by Mary Hazard
I eventually retired from Chase Farm in 1994 and thought that was it, time to hang up my white nurse’s coat. However, my local GP’s surgery, the Bounds Green Group Practice (BGGP), in Bounds Green, North London, was looking for a phlebotomist to work on the premises. As I was living fairly near by, and had a car, I thought, ‘Why not?’ I met with the chief GP, a charming and sincere Dr Schamroth, and soon I was started on my next, and final, career, working in the GP’s surgery for four days a week, taking blood. I loved the work, and really enjoyed working with the doctors and practice nurses. I always felt very at home there, and I would get up at six in the morning, winter or summer, come rain or shine, have my breakfast, walk my little Shih Tzu doggies, Bobby and Lottie, and then go in to work.
I worked at the BGGP until November 2013 when I retired reluctantly, at the age of 79. I had worked in the NHS for 62 years by then and think there are few nurses that have worked that long in the service. Every time, before that, when I tried to retire, I would tell Dr Schamroth that I thought it was time I was off, and he would say, ‘You can’t retire, Mary. Why don’t you take Friday off?’ So I’d think ‘OK’ and carry on. I didn’t really do the job for money, as I had my nursing pension, but I did it for the love of the job, and the love of company. Meanwhile, I would spend some of my afternoons and evenings visiting the elderly, and I looked after one particular woman, Connie, until she was ninety-three. She was blind, poor thing, and I’d take her out in the car, or take her to appointments, to go shopping, or help her do things. I actually received an award in 2013 for over 100 hours of volunteering in the community, from the Mayor of Enfield, but I didn’t do it for that, of course; I did it because I enjoy the work and I’d rather be out and about doing something than moping round the house, getting bored. On my off days I spend time writing to David Cameron, telling him to bring back decent standards of hygiene and care in the nursing service: it’s essential to keep on top of that, and I should know, as I spent my formative years scrubbing away madly with the carbolic and disinfectant. I still see a few Putney staff for a social occasion from time to time. I still walk my little Jack Russell dog, Jacko, every day in my local park today (sadly, my two other doggies died). I have a gang of friends I meet there, and dish out the odd bit of nursing advice when it’s needed. We often end up having a pub lunch together, with the dogs chasing each other in and out of the pond.
I have just turned eighty, but am so thankful for the life that I have had in nursing. I know I’ve made many mistakes in my life, and I left behind my family in Ireland, and lost two husbands and my beloved daughter, but I have to say I don’t have any real regrets. I try to live each day as well as I can, I still like to go out to the pub with my friends, or take my dog to the park, or help to organise the street party, or sit in my back garden, with a glass of chilled white wine, and chat to my neighbours on a sunny afternoon. My cheeky neighbours in the street call me ‘Queen Mary’ although I have no idea why. I can honestly say I feel I’ve had the best, most productive and happy of lives working, as a proud Irish nurse, for over sixty-two years in the NHS.
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1
‘It feels like we’re in the Army’
‘My job is to make nice young ladies of you all,’ Sister Mary Francis proclaimed. She was the headmistress at the strict Harrytown High School I attended in Romiley, Cheshire, and this was a phrase I heard countless times from the age of seven.
The private, all-girls convent school was very highly regarded and, like many of my peers, I came from a comfortable, middle-class family. It was expected that we ‘young ladies’ would enter suitably respectable employment at the age of eighteen, which I gathered meant choosing between working in a bank, going into teaching or becoming a nurse.
I was seventeen years old when I was summoned to Sister Mary Francis’s imposing dark-wood office and asked the question: ‘Well, Linda, what do you propose to do next?’ Before I could answer, she tilted her head forward to peer at me over her small, round reading glasses and said gravely: ‘You are indeed a fine young lady, despite the one minor indiscretion we have thankfully overcome. I trust you have chosen wisely.’
‘I’m thinking of going into nursing,’ I replied meekly, blushing at her reference to my ‘indiscretion’. She meant the time I was caught breaking a cardinal rule and talking to boys on the bus. This had been seen as such a scandalous breach of conduct that a letter was sent home to my parents, warning of severe consequences should I ever compromise my reputation in such a way again.
‘Nursing is a good choice for you,’ Sister Mary Francis deemed. ‘But only the best will do for my girls. I want you to apply to the Manchester Royal Infirmary. It is a teaching hospital, and the most prestigious in the region. Please promise me, Linda, that you will always work hard for your living.’
I nodded obediently, grateful that Sister Mary Francis had not probed any deeper, as I had just three rather fragile reasons behind this big decision.
Number one: my best friend Sue Smith from school had an older sister called Wendy who was a nurse. She was always smiling when she told us tales about her job, and I thought she looked wonderful in her smart uniform. I admired her, and I wanted a uniform like hers.
Number two: my mum always said I was a caring person, telling me that I’d insisted on looking after my teddy bear right up to the age of eleven. I thought I’d be good at tucking patients into bed and giving them tea and sympathy.
Number three: I didn’t want to work in a bank and I didn’t want to teach. My parents never wanted me to work for the family business, even though their bakery shop near our home in Stalybridge was very successful. It was hard graft being self-employed, Mum always said. She wanted better for me.
Nursing it was to be, and that is how I found myself standing before Miss Morgan, Matron of the Manchester Royal Infirmary, in September 1966.
‘You must see me as your other mother!’ she boomed. I was eighteen years old and I had just started my three-year training course at the MRI, which was situated on Oxford Road, a mile and a half outside the city centre.
Though I knew next to nothing about nursing I had quickly cottoned on to one very important fact: Matron was like God, and her word was Gospel.
‘I want you to be able to talk to me at all times,’ Miss Morgan instructed forcefully, her extremely large bust somehow expanding further still as she snorted in her next breath. ‘You are my girls!’
I looked at her in horror. She seemed completely unapproachable and absolutely nothing like my own mother. My mum was so gentle-natured she practically had kindness dripping from her pores. Miss Morgan was a bulldozer in a bra by comparison. Her voice penetrated my eardrums with considerable force, and her facial expressions were as stiff as the large, starched white frill cap that was clamped on her head.
I nervously glanced from left to right to see how the other new girls in my group were reacting. There were thirty-six teenage girls in my intake, and we were divided into groups of six. As my name then was Linda Lawton, I’d been placed with two other student nurses whose surnames began with the letter L, as well as with three whose surnames began with M and P.
I took some small comfort from the fact Nessa Lawrence, Anne Lindsey, Jo Maudsley, Linda Mochri and Janice Price all looked as startled as I felt.
‘You will be taken down shortly to be measured for your new uniforms,’ Matron went on, forcing a rather frosty smile to her lips. I imagined her heart was probably in the right place, but she seemed oblivious to the fact she’d turned us into a group of baby rabbits caught in the glaring headlights that were her wide, all-seeing eyes.
‘Be warned, girls, that if I catch any of you shortening your uniform I will unpick the hem myself forthwith and restore it to its correct length, which is past your kne
e, on the calf.
‘Hair is to be clean and neat and worn completely off the collar, stocking seams are to be poker straight, and make-up and jewellery are strictly forbidden. Strictly forbidden!
‘You will require two pairs of brown lace-up shoes which are to shine like glass every day. Cleanliness is next to godliness, never forget that, girls!’
We listened attentively, scarcely daring to breathe lest we incur Matron’s wrath.
‘Furthermore,’ she went on, ‘I will not tolerate lateness, sloppiness or untidiness of any nature and I expect best behaviour at all times.
‘Good luck, girls,’ she added briskly, smoothing her hands down the front of her exceptionally well-pressed grey uniform. ‘Don’t forget you must come and talk to me at once about any concerns you may have. I am here to help you.’
Miss Morgan was clearly exempt from the make-up ban as she had thickly painted red lips, which she now stretched into the shape of a wide smile. Despite this she still managed to look incredibly intimidating as she waved us out of her office and instructed us to follow a grey-haired home sister down to the uniform store, a visit she hoped we would all ‘thoroughly enjoy’. Miss Morgan sounded sincere, but in that moment I felt a pang of real fear and homesickness.
The home sisters were typically older, unmarried sisters who had retired from working on the wards but ran the nurses’ home, and usually lived in. This one was glaring at us impatiently, which did nothing to ease my anxiety.
Dad had driven me in to Manchester and dropped me off earlier that day, and my small suitcase was still unopened. I’d felt as if I was going on an exciting adventure as we pulled up outside the grand red-brick façade of the enormous teaching hospital. It was opposite the sprawling university campus on Oxford Road, and I felt honoured to be entering the heart of such a vibrant, progressive community.
As I waved Dad off and joined the other eager-looking student nurses gathered in reception, I was buzzing with anticipation. I was actually going to be a nurse, and not just any nurse: I was going to be an MRI nurse!
Now, however, reality was rapidly starting to dawn. I felt lost and abandoned in this unfamiliar environment, with the imposing Miss Morgan thrust upon me as my ‘other mother’. Home was less than ten miles away, just a half-hour car ride east of Manchester. It was tantalisingly close, which only made me long for it all the more.
I’d been on just one previous visit to the MRI several months earlier after my letter of application, vetted and approved by Sister Mary Francis, was swiftly accepted. It was June 1966 when I was invited on a whistle-stop tour of the hospital, and when I met some of the other student nurses for the very first time.
Now, I realised, I had scarcely taken anything in. At the time I was preoccupied with finishing my A-levels and going on a summer holiday with my best friend Sue from school. We’d been invited to Beirut in the August, where my brother John, who was ten years older than me, worked as a journalist. It was a very safe and beautiful place to visit in 1966, and we were looking forward to exploring it, then spending two weeks sunning ourselves in Turkey afterwards.
When I got back from that first visit, my boyfriend Graham, who I’d been seeing for about a year, asked, ‘What was it like at the MRI?’
‘Well, there was nothing I disliked,’ I replied cheerfully. ‘I think I’ll like it,’ I added naïvely. ‘Shall we go to the cinema in Manchester tonight? I have to get used to the city before I live there!’
How I was ruing my blasé attitude. I was pitifully unprepared for my new life. I had absolutely no clue what I was letting myself in for and I had foolishly committed myself to the MRI for three long years of my life. That’s how long it took to qualify as a State Registered Nurse (SRN). Three whole years! I’d be twenty-one before I finished my training. It felt like a lifetime.
Walking along the windowless corridors on the first day of training, I felt like an inmate. Miss Morgan had said we would be ‘taken down’ to the uniform store, but I felt as if I was being taken down quite literally, to be incarcerated. There was no way out, and I saw nothing to cheer me up.
Plain, white walls were pitted with monochrome signs I didn’t understand. Metal trolleys were pushed by porters with faces as dull as cobbles. The hard floors appeared to have been scrubbed clean of any hint of colour. It was just like watching a boring old documentary on television, where everything was a grim shade of black and white.
Big doors loomed everywhere, swinging heavily on their hinges in the wake of white coats and pale green uniforms, which disappeared into goodness knows where. The world beyond the doors was, as yet, a complete mystery to me. The wards and clinics and theatres filled me with a mixture of curiosity and fear. I was in uncharted territory. That’s how the hospital seemed to me as I proceeded towards the uniform store with the other girls, marching rigidly on the left-hand side of the corridor, as instructed.
Turning a corner, I felt a gentle dig in the back of my ribs and whipped my head round to see that one of the girls in my group, Linda Mochri, was giving me a cheeky smile.
‘What d’ya think of our second Ma, hey Linda?’ she asked in a friendly Scottish brogue.
I sniggered and whispered behind my hand: ‘I don’t think I’d like to fall out with her!’
Linda screwed up her eyes and gave a little chuckle. ‘I might have to risk it if the uniform makes me look like a nun!’ she joked.
We continued in silence, fearful of receiving a ticking off from the home sister who was accompanying us, but thanks to Linda I felt ever so slightly less alone. We were all in the same boat, weren’t we? We ‘newbies’ would stick together and have a laugh and make the best of it, wouldn’t we?
Being measured for my uniform made me imagine I was joining the Army instead of the nursing profession. We had to stand in a stiff line like soldiers as we each took it in turns to have the tape measure wrapped around our bust, waist and hips. All the while we listened earnestly to a string of orders and instructions from the home sister.
‘You must wear your uniform at all times, even in school, though you must remove your apron during lessons.
‘You will each be provided with three brand new dresses and ten aprons. It is your duty to take good care of your clothing and to take pride in your appearance at all times.
‘As you are aware, the uniform consists of a light green dress with detachable white cuffs and collars and a white cap, which must be clean and stiffly starched at all times.
‘You will leave your dirty clothes in your named laundry bag outside your room once a week, and they will be taken away and laundered. It is your duty to collect your clean laundry from the uniform collection point.
‘You will be shown how to fold your hats correctly, don’t fret. You will soon be experts in the art. If you have not already done so you must purchase two pairs of brown lace-up shoes, and your stockings must be brown and seamed. Matron likes seams to be perfectly straight, and be aware she will check up on you without warning.’
As the day went on we were bombarded with more and more information, and my head began to ache. We were shown the stark schoolroom, which contained dark-wood desks, a full-sized skeleton and a dusty blackboard. Our daily routine was to begin at 8 a.m. prompt for lectures with Mr Tate, to whom we were briefly introduced. I scarcely took in a word he said because I was too busy taking in his demeanour. He had huge lips, wore a terrible green knitted tie and ill-fitting glasses, and had the worst comb-over you could ever imagine, with skinny strands of greying hair stretched desperately across his bald scalp. Odd, I thought. A very odd-looking man indeed.
We would spend our first eight-week ‘block’ based in the schoolroom, and classes would be punctuated with tours of the fourteen wards in the 400-bed hospital. I didn’t even know what some of the names of the wards meant, such as endocrinology and thoracic, let alone how to navigate my way through the three-floored maze to find them.
That first evening I sat on my single bed at the nurse’s home with all
my day’s thoughts and fears clattering around inside my aching head. As students we all had to live in the nurses’ quarters adjacent to the hospital; there was no choice in the matter. The money for our board was taken out of our student wages before we received them, leaving us first years with £27 a month – not a bad sum to live on, I supposed.
This was the first time I had been alone all day, and I gulped as I sat on the unfamiliar bed, trying to absorb the huge step I was taking. I surveyed my new bedroom warily and felt my throat tighten. It was a large room with a wooden floor and a big fitted wardrobe, which was painted the same drab, off-white colour as the bare walls and had three hefty drawers underneath. I got up and tried to pull one of the drawers open, but found the task almost impossible. Puffing and panting, I eventually managed to heave the drawer free, feeling like a feeble little bird struggling to build a nest. I wanted to cry.