygen mask from Mr Clegg’s face.

‘Oh, my,’ he murmured when he saw his wife standing on the lawn with his beloved wire -haired fox terrier, Monty. Feebly, he waved his hands and breathlessly called: ‘Monty! Monty! Here, boy!’

Realising who was under the blankets, Monty yelped excitedly . Mrs Clegg let the dog off the lead and he scampered over to Mr Clegg and jumped lightly on to his lap.

It was a marvellous moment: Mr Clegg hugging Monty and enjoying a Pal-scented facial, Mrs Clegg and Klaus smiling, and me watching with a lump in my throat.

Mrs Clegg produced a red ball, and Monty jumped back on to the grass and uttered a playful woof.

As Mr Clegg was too weak, I threw the ball, and Monty raced around after it, much to his master’s sheer delight.

It was shortly after that every - thing went pear-shaped. Big time.

‘Johnson!’ a voice screeched from above. I looked up to see a furious Sister Morag leaning out of a second-floor window in the nurses’ home overlooking the quadrangle. Really, how was I supposed to know she lived there?

She went ballistic, predictably , shouting about disciplinary action and possible dismissal. But I didn’t care. It had been worth it. Some - how the storm blew over, and just a few days before he died, Mr Clegg beckoned over one of the other sisters, the kindlier Sister Bronwyn, to his bedside and told her I had a heart of gold.

‘Do you know what she did?’ he puffed, his voice so faint she had to lean forward to hear him. Before I could stop him, he told her all about Monty’s visit. ‘She got into terrible trouble,’ he said, before taking a big whiff of oxygen.

‘Did she, indeed?’ Sister Bronwyn remarked. I didn’t dare look at her.

‘Yes,’ Mr Clegg said, removing his mask again. ‘But it’s the best thing that’s happened to me . . . seeing the missus and Monty like that.’

Closing my eyes, I wanted to run away and run until I reached Dover. ‘She’s a good nurse,’ he managed.

‘Not yet,’ I heard Sister Bronwyn say. ‘But she will be one day.’

Her voice was tinged with amusement. I opened my eyes and Sister Bronwyn was smiling at me. I could have hugged her at that moment. And wonderful Mr Clegg . A very special man. I LEARNED so much during those early months as a student nurse. I found out that many men, espe - cially some doctors, suffer from a condition I diagnosed as AMS — acute misogynous stinkerism.

ASERIAL offender was Dr Wolfbane, a consultant anaesthetist whom I once caught staring at the name badge pinned to my apron over my right breast. ‘Hmm, Nurse Johnson,’ he said thoughtfully. ‘ And what do you call the other one?’

I learned that the letters TTFO on a patient ’s casualty notes did not relate to some obscure medi - cal condition, but stood simply for ‘tell to eff off’. And that GATKITT was similarly explicit: ‘ Give a therapeutic kick in the testicles’.

I witnessed for myself the phenomenon of the all-knowing and all-powerful Matron — extraordinary women who could single - handedly have stopped The F our Horsemen of the Apocalypse, and who knew the name and diagnosis of every patient on their wards.

For them the welfare of their charges was paramount. How sad that their authority was slowly eroded away, so people in charge of hospitals didn’t know a thermom - eter from a cocktail stirrer.

Above all, though, I learned men and women, when they grow old and frail, regret things they haven’t done when they had the chance.

I heard that message loud and clear in the early months of my training. Since then I have walked through every door that opened for me.

Nearly 50 years on, I’d do it all again in a heartbeat.

NOT Your Average Nurse by Maggie Groff is published by Corgi, £7.99. To order a copy for £6 (25 per cent discount) visit mail bookshop.co.uk or call 0844 571 0640. P&P is free on orders over £15. Offer valid until July 29.