Call the midwife
Sixties secrets of our Jamaican nurses
This weekend, Call the Midwife welcomed its first regular black character. “Elegant, funny and clever” Lucille Anderson, from Jamaica, has joined the seventh series of the BBC drama, set in the early 1960s. Heidi Thomas, the programme’s creator, was keen to reflect the contribution made by West Indian and Caribbean nurses to the NHS post-war.
From 1948, the British government encouraged immigration from the Commonwealth to fill jobs – 40,000 nurses and midwives responded.
Karlene Leiba (now Davis), was 21 and from the Jamaican town of Port Antonio. Despite going on to become chief executive of the Royal College of Midwives (1997-2008), a Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire in 2001 and a Fellow of the Royal Society of Medicine, she was not initially keen on nursing.
“I was very self-absorbed in terms of my appearance. The nurses in Jamaica looked like plain Janes,” recalls Dame Karlene, from her home in Croydon.
But the adventure of travelling to Britain appealed. Her mother, a teacher, and her policeman father had aspirations for their children. Karlene’s younger brother left the family to study dentistry in the US but was killed in Vietnam in 1967.
Karlene says: “That broke my father’s heart. It was down to me to be the shining light.”
Her parents waved her off at the airport. “My mum sent me off with a tuck shop in my suitcase – jerk pork and coconut.” It was a wise move – bland British fare was a shock: “Black pudding. Rice pudding. I couldn’t!”
On arrival, she was greeted by the British
Council and dispatched by train to Nottingham. It was May, but “really drab. Grey.”
But Karlene was happy. She lived in a nurses’ home during her three years’ training under the beady eye of the sisters (“some were dragons”). She loved the work, but it wasn’t long before “I had my first little sting of racism” when she was called an “untidy, stubborn little monkey” by a ward sister.
Karlene complained to the matron, who brushed it off. But what courage to even dare protest, I suggest. “I just thought she was out of order to speak to me like that,” she says.
Dame Karlene trained in midwifery in Wimbledon and was paired with another Jamaican on the presumption they would understand one another.
She recalls on one visit to a new mother: “We had to enter through the serviceman’s entrance. My colleague didn’t make an issue of it, so I didn’t either.”
Mostly, though, she found the job rewarding. Dame Karlene recalls, “the connection was one of the things I loved; seeing the start of a new family. And many were really appreciative. In those days women took our advice with the best intentions. Whereas now, it seems as if the professionals are challenged at every step. I’m not saying it’s wrong, but it does contribute to the stress people feel.”
The discriminatory incidents made her determined to instigate change. “I had to get into the decision-making arena. I thought ‘I am not going to allow myself to be trodden on’.” She moved into training, which got her noticed. By the Nineties she was working for the regional health authority, finally becoming CEO at the Royal College of Midwives.
She accepts there are challenges for overseas staff in the NHS, but she says it gave her “a greater understanding of midwifery in each country, which enriches the care each woman gets”. Now, seven years into retirement, she enjoys watching Call The Midwife. Any good?
“It’s exactly as I recall it.”