Interviewed by Janet Holmes
Date: 23/04/2013
Transcribed by Pauline Rhodes May 2013
Hertford Oral History Group
Recording no: O 2013.5
Interviewee: Ellen Cook (EC)
Venue: 122 North Road Hertford
Date: 23rd April 2013
Interviewer: Janet Holmes (JH)
Transcribed by: Pauline Rhodes May 2013
************** = unclear recording
[discussion] = untranscribed material
This is Janet Holmes recording Ellen Cook of 122 North Road Hertford on the 23rd April 2013 transcribed by Pauline Rhodes, 15 May 2013
JH: So thank you very much Ellen for agreeing to be recorded this morning for the group. I wonder if you could start by telling us a little bit about where you came from and how you came across to England?
EC: I came from a tiny place called Arda, it is very famous for its chalice prehistorically. I came here in 1953 having worked in an old people’s home in the town where I went to school. I came for a £5 bet with a friend who was working here. She said I bet you £5 you won’t come to England and I said “You’re on”. I told my mother and she said “send me a card when you get there” kind of thing. Any how I came and started working but I never got my bet because my friend moved to the Scilly Isles! I went to work at St Mark’s Hospital in London as a nursing auxiliary in the operating theatre. From there I moved to Broxbourne Nursing Home in Broxbourne as a carer and the Matron there said “you would make a very good nurse why don’t you go and do your training somewhere”. I applied to the County Hospital to train and I was accepted and we went into the Training School on 3 April 1958 and I qualified as a State Registered Nurse in 1961.
JH: So what was the training like?
EC: The training was very disciplined. Very hard work as when we came out of training school it was called PTS our training school and when we came out of there and went on the wards full time we were supervised by the Sisters. All the Sisters and Doctors were lovely except for one lady on the Male Surgical Ward – I think she was related to the Devil! We had to polish the floors with bumper things; we had to clean the sinks; we had to do everything but she would come and put her finger underneath to see if you had cleaned underneath as well as inside. We had three months in the Training School with a day out every day onto a different ward and then we had to do our exams. We were told then if we were worth training or if we didn’t feel we were worth being trained we either left or were told to leave but fortunately we all got through, there were seven of us in our school and we all passed our exams. We had to go to London to do some of the exams and, I don’t know if I should tell you this funny story, but one of the girls, we had to wear black stockings and one of the girls had a hole in her stocking on the inside and we didn’t have any cotton to stitch it with so one of the others gave her a bit of black polish to rub on her leg! And off we went to St George’s Hospital and did our exam. We all passed that and from there we went back onto the wards and we had to work three months on different Wards.
JH: This was all part of the training?
EC: No we had qualified by then and there is a little booklet here somewhere I’ll show you it’s actually signed by all the Sisters on the different wards when we did...surgery.
JH: What does PTS stand for?
EC: Probationer Training School
JH: So that was from the 1 April 1958 to 23 June and the initials at the side are Sister Maitles she was our Tutor Sister and she was a lovely lady and then all the other pages are signed by the Ward Sisters.
JH: So a Record of Practical Instruction and experience
EC: And I got a Certificate for...(too quiet to hear)
JH: But interesting looking at the General Care of Patient. Feeding Helpless Patients. The treatment of Infested Patients.
EC: Yes people came in with lice. One lady came in with an enormous amount of lice under her arms and scabies. I don’t think they exist now scabies. I don’t know.
JH: Right so that’s very...
EC: I didn’t like the Maternity Ward because I was on Night Duty then and once one baby started crying the whole lot started and it was like the Dawn Chorus!
JH: It’s very interesting seeing that you should send it to Jeremy Hunt to see what he makes of it.
EC: I think it is time that something like that was brought back and people took a pride in what they did. You didn’t have the notion that because you were a qualified nurse you shouldn’t give someone a bed pan or give someone a glass of water. There was always a nurse visible on the Ward so that if a patient wanted something you went and got it for them. If you weren’t capable of doing it you told a Sister and the Sisters were brilliant. We had one lady called Sister Lacey she was a marvellous person. She was always up and down on the wards to see her patients were fine. We had a night sister (I think I’m deviating...)
JH: That’s OK.
EC: We had a Night Sister called Sister Moxon (I hope she’s in heaven by now) but she would come round all night long. She would parade around the wards and one night she came on to the Female Surgical Ward and I was on my hands and knees looking under the fridge “Nurse Geoghan what are you doing?” “There’s a mouse under here Sister and I’m trying to catch him”. And she took off up the corridor and she didn’t come back again that night! We had another Night Sister who was lovely but she was a bit deaf and she would come on the Male Surgical Ward and if a man was awake she would say to him “Did you have any bet on a horse today?” If he said “yes” she wanted to know what the horse was called and she would wake up the whole ward and then a she left she would say “Give those chaps a hot drink.” We spent the rest of the night dishing out hot drinks. What else do I tell you? Mr Bedford was the Head Surgeon. He was very...I don’t know what you call him. He had no time for anyone except his Sister kind of thing. The lower ranks but he was a really good surgeon he would get on with the operation. Nobody collapsed, nobody died. We didn’t have an awful lot of time off duty. We had one and a half days a week off. We would go into Hertford town on a Saturday after payday to see the market and to buy a pair of earrings for two shillings.
JH: so you were living at the hospital at this time?
EC: We lived in the Nurse’s Home and we had a Sister who looked after us in the home called Sister Hatchett. We had to go to breakfast at 7.30 in the morning. Prior to that we had to strip our bed, put it all over the chair and at coffee time we came back and made our beds. We had tiny little bedrooms, there was a washbasin there was no central heating in those days and we had a big sitting room where we could all meet up and we had to do physical exercise in the morning.
JH: Led by the Sister
EC: Oh yes. The Home Sister.
JH: and then you ate all your meals in the Nurses Home
EC: Yes we did. One Christmas morning we came off Night Duty and we were given kippers for our breakfast and there was mashed potato with these kippers because it was dinner really and someone was there with a spoonful of mashed potato ready to do this (Flick it) when the home Sister walked through the door honestly we were a load of hooligans!
JH: So what happened?
EC: Nothing because it was Christmas she let us off but it was very strict. We had to be in at 10 o’clock at night. If we wanted to be out later than that time, we had to have permission and we had to leave the name, address and telephone number of wherever we were. We were very well looked after. It is not like nowadays where nobody seems to know where anybody is.
JH: So it was very supportive.
EC: Yes. We were well cared for. We didn’t always like the food we were given but there was no option you either ate it or you went hungry.
JH: Did you get any holidays at all?
EC: We did. I think we had about six weeks altogether. If I could afford it I would go home to Ireland but a couple of times my brother paid my fare for me because he worked in London and sadly he got killed there in 1960 age 24. Matron wasn’t very (I hope she’s gone to heaven by now) she wasn’t very humane I don’t think because when my brother was killed I took an extra day off and when I went back to report and say “I’m sorry I didn’t come in yesterday”, she sat there with a pencil in her mouth and said “well you’ve got two more brothers haven’t you”. Any how things have changed since then. We enjoyed our training and wanted to understand, I didn’t like gynaecology and if I didn’t understand the question I could ask someone else who did enjoy it. We helped each other.
JH: Yes, yes
EC: Because we had the home environment. We lived in the different homes like the student nurses home then we went up a grade into another home and we had a Night Nurses home across the road which is now a big block of flats or something and our training school was just across the road from us so we didn’t have far to go for our lectures and if Mr Bedford or Mr Stanley thought we were nodding off he would bang his fists on the table like that and we would jump sky high.
JH: So you were taught by the Doctors at the hospital?
EC: Yes we were and when it came to Preliminary Part 1 we had to go to St George’s Hospital in London and Part 2 I think we had to go back to St George’s as well to do our finals and we had in-hospital exams as well. The tutors marked those papers. We had two tutor sisters and they were very good. I don’t know what else to say really except that we all really enjoyed our time there. Nobody ever left.
JH: You must have made very good friends.
EC: Yes, one of the girls was my bridesmaid when I got married and I’m still in touch with quite a few of them all these years on.
JH: You had a good story about how you met your husband at the hospital?
EC: Yes he came in he had to have the cartilage taken out of his knee and I was on the ward with a face like a kite because I was still upset about my brother being killed and I didn’t have a boyfriend at the time though you had plenty of opportunities especially with policemen coming in to Casualty and asking you out. So he went home and he kept phoning and phoning and in the end I gave in and went out with him. That was the start of what is now 50 years on. We were married 50 years on 30 March this year.
JH: So you’ve always lived in Hertford?
EC: Yes since 1958 I came here. Time has gone so quickly I can’t believe that I’m this old. I will be 80 in September. The time has just flown because I’ve kept on working. I had my children I stayed at home with them when they were little but I used to do the odd night shift because I became a Sister at the Cottage Hospital in Cheshunt and I used to do night shifts there and then I went back full time when the boys started going to school.
JH: Was that at the Cottage Hospital or was that back here?
EC: That was at the Cottage Hospital. In between times I went to work in the operating theatre back at St Mark’s Hospital in London. I was there for what was called a Post Graduate Course in Theatre I was there for 8 months then I came back to Cheshunt. I am going backwards now. I went from Hertford County to St Mark’s and from St Mark’s back to Cheshunt and then I worked at Western House Hospital which comes under the East Herts Group.
JH: How long were you at Western House for?
EC: 5 years. I worked on the psycho geriatric ward there. That was hard going you got beaten up fairly frequently. You understood that people wouldn’t do that to you if they were in there right minds but that was part of the job.
JH: Did you come back to Hertford County?
EC: No I didn’t - you see Hertford County was discontinued as a training school. There is a picture here of us standing round trying to save it. Where is it?
JH: Don’t worry
EC: We tried to save the hospital when Bowen Wells was the MP. He said he would save it but he didn’t. Everything was moved over to QEII which upset everybody and now we’ve got just an outpatients thing. That was a really busy hospital. The surgeons would come in in the night if there was a road accident or something. It didn’t matter what time and the house surgeons or house men if there was somebody with appendicitis they would operate in the middle of the night. Mr Bedford was a brilliant bloke he would come in at any time of the day or night. Head injuries he would look after them.
JH: So it was a very busy General Hospital?
EC: It was really, really busy and we had a lovely Australian doctor who, when it snowed, decided he would go out in the middle of the night and drive his car round. There was a building in the middle of the driveway and he drove his little car round and round in the snow.
JH: May be it was the first time he’d seen snow
EC: He’d never seen any snow. Where he came from in Australia I don’t know. It’s just another bit of chat. We had the pharmacy on the ground and you could go across and get whatever the surgeons wrote up for. Mr Bedford was brilliant at writing people up for a little tiny bottle of champagne after they had an operation on their bowel or something because it was purifying and the physicians would write people up for Milk Stout , horrible looking stuff.
JH: Did this come from the pharmacy then?
EC: It did yes with the prescription. You would toddle over and get that. What else is there?
JH: So there were the General Wards and there were some specialist wards as well?
EC: There were no specialised wards as such. There was no neurological ward. There was a nursing home. A ward called the Nursing Home where people who paid went in and Sister Davis was in charge of that. She was a very quiet nice lady.
JH: That was what for people recovering from operations or people needing long term care?
EC: People who were operated on and were paying for the facility in the hospital. They were all little rooms. You had surgery and medicine. Mr Corman and Mr Bedford were the surgeons. Dr McDougall and Dr Stanley were the physicians and they looked after leg ulcers and things like that. The surgeons chopped the bad bits out of you and then there was the Children’s Ward.
JH: And did you work on that?
EC: I worked on that, you had to work on all the wards and my longstanding memory of the Children’s Ward was when I went to give a little boy a drink out of a beaker and he started to cry and I said “why are you crying” and he said nurse “I don’t want to drink out of a teapot”. It had a little spout on it and we had an Italian Sister in charge there and she was brilliant. She would never go off duty on time if there was something to be done for the children. She stayed on and we did the same, you didn’t think it’s 4.30 or 5 o’clock I’m off duty. You would carry on and finish whatever you were doing.
JH: Did you enjoy the Children’s Ward?
EC: I did except it was sad to see the tiny ones sick. They couldn’t really tell you what was wrong they would just cry and you had to assume they had pain or whatever. There were medical and surgical on the Children’s Ward. One little bit was for the surgery and one little bit was for the medical side
JH: Did the same doctors operate on the children as the grown-ups?
EC: Yes. They were General Surgeons. They would take your leg off or they would take a clot out of your head. They did everything.
JH: And in those days presumably parents couldn’t stay with their children?
EC: No
JH: So it was quite different
EC: They could stay as long as possible but there wasn’t the facility for them to sleep overnight and, of course, it didn’t really matter because the children were sleeping anyway but when I worked in a hospital in Nottingham (I worked in an isolation hospital there for a little while) and the parents weren’t allowed to come into contact with the children and when the children came in, if they had a little toy, it had to be fumigated before you could give it back to them which was upsetting but I didn’t stay there very long. I didn’t like to see the children die. It was very upsetting so that was the end of that.
JH: But at Hertford County the parents could visit as long as they wanted?
EC: Yes
JH: There were no strict visiting hours?
EC: No
JH: Were there in the other wards? Was it quite strict?
EC: It was. Sister on the wards “Everybody out!” Poor Sister Liz. She died in a home in Ware where I happened to be working at the time as a part-time nurse and I was so upset to see her but that’s life.
JH: So it was very strictly run but very well run by the sound of it?
EC: We had a man called Mr Sharples he looked after the equipment and the maintenance of the hospital. The Matron looked after the nursing side of things. She used to come round everyday and walk round the wards and ask people how they were and ask us to put our hands out so she could look at our finger nails to see that they were the proper length which I still carry on with and it was kind of like military-type. You would more or less stand to attention if you saw her coming along and she might speak to you or she might not. Mr Bedford never spoke to us. Mr Cormon would speak to us. He was the other consultant there. We got fed very well. If we were on nights we went to our meal at 2am our dinner but if there was an emergency in Casualty you had to leave that and go to Casualty and be sent down by the Night Sister.
JH: So did you work specifically in Casualty or did you all have to go there?
EC: You had to do 3 months on every ward and you had to do 3 months in Casualty , I don’t know if I should say this in front of that, but we had a lady come in once with a plaster on and this was on Day Duty and when the Sister took the plaster off all these little maggots came out of it! We all cleared off and she called us back.
JH: Nobody wanted to deal with it?
EC: No nobody wanted to deal with it and two house surgeons said “save them for us, we’re going fishing tomorrow”. They were just messing around but you know you learnt such a lot. We complained a few times that we were being taught like we were medical students but the Tutor Sister said “In years to come, you’ll be pleased” and years later, when I was a night sister at the Cottage Hospital, one of the doctor’s rang up and asked me where I did my training and, of course, being me, I said “What do you want to know for?” and he said “Well we’ve got friends in Spain and their daughter wants to be a nurse” and he said “I always consider you to be a well-trained nurse so I would recommend them to send their daughter to where you got trained” And she did, she came to the County Hospital.
JH: So it was very good
EC: It was a good recommendation. Yes all the nurses from there had a good reputation because we had to do as we were told and if you didn’t like it you were told “well you are not worth training”
JH: It sounds as if it was quite small so you had to learn everything?
EC: You did. You learnt everything. We had a lady who taught us Dietetics – how to boil an egg and how to set up a white plate and she said: “Darlings you mustn’t put two white things together on a plate” Like you had to put a carrot, a bit of cabbage and a bit of meat and all three had to be separated. You didn’t have three white things together.
JH: Why was that?
EC: Because it was more appetising to have it spread around. Three white things on a white plate didn’t look appetising so she said.
JH: But you were taught the importance of feeding patients?
EC: Oh yes and what kind of food to give people what they could tolerate. Like if you had a piece of your intestine taken away, you couldn’t eat tomatoes because the pips would go into the cut or the wound and she taught us all that. And not boiling milk so it boiled over and it lost all its goodness. All that kind of stuff.
JH: It sound very useful, important information that she gave.
EC: I can’t cook. I don’t know if when you came in the door if you smelt the burnt potatoes?
JH: But you weren’t having to cook the food?
EC: Oh no, no there was a big kitchen and we had a lovely cook sadly she’s over there now, Betty, she used to cook nice little meals for us because we were working at night and she thought we deserved nice meals. Sometimes she would buy stuff herself and bring it in if she thought it wasn’t appetising enough.
JH: That was very kind of her.
EC: Yes. The Night Sister was a bit of a tartar. The other one was good. The one who was always wanting to back the horses, she was nice.
JH: And were there social events at the hospital for the staff?
EC: We had our graduation. Barbara Cartland came to that and I think there was a dance for that. Christmas-time we used to have to go round and sing Carols to the patients with a lantern and our cloaks were turned inside-out so the red side was out. Most of the time the patients cried and we said what are we doing coming round singing Carols and upsetting the patients? It is only making them cry but the powers that be thought it was good that we did that.
JH: Because they wanted to be at home presumably?
EC: Yes, of course they did. The children and young mothers that were in there wanted to be at home they didn’t want to be in there listening to us. We didn’t have anything there. Nobody came in to sing or dance for us. Whereas when I ran the home in Cheshunt we used to get people in to sing and play the guitar for us. We used to have kids come in and dance for us. We had nothing like that.
JH: I suppose times were changing then?
EC: And you were too tired when you went off duty to do anything and you didn’t have the money to go very far. I think we went to the cinema maybe once a year. There was a cinema down where the Castle Hall is now.
JH: Yes
EC: There was a cinema there and we could go there. I don’t think we went very often.
JH: What other things could you go to in Hertford when you got your bit of time off?
EC: Not a lot. There was nothing. I don’t know I can’t recall anything like there is now – no playhouse or theatre like there is now. If you wanted to go to something like that you had to go to London and we didn’t have the money to go to London.
JH: So there were no dances or anything?
EC: No not that I can remember. We got £9 at the end of the month when we were 1st years and then it went up to £13 when you were a 2nd year. No there was nowhere to go. I suppose if you were a swimmer you could go swimming. We had a tennis court if you could play tennis which I can’t. You could play tennis or sit and watch the others do it and then they took that away to extend it into something else
JH: So there were no grounds to go out in?
EC: No there was nothing but we didn’t miss it because we were tired. When you had finished a day’s work you were running here, there and everywhere. I got into trouble because when I worked in the operating theatre the sister told me that I had to wash the socks of the surgeon .
(Phone rings – EC: “John!”)
JH: So you washed the socks of the surgeon?
EC: She said “Oh Nurse Geoghan you’ve got to wash Mr Bedford’s socks” and I said “Wash his socks?” She said yes when he has finished his list the nurses have to wash his socks. I said “I’m not washing his socks he’s got a wife” She said you’ll have to wash his socks or you’ll have to see Matron. Anyhow I wouldn’t wash his socks. I wasn’t sent to see Matron either.
JH: Were you ever asked again or was that it?
EC: No. Why should I wash his socks? I’ve washed the patients’ socks but I wouldn’t wash his socks! He’d got a wife and he had got plenty of money, she could wash his socks. So that was my life there.
JH: But looking back how did you find it?
EC: Oh I enjoyed it. I loved it. I loved it. It was a brilliant hospital. Nobody ever died of neglect and nobody was ever neglected. If they were incontinent you made sure they were washed and cleaned and you were on the look- out all the time for problems.
JH: So when you hear some of the news...
EC: When I hear some of the news now my hair stand on end. If I was a good writing person I would write to the paper and complain and send a photocopy of that thing that I’ve got there of how you had to do your work and you were marked up. You know if you didn’t do it properly you had to go back and do it again and the children would come and talk to you. I got fed up with the theatre sister once and I said to the Duty Sister “I want to leave” She said “Why?” and I said I want to be a policewoman. “Now dear sit down, if you become a policewoman, you won’t be able to work part-time. If you stay here you’ll meet lots of people like Sister in theatre and you just keep your head above water and qualify and then you can work part-time as a nurse wherever you go in the world”. And I’m glad I listened to her. I didn’t often listen to people but I listened to her.
JH: That was good advice.
EC: It was. It was very good and I’m grateful to her. I expect she has gone to heaven by now too but there is such a lot in my head and I don’t know how to explain it to you but it was a happy life. It was a hard-up life. We had no extra money for anything we had to buy all our own books all your big books you bought your medicine and surgery and things.
JH: So you had to get those yourself?
EC: Yes There is a Training School and there is a library over there and you could have a look at the books there but there were so many people who didn’t have enough money to buy their own books that would want the library so the rest of us brought our books. The nurses I trained with have gone all over the world now.
JH: Were many of the trainee nurses local or were they from all over the place?
EC: They were from all over the place. One girl was from Russia she was called ? the others were from Africa, Scotland, Ireland, Wales. I think there were only two English girls in our training school.
JH: So it was a really interesting mixture?
EC: Yes it was. My crowning glory was I got to meet the Queen Mother because my name was put in hat because I was a member of the Royal College of Nursing and our names were put in hats because we had so many tickets and mine was drawn out. So I went to St James’ Palace and had tea with the Queen Mother.
JH: And how was that?
EC: It was fantastic. She was lovely.
JH: So which year was that?
EC: ‘62 I think. It was before I was married. We had to wear our white gloves and she was looking at all our badges and the High Sheriff was with her and she said “Gracious me, it’s like the League of Nations here” and her little dogs were running along beside her. She had these lovely big earrings, what’s the red stone?
JH: Ruby
EC: Ruby and this girl next to me who was from Africa with a big thing on her head and she said “Wouldn’t it be nice if we had one of them? We could sell it and we would be very rich”. One earring!
JH: So you got to have tea with her?
EC: Yes we did. We had sausages for supper and then, again through the Royal College of Nursing, we had, it was the centenary of the College of Nursing and we had a meal at the Connaught Rooms and Harold McMillan came and I’ve got his autograph on my menu. So you know we had good things and poor things.
JH: Were there any important visitors who came to the hospital when you were working there?
EC: Some Duchess came but I can’t remember who she was. Every place was tarted up when she came.
JH: But it was more you going to these events?
EC: It was only because of an accident it wasn’t because I was me. I was just a name in a hat! And a difficult name at that! We were in our Training School when Princess Margaret came to the town and she came in her Rolls Royce and we were having a lecture from a skin specialist and he was a bit of a miserable creep. He said “You girls are not going outside to wave to that lady. You do a far better job than she does”. He wouldn’t let us go out and wave. The training school was just down from the hospital on the other side. It’s a big building now. It is a block of flats. But we were sitting gawping out of the window and he was trying to talk to us.
JH: And you saw the car go past?
EC: Yes. I have a photo of it somewhere. You can barely recognise her. Somebody leaned out of the window and did it for me. No we didn’t have anybody important. Barbara Cartland came and gave us our certificates when we qualified.
JH: And was she all dressed up in pink?
EC: Yes. She had like an ice cream cone on her head. This was dark pink and this was light pink and the top one was dark pink and she said to me...I’ve put it out to show you... and we were having sandwiches and stuff and it was given to me as a present and she said “Geoffrey come and look at this nurse's buckle” and he said “O I say it is Burmese dancers or something” but while I was having to listen to them all the sandwiches were being eaten behind my back! There was a lady ? She came too. She was giving us our certificates. We had a dance in the Shire Hall to celebrate. That was it really. That was my life.
JH: And you worked for a long time?
EC: I worked 'til I was 74.
JH: Why did you retire?
EC: Because somebody came to work who called the patients “chuck” “mate” and “darling” and I couldn’t stand it so I left. And I said to her one day “So-and-so doesn’t like being called “mate” or darling” and she said “I’m only being friendly” I said “She’s been a Headteacher all her life and she’s not used to being called names like that”. You couldn’t teach her how to be nice to people. She was nice but she was uncouth.
JH: Too casual really?
EC: Yes
JH: So times had changed too much really.
EC: She was my age and you respect people you don’t call them things they don’t want to be called and when they are admitted you ask them how they want to be addressed and if they say “Mrs, Mr, Miss Jones, Tom” whatever you use that name. You don’t call them “chuck” and “mate”. I’m getting past it I think!
JH: Well you had a long haul as a nurse?
EC: I have yes and then I trained to be a bereavement counsellor after my son was killed and I think I did a good job there because a lady has written to me to thank me for stopping her from committing suicide. She was so down in the dumps her husband had died and I went to several people. The majority of them were young people and I tried to comfort them and I did very well because they got back on their feet again.
JH: Do you still do it?
EC: No I stopped it because I had to have a new tendon fitted on my ankle and I wasn’t able to drive for a while. A lovely surgeon from Damascus did it for me in QEII and I think I got lazy then. I read and I love my garden but again I’m very wary of breaking my tendon again. He had an awful job putting an artificial one in and he couldn’t catch the bit that had snapped.
JH: So you have to be careful
EC: I used to ride a scooter up and down to Cheshunt when I was on duty there. Now I drive an automatic car.
JH: OK thanks very much, that was very interesting.