The tragic lost story of my grandmother
MOTHERS AND daughters. That simple phrase belies the complexity of the bond connecting parent to child. It’s one I didn’t have the courage to explore until my mother, Sylvia, died in 2015.
Ours was a difficult and unsatisfactory relationship. I knew my mother had been adopted by a great aunt as a newborn and that her own mother was a mystery. When I became a parent myself I began to understand that something fundamental had been missing in my mother’s early emotional life and it had affected her very deeply.
My maternal grandmother — and the woman missing from both our lives — was Rose Dehaan. In May 1930, three days after giving birth to a daughter at her Stepney Green home, Rose’s life was over. Her husband, Reuben, a father and at the same time a widower at just 24 years old, naturally looked to his extended family for help. A deal was soon struck with a childless aunt and uncle.
Family history was being repeated with the swift adoption of a new baby. Reuben himself was illegitimate and had been brought up by his grandmother when his birth mother abandoned him. The stigma of unmarried motherhood in the Jewish East End was just too great a burden to carry in the early years of the 20th century.
This much information was known. Sylvia’s adoption was no secret but Rose remained a mystery. The adults in charge at the time didn’t speak about her and as the years went by the details surrounding her death were lost and forgotten — until I found a photograph I’d never seen before amongst my late mother’s possessions.
Something about the woman’s face reminded me of myself and the inscription on the back confirmed this was Rose. I started to think about what we inherit from our ancestors and how we learn who we are from the people that came before us. There was a story to be told about my grandmother and what happened to her, and it was part of my story too.
Rose’s death certificate unpacked the myth that she died “in childbirth.” In fact she died of eclampsia, a condition unique to pregnancy which causes a dangerous rise in blood pressure, leading to fits and organ failure. Symptoms occasionally persist after delivery and pre or postpartum eclampsia can still kill new mothers today if the condition is not recognised and treated.
The London Hospital’s obstetric patient records from 1930 show 11 women between the ages of 17 and
36 were diagnosed with eclampsia. Three died and in one heart-rending case, both mother and baby were lost.
The condition was understood but the drugs were less effective than they are today. Some women responded to drug treatment, others didn’t. East End maternity care, particularly amongst the Jewish population was better than in many parts of the country but tragedies still occurred.
Interestingly, in every midwife’s account from this period that I read, there was always one maternal death due to eclampsia that they remembered because it affected them deeply.
Notably, there is an account of a case by Call the Midwife author, Jennifer Worth and postpartum eclampsia features in an episode of Downton Abbey. It is the stuff of drama, because the illness is merciless in how it plays out. The fits that can lead to death are deeply disturbing to witness. In the midst of joy, there is the most terrible outcome. My mother’s birth was tainted by tragedy and loss.
As I shaped this material into part of a larger narrative I often wished I could have told my mother more about Rose. I had so much more information than she ever knew. She could have obtained her mother’s death certificate during her lifetime, if she’d wanted to. Why didn’t she? Her voice in my head would always give me the answer. “Ach, what difference, now? What does it change? Nothing!”
The cold hard facts remain the same. Rose Dehaan, a humble cigarette maker from Stepney Green, didn’t change the world at large, but telling her story has helped me make peace with the past and given my grandmother a longer life than she was allowed.