conversations with grandma: part 3

Previously I have spoken to my Grandma about her experiences of love and loss as a nurse in war torn London. She talked about the thousands and thousands of Irish men and women who, like her, came to London to make a living. Despite the invaluable work they were doing, they were almost treated like criminals. Her immigrant status meant she had to report to the police every three weeks for two years. This was at a time where signs in cafes, B&B’s and hotels read ‘No Blacks, No Irish, No Dogs’.

‘To think of all the work that the Irish did, they rebuilt their cities after the bombing!’

I ask if she ever felt she was treated differently in the hospitals because of her race.

‘Not there, not in South Mimms, never.  They did a survey and 75% of the staff were Irish! We were the most common nationality. No, they couldn’t do anything about that.’

She talks about the many different people she encountered during her time at South Mimms.

‘There were rumours that Queen Wilhelmena of Holland was there. It wasn’t known for certain, but we had mass every Sunday on a ward, C Block, and her guards would come to mass. We would say, ‘Blimey, who are they?’ We were told afterwards that’s who they were. So we met all sorts really. All nationalities. And the odd time we went down to the pub, it was full of Americans! The native English could hardly get in!’

(Wilhelmena of the Netherlands was evacuated with her family to their country estate in South Mimms after the German invasion of the Netherlands in 1940. Her South Mimms home was badly damaged by a bomb that killed some of her guards. The same bomb must have also affected the hospital my Grandma was working at.)

My Grandma speaks very highly of the women who had fled their countries after the war to look for work in Britain.

'‘When the war was over we had a number of girls who came over. They were four displaced persons from Yugoslavia who came looking for work. They’d all been to university in Belgrade and they were employed as student nurses. They were very nice and had been through so much. When they fled from the German army they would sleep in barns and hayfields by day and travel by night. The one’s health didn’t stand up to it and she died’.

My grandma must have felt a connection with these people. They all came looking for a better life in the UK.

‘We had no choice. In Ireland there was no employment. You had to leave. First of all, I was going to go to the US as I had aunts there. My mother said, ‘You’d be better off if you went there.’ But if I went I’d never have come back, for that’s how it was then. My aunts only came back once in 25 years.’

Whilst caring for the health of others my grandma had her own health problems. When she had to have a tooth extracted, there was no painkiller available.

‘There was no cocaine because it had all been sent to the forces. I had a tooth pulled out, tearing the gum. Then it went septic and I never had any pain relief.’

(Cocaine was often used as an anesthetic for procedures on the mouth. There was also a shortage of antibiotics for British civilians during the war).

As well as the impact the war had on physical health, it took its toll emotionally and mentally. A story my grandma often talks about is when she was on a night shift on the TB ward in South Mimms. She was on duty with another nurse and they were both sitting in deck chairs on the open veranda of the ward. The other nurse had fallen asleep. My grandma was aware of a buzzing noise that stopped suddenly. Just in time she realised what it was- a V1, or buzz bomb, about to fall on the hospital. She kicked the legs from under the other nurse’s deck chair to waken her and they both dived under a table. The bomb fell. When they emerged from under the table they saw that the beams from the ceiling had fallen on every bed, missing their patients by inches. It was a miracle no one was injured. When help arrived and the clearing process began, my grandma realised she couldn’t speak because of the shock. She was only given one day off work. 

On the 5th July 1948, health secretary Aneurin Bevan launched the NHS. I ask my Grandma what changed for her when the NHS was founded.

‘You sort of knew about it, but it didn’t make any difference to the staff. It was more important to the patients than to us.’

Free health care changed the face of Britain. The NHS has always relied on people like my grandma, immigrants and displaced people at the core of our health service. Our NHS still runs on the work provided by such people, people that are often not given the thanks they deserve. In fact, they become scapegoats, victims of racist attacks and blamed for our failing economy when they are the lifeblood of our public services. Without them, there would be no NHS.