Sisters of the East End

by Helen Batten

  CONTENTS

  * * *

  COVER

  ABOUT THE BOOK

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  TITLE PAGE

  AUTHOR’S NOTE

  CHAPTER ONE: The Call

  CHAPTER TWO: But Why?

  CHAPTER THREE: Obedience

  CHAPTER FOUR: Released Into The Wild

  CHAPTER FIVE: Deliverance

  CHAPTER SIX: The Empty Place

  CHAPTER SEVEN: An Unexpected Arrival and an Expected Departure

  CHAPTER EIGHT: The Winds of Change

  CHAPTER NINE: An Unexpected Journey

  CHAPTER TEN: The Trouble With Paradise

  CHAPTER ELEVEN: Working in a Mysterious Way

  CHAPTER TWELVE: Revolution

  EPILOGUE

  ABOUT THE SISTERS OF ST JOHN THE DIVINE

  BIBLIOGRAPHY

  ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

  COPYRIGHT

  About the Book

  Heart-warming tales of nursing and midwifery from the Sisters who worked with Jennifer Worth.

  Born into a working-class North London family, Katie is determined to ‘do something’ with her life. Working in the impoverished East End in the 1950s, she meets the Sisters of St John the Divine – a community of nuns dedicated to nursing and midwifery. The Sisters have been present at births, cared for the sick and laid out the dead for a hundred years, and Katie soon joins them to start her journey to becoming Sister Catherine Mary.

  As a novice Katie rallies against the vow of obedience, yet as a nurse and midwife she learns much about the nature of dedication, love and tragedy. Her story is full of hardship, humour and compassion, bringing to life the unique world of the nursing Sisters.

  Sister Catherine Mary’s story was written by Helen Batten after in-depth interviews with today’s Sisters of the Community of St John the Divine.

  About the Author

  Helen Batten studied history at Cambridge and then journalism at Cardiff University. She went on to become a producer and director at the BBC and now works as a writer and a psychotherapist. She lives in West London with her three daughters.

  AUTHOR’S NOTE

  * * *

  The story of Sister Catherine Mary has been created from interviews with the six sisters of the Community of St John the Divine. Although fictional, her life is based on the real experiences of the Sisters, particularly the Reverend Mothers Christine and Margaret Angela, and their lives working as nurses and midwives in the East End and abroad.

  I first met the Sisters over a year ago and was immediately struck by their warmth, humour and love. Then, as they told me their stories, I was amazed by the history of their Community, the pioneering and largely unsung work of these courageous, feisty women who dedicated their lives to helping the poor and played such a key role in developing nursing and midwifery in this country. It made me think about the real meaning of commitment: as well as constant challenges, I learned how it brings great rewards. They have been an inspiration.

  I would like to thank Sisters Christine, Margaret Angela, Theresa, Ivy, Elaine, Shirley and Novice Ruth for letting me into their home and their lives, and showing me their great hospitality and love.

  Helen Batten

  CHAPTER ONE

  * * *

  THE CALL

  My first memory is the sound of an air-raid warning; I can only have been three. I was playing outside in the streets when a ghostly wail filled my head. I put my hands over my ears and ran in to my mother. I was crying ‘stop it, Mummy, stop the noise’, but she just grabbed my arm and pulled me under the kitchen table. Growing up in North London during the war, we were to spend a lot of time under the kitchen table and even more time in the dark, damp, communal air-raid shelter that our council block shared. But my father refused to let us be evacuated. For him, the war brought back too many difficult memories, and he kept his children close.

  Probably the most important moment in our family’s history was when father rode a war horse into the German guns at the beginning of the First World War. He didn’t come from a privileged background, but he was tall and dashing and very good with horses. I was slightly puzzled as to how he had managed to become such a horse expert, growing up in poverty in Camden Town, unless he had spent time nuzzling up to the working horses that were still plodding up and down the streets.

  He was the eldest of six children (six others having died) and my grandpa was a bounder. But my grandmother kept her children fed and clothed by taking in laundry. This tireless lady not only took care of their physical needs but also, perhaps inspired by the trauma of living with such an errant husband, paid great attention to their moral foundations. The motto drummed into them was ‘Good, better, best. Never let it rest until the good is better and the better is best’, with the result that as soon as war was declared Dad lied about his age and found himself at the age of 17 charging the Germans across the fields of Belgium.

  It was only a few months before he was brought off his horse. We’d beg Mother to show us the wallet that had been in his breast pocket. It had a smoky hole right through the leather where the shrapnel had shot through his breastplate, and lodged in his lungs. We’d gaze in awe at the evidence of the event – the canvas upon which our whole family life was painted.

  One day my sister asked Father what was the most physically painful thing he had ever experienced. We listened spellbound as he told us how the army medics had packed the wounds in his chest and arm with gauze soaked with salt, then left him for three days lying in this no-man’s-land as the battle raged around him. Father had nothing to help relieve his pain, only Kipling’s poem ‘If’ to fortify him (my grandmother’s favourite),

  And so hold on when there is nothing in you, except the Will which says to them: “Hold on!

  He described the moment when they were finally able to come back and take him to hospital and unpack his wounds, taking out the gauze which had putrefied in the dirt and heat. But the moment his voice wavered was when he told us how they shot his wounded horse – the horse that Father believed had saved his life. At times I have felt as if I have been posted to the front line of human suffering; but one of the things that never ceases to amaze me is the resilience of the human spirit. I suppose Father was my first example.

  When he arrived back in England, Father was sent to a special hospital in East London and my grandmother went to visit him. She’d never been to this area of London before and it was quite difficult for her to find the money for the fare. When she eventually walked into the ward she thought there had been a mistake. Father’s face was covered in bandages, so still, and so at peace that she thought she’d come all this way only to find him dead. She went over to his bedside, took his cold hand and started to pray. My grandmother had already lost six of her 12 children and she wasn’t prepared to part with this boy who was so brave and of whom she was so proud. He was her eldest. After a few minutes, the ‘corpse’ opened his eyes and smiled at her. From that moment Father thrived. He had lost the use of his right arm (he always wore a black leather glove and one of our jobs every morning was to do up his cufflinks), and he suffered debilitating bouts of bronchitis from the shrapnel left in his lungs, but he recovered his good looks and his optimism and within a couple of years he was married and working for the Post Office.

  Father’s war experience had a profound impact on us children in all sorts of ways, not least because he came out of hospital a fervent Socialist. Influenced by some of the soldiers he had met while he was recovering, the conclusion he had come to from the suffering of the war was that power had to be taken out of the hands of the elite and given to those who would actually have to fight. His first action when he left hospital was to walk into the local Labour
Party office and sign up. I remember sitting at my father’s feet listening to him talk about the evils of inequality, ‘Is it right that some people have too much, while some people have too little, Katie? It’s up to you and me and all of us to do something about it and we must keep on striving until this is put right.’

  Of course this meant that Father had little time for religion – an establishment conspiracy to keep the workers in their place. We never went to church, but when I trotted down the road to see my grandmother, with a wink she would get out the family Bible and entrance me with stories of floods and arks, multi-coloured dreamcoats, wicked women cutting off their strong husband’s hair, and virgin births in stables. It was our little secret. Meanwhile Father was working very hard, educating us in his own way.

  One of the wonders of being the Second World War generation growing up in London was that if you had enlightened parents, it was possible to have a fantastically enriching, full education and Father was dedicated to instructing us – I was intimately acquainted with many museums, and frequently taken to watch Shakespeare at the Old Vic. Of course we had to sit up in the gods, but still, in a drab post-war London without television, that left quite an impression. I even remember Father taking me to see cricket at Lord’s.

  My mother was quietly complicit in all this socialism and self-improvement. She taught us to read at an early age and we grew up with a strong sense of right and wrong. She was a great household manager – highly organised and efficient, with complete knowledge and control of her household. She managed to work the household finances so that although we were poor, we didn’t feel it. There was always spare food so that when friends and family popped round she was able to set another place at the table. Father worked as hard as his fragile health allowed, but when he was laid up in bed with one of his frequent bouts of bronchitis, Mother took in sewing.

  My mother’s controlled competence made the story of the way she fell in love with Father all the more puzzling. It seemed rather unlikely. Mother was not my father’s first wife. Very soon after he left hospital, Father had fallen deeply in love with another woman and they had married and quickly had three children. Then, during one of my father’s periods in hospital with chest complaints, his first wife had suddenly died, from consumption. Father was so ill he wasn’t allowed to go to her funeral, but they rerouted the procession so it went past the house. The story goes that he said his last goodbye to her as her horse-driven hearse moved slowly past his window.

  Father actually met my mother on his next stay in hospital. She happened to be a trainee nurse working on his ward. She was much younger than he, she was 24 years old, while my father was 38. Apparently it was love at first sight, which I suppose was not totally surprising because, despite his appalling health, Father still looked like Clark Gable. They did make a tall, striking couple. However, their families were not impressed by their relationship, so Mother and Father agreed to test their love by not seeing each other for six months. They lasted two weeks. Within the year Mother had given up work and was looking after my half-brother and sisters and I was on the way. Four years later my little brother, Harry, was born. Despite there being 16 years between my eldest half-sister, Elsie, and I, the two families always felt like one. We were a happy, secure family unit. My mother was particularly undemonstrative (even withering, sometimes) but somehow I did know that I was loved.

  But the heart of the family was my father. So when he became really ill in the spring of 1948, we were all quietly scared. He took to his bed as the weather warmed up and I knew something was different: something about the way he was breathing, the way he was coughing. One day Mother took me aside and said, ‘You know, Katie, Father might not get better.’ I nodded, a horrible lump in my throat. I knew already, I could smell it in the air of the house. I would stand in the sitting room directly below their bedroom and listen. I counted the gaps between his heavy painful breaths, trying to work out if he was getting better or worse. I was ten; old enough not to be able to ask anyone what was going on. One afternoon, I was in the living room, listening. It all went quiet. I was trying to work out if this was a good or a bad sign when Mother came downstairs and said, ‘Katie, Father has died.’ My first thought was ‘How on earth are we going to survive?’ It seemed impossible that the family could carry on and not fall apart without him.

  Of course we did survive. My big brother started giving Mum his wages and my smart eldest sister (who otherwise would probably have gone to university) left school and became a secretary to help support the family. But I struggled with the Father-shaped gap that had been left behind and all the unanswered questions that were left in his place. Principally, ‘where have you gone?’

  One sunny afternoon in the spring, six months after my father’s death, I walked past our parish church and then I turned right round and walked in. Totally spontaneously, for the first time in my life, I found myself in a church. Suddenly, it seemed that here was a place where I might find the answer to my question. I sat in the pew in the dark and I felt comfortable and peaceful, at home in a way that I hadn’t felt at home in our flat since Father had died. So the next Sunday I slipped out and went to morning communion and before I knew it, I was going to church every week. I didn’t tell anyone because I knew it wouldn’t go down well.

  Of course it wasn’t long before my secret was rumbled. One Sunday morning my big sister, Elsie, saw me coming out from the morning service and went straight home to Mother. ‘I know where Katie’s been going, Mum. Church.’

  Mother raised an eyebrow. I kept very still.

  ‘I caught her coming out of St Luke’s this morning.’

  Mother looked at me over the top of her glasses, ‘I’m sure it’s just a phase, isn’t it, Katie?’

  I didn’t say anything. I knew it wasn’t just a ‘phase’. I also knew my mother well enough not to confront her.

  Before long I was singing in the choir and making friends in the youth club, then I was confirmed. No one stopped me, although Mother made passing remarks about my ‘religious mania’ and although no one except my grandmother approved of religion, their disapproval was outweighed by their belief in personal freedom, so I was allowed to go about my spiritual business. Also, they were all struggling with their own grief and I think they thought it was my way of getting through and I’d grow out of it. The thing is, I didn’t.

  Unlike my clever brothers and sisters, I was really rather hopeless at school. I remember overhearing two of the primary school teachers who had taught my big sisters saying to each other, right in front of me, ‘Oh, I don’t know what’s happened to Katie! Her sisters were always so bright.’

  ‘Yes, strange isn’t it? From the same family and yet so different.’

  School just didn’t inspire me. Again, unlike my gregarious siblings, I was quite shy and I stuttered when I had to read aloud in class. Most of the time I was caught up in a world of my own: I collected stamps and knitted big woolly jumpers and I was terribly disorganised. I was always wearing games kit on the wrong days and forgetting my homework. It’s not that I wasn’t interested in learning – I read everything I could get my hands on and I loved going to see plays – but I was only interested if it was my own choice and school was not my own choice. So unlike my siblings I finished primary school at the bottom of the class and failed my 11-plus. To the shame of the family I was the only Crisp not to go to grammar school and I had to shuffle down to the local secondary modern instead. I guess I was quite headstrong in my own quiet way. Church was my choice and my thing, my own little separate existence if you like, and, greatly to my own surprise, I began to make a bit of a mark. I started to help organise the youth club, then I was running it and suddenly I found myself in charge of the youth conference for the diocese of London. It seems I had a secret abilities. Again ‘religious mania’ was all my mother would say on the subject.

  When I reached 16, I left school with absolutely no qualifications. There was a family conference around the kitchen tabl
e. My big brother and sisters were there. Even my grandmother had been summoned.

  ‘So, Katie, what do you want to do?’ Mother asked.

  ‘I’d like to be an actress.’

  There was a stunned silence.

  ‘Shall I ask you that question again, Katie?’ Mother said slowly. ‘Now please tell us what you have in mind to do now you have left school.’

  I was feeling less confident now. ‘No really, Mother. I’d like to be an actress. I know it might seem strange but I’m not shy when I’m on stage. Really! Miss Woodridge thinks I’ve got real talent.’

  I could see big sister Elsie trying not to laugh. Edward was staring very hard at the table. I soldiered on, ‘You know how much I’ve always enjoyed going to the theatre …’ (actually I saw myself as more of a blonde Vivien Leigh, but I knew any mention of Gone with the Wind would finish them off).

  But my grandmother had already had enough.

  ‘What rubbish, Katie, I can’t believe I’m hearing this! I thought you had more sense. Acting! Tshhhh,’ she shook her head. ‘Well, I’ve heard it all now. You’ve spent too much time at the pictures and not enough at your homework. Look, my girl, you’ve got to earn a living. Acting is not a living. If you want to eat, you’ve got to work.’

  And that was the end of that. I got a job working in a surveyor’s office and I was sent off to night school to try and pass the exams I should have passed at school. I absolutely hated it. Shorthand, it drove me insane. Or at least it would have driven me insane if I hadn’t been hatching a plan.

  One of the turning points in my life was the day the Americans dropped a bomb on Hiroshima. Father had sent me down to the corner shop to get his paper. On the cover was the most horrific photograph I had ever seen. They really did show photographs of the terrible injuries from the atom bomb. There were lots of them inside. I couldn’t believe that the Americans and, as their allies, we, had done this to other human beings. Then nine days later they did it all over again at Nagasaki. A feeling of disgust stayed with me and it got me thinking. As I got older I started to dream about travelling so I could get to know people in other corners of the world, perhaps people who didn’t look like us, who were poorer and needed help. I wanted to do something meaningful and useful, to do something my father would have been proud of. There was one obvious way I could do this and that was to become a missionary, not the preaching kind of missionary, but perhaps one of the teaching or nursing kinds. Becoming a missionary was not as radical an option as it would be today. Think of it as more like taking a gap year. Missionary work was one of the few respectable routes for a working class and unqualified woman to travel and see the world. In 1954 it was perfectly acceptable to live away from home and mix with other young people (including men) if you were being chaperoned by the Church of England.