Maternity home proved feisty campaigner’s finest hour
Historian MERVYN EDWARDS looks back at Fanny Deakin’s campaign for better maternity services in North Staffordshire...
HOW many Sentinel readers were born in the Fanny Deakin Maternity Home in Chesterton? Years ago, I took a couple of photographs of this property, off Beasley Avenue, prior to its demolition, in the interests of recording community history.
Fanny Deakin (1883-1968) is variously remembered as the Silverdale-born politician, miners’ champion and campaigner for improved maternity services.
Her achievements were many, but a Workers’ Educational Association booklet in my archive admirably sums up her finest hour: “The culmination of her work on the [County] Health Committee was when she finally got her maternity
home for Newcastle. This was opened in 1947 and became known quite simply as ‘the Fanny Deakin’. Thousands of women who know nothing else about her know the name of that hospital.”
Fanny wanted a maternity hospital to be opened in order to reduce the high numbers of deaths during childbirth in North Staffordshire.
It has been recorded that upon entering the daunting – and maledominated – world of politics, she had two chief objectives, namely to provide better care for babies and young children and to improve maternity care for mothers.
The hospital had been in the offing for several years before its opening.
During one meeting of Newcastle Town Council’s Maternity and Child Welfare Committee in April, 1943, it was lamented that Newcastle was still waiting for a maternity home, even though plans had been put forward on three occasions – and each time, rejected by the Ministry of Health and the County Council.
Fanny, the committee’s chair, remarked that the scheme was first suggested six years earlier, citing that Stafford already had maternity accommodation.
Some time ago, I made it my business to trawl through the minutes of the Newcastle-underlyme Borough Council Maternity and Child Welfare Committee meetings relating to the establishment of the Fanny Deakin Maternity Hospital.
They record the key developments relating to the hospital’s opening in an old house called Farcroft.
The decision to name the home after Alderman Fanny Deakin was made in June, 1946, proposed by Councillor Ryles and seconded by Councillor Proctor.
Ryles himself, by the way, had been born into a poor family in an indigent part of Cobridge back in 1885, though his loving parents were very protective of their children’s wellbeing.
He would surely have empathised with the views of Fanny, who was only two years older than him.
As the project took shape, boilers and cookers were installed and tenders for the supply and fitting of linoleum were submitted – some of which was accepted from the well-known Newcastle department store, Paulden’s, who also supplied Axminster carpets and rugs.
Other long-established firms assisted in furnishing the home, such as Carryer Brothers of Newcastle who supplied the curtains.
Sherwins of Hanley supplied a wireless set for the staff.
The Newcastle Times newspaper referred to the benefit that would be felt by many pregnant women in lower income groups.
That said, I would suggest that admission to the hospital may not have been within the financial reach of some deserving cases.
There was a scale of admission charges determined by means testing according to a minute of February, 1947.
The gross income of a household – the earnings of husband and wife – were considered, as well as a percentage of the wages of other household members over the age of 21.
The period from March, 1947 saw the appointment of domestic and nursing staff – as well as engineers and porters to work in the home.
The decision was made to formally open the Fanny Deakin Maternity Home at Farcroft, Chesterton in July, 1947 – ready or not. By this, I mean that for all the assiduous work of the Maternity and Child Welfare Committee, no patients could be admitted due to a shortage of nurses.
Indeed, Mrs Deakin herself observed: “Already, we could have filled the home three times over.”
This was not allowed to spoil Fanny’s glorious day. She claimed to be the proudest woman in the borough.
Referring to the old Wolstanton Urban District Council, she admitted that the home was something she had wished for “for a long, long time from the days of the old Wolstanton Council.”
She recounted some of the difficulties experienced in the establishment of the home in typically feisty Fanny Deakin style: “On one occasion, we took the full force of the Maternity and Child Welfare Committee on a deputation to the Ministry of Health and steam-rollered them.”
Did I say feisty? Joyce Holliday’s book, Silverdale People, recalled that at the opening of the hospital, the Mayor, beginning his speech, addressed the Silverdale spitfire as Mrs Deakin before asking if he could call her Fanny.
Never one to stand on ceremony, she replied, “Call me what you like, I’ve called you many another name.” The Mayor, having recovered his equanimity, finished his speech, with Fanny responding: “I agree with the majority of what you’ve said. I’ve had a lot of troubles and I deserve it to be named after me. Indeed, I’d raise Cain if it was named after anybody else. And when you talk about the obstacles I’ve had to overcome, indeed I have, and the biggest obstacles are sitting at my back on this platform.”
The home’s capacity at the time of opening was 16 beds, primarily for the use of women in the borough.
The charge for each bed was £7 and seven shillings per week, exclusive of doctor’s fees, though the Borough Mayor regretted that it could be some time before patients would be accepted, especially considering the flood of enquiries received: “It is a thousand pities that there are not more recruits attracted to the profession.”
In 1991, reports in The Sentinel relating to the imminent demolition of the hospital prompted me to visit the site and take my photographs for posterity.
It was reported that North Staffordshire Health Authority officials wished to bulldoze the building and sell off the site against the wishes of Newcastle Borough Council.
The hospital was due to be closed in August with its 26 beds transferred to the Haywood Hospital in Burslem which was then cultivating a fine reputation for rehabilitation.
Those readers with fond personal memories of the Fanny Deakin may be interested to know that Martin Bentley, the chairman of the Borough Council’s Environmental Health Committee, declared that the Health Authority was overriding the wishes of local people in planning to leave the site.
“The people in the Chesterton area,” he said, “are among the more socially deprived and so are more vulnerable to ill health. Therefore they need more hospital provision.” He advocated a replacement service on the same site.
However, in August, 1991, The Sentinel reported that the remaining seven patients at the hospital had been transferred to a purpose-built, twenty-bed rehabilitation ward at the Haywood Hospital. Many staff were transferred, too.
One patient, Tony Edwards of Porthill, who was paralysed from the neck down, welcomed the move, but the Sentinel’s headline, “End of the line: After 40 Years care for the Sick” drew a testy response from reader Philip Moseley of Scholar Green, who was determined to emphasise the original function of the building.
“Until 20 years ago,” he said, “The Fanny Deakin was a maternity hospital where the ladies who entered, were about to experience a happy and healthy event – the birth of a child.
“Many people in North Staffordshire enjoyed the excellent facilities and I am sure would be dismayed by your reporter’s description. It is only in recent years that the hospital was given over to care of the sick and infirm, which is to be admired.”
Incidentally, John Briggs’ Octocentenary book on Newcastle does confirm that from 1971 the hospital was used as a home for the chronically sick.
However we remember the hospital, no-one can deny its crucial part in awakening a much-needed acknowledgement of welfare requirements in North
Staffordshire.