Baby care centre will be born again
THIS month marks the seventieth birhday of the National Health Service, and that most vital and cherished of insitiutions is set to play a major role in the future of the Black Country Living Museum.
Plans for the ambitious new developments at the Tipton Road museum, which will see a new 1940s to 1960s street built, include the recreation of the Lea Road Infant Welfare Centre, which once served Wolverhampton.
The town council opened several such centres in the 1920s, and the Lea Road building, which opened ninety years ago in June 1928, will play a key role in the museum’s new street.
Though pre-dating the NHS by twenty years, the centre was designed to provide a meeting place and advice centre for expectant and new mothers. Here they could learn about baby health, having their children vaccinated, weighed, and checked over, have their own wellbeing checked out, and meet other young mums socially.
The Museum’s resident Historical Researcher, Simon Briercliffe, has dug deep into the Lea Road Centre’s past, and told us the following:
“When the social investigator Tom Brennan visited in 1945 he found the busiest Infant Welfare Centre in Wolverhampton, covering 2,000 children aged 0-4 in Southwest Wolverhampton.
“Although the clinics were open to the public, mothers often had to be encouraged to visit by doctors, health visitors, or staff at the town’s Food Office.
“The events of World War Two convinced many people that the old way of life – poor wages, economic crisis, and social security dominated by the dreaded Means Test – was no longer acceptable. Clement Attlee’s Labour government was elected in a landslide in 1945 and at its heart was the promise of a National Health Service, free for everyone at the point of use.
“Centres like Lea Road remained part of local authority provision, although their funding was now provided centrally, and this gave them a new lease of life
Busy
“Visitors to Lea Road in the 1950s and 1960s would have found a busy environment, overseen by staff and volunteers. The main hall was a waiting room, but doubled up as a venue for ante-natal and ‘mothercraft’ classes, baby clothes sales, and as a social gathering for new mothers – always with a fresh cup of tea in hand.
“Worried new mums could receive advice on anything from birthing anaesthetics to family planning – though this was strictly for married women only.
“Babies were weighed and checked regularly, and vaccinated against a range of diseases. Outbreaks of measles, smallpox and polio still occurred from time to time, and diphtheria was a particular Black Country problem: at points during the 1950s, for example, Coseley was responsible for a third of all cases nationally!
“Most memorably, the centres also distributed welfare foods: vitamins, bottles of thick, sticky orange juice, tins of National Dried Milk, and the hated cod liver oil.
“By the 1960s, Lea Road’s constituency MP was even Minister of Health. Enoch Powell was always controversial: he oversaw the withdrawal of thalidomide but refused a public inquiry; sanctioned the use of the pill on the NHS, but only for married women; and met an acute NHS staff shortage by enthusiastically supporting recruitment from Britain’s Commonwealth friends in South Asia and the Caribbean.
“It was noted in Parliament that ‘the Health Service would have collapsed if it had not been for the enormous influx of junior doctors from such countries as India and Pakistan.’
Booming
“Wolverhampton at this time was becoming home to many families from these areas and others, much-needed labour for booming local industry; they were also crucial for the continuation of the health service, providing doctors, nurses and midwives.”
The Lea Road centre was eventually closed in the 1970s, when its services were transferred to more modern buildings elesewhere.
And this is where Bugle readers come in. If you ever used, or worked at, the Lea Road centre, the Black Country Living Museum wants your memories, so that it can makes its recreation of the place all the more authentic. As Simon explained: “Upon completion in 2022, visitors will be able to step back in time and learn about the birth of the NHS and the lives of young children and mothers in the post-war period. For this, we need your memories. Did you visit Lea Road as a young mother? Can you still recall the taste of cod liver oil in the clinic? Do you remember the staff, or other visitors? Please get in touch with us by emailing collections@bclm.com or call 0121 557 9643.”
For more information about BCLM: Forging Ahead, please visit www. bclm.com/forgingahead