Loe raamatut: «Bath Times and Nursery Rhymes: The memoirs of a nursery nurse in the 1960s»

Chapter 1

‘After you’ve had your supper, wake the night nurse, and then come to the main hall. The person on “Lates” does the mending.’

Miss Carter, the small ginger-haired nursery warden, barked her instructions at me and left the room. I was doing my first ‘Lates’ duty in a children’s residential nursery run by Surrey County Council. The year was 1961. Yuri Gagarin had become the first man to go into outer space, The Beatles were at the start of their phenomenal success, you could buy a house for two thousand pounds and I was just sixteen.

I had arrived from my village home in Dorset a week before; my only possession, a small brown suitcase and my one ambition, to get a qualification with letters after my name. Adopted at birth, I had grown up as the daughter of my natural mother’s best friend in a small village on the Hampshire-Dorset border. My father had been an American GI, who came to this country for the D-Day landings in France and most likely perished there. He was obviously a person of colour because I have an olive skin and at that time, tight curly hair. I had left school in July and began my working life in Woolworths on the broken biscuit counter. I had no real idea of what I wanted in life but it certainly didn’t include broken biscuits or a promotion to the ladies’ personal items counter, which was on offer as soon as I’d done three months’ probation. Selling ‘bunnies’ (the name we gave sanitary towels because of the loop at each end which you fastened to the belt) didn’t really do it for me. The trouble was, there were few other opportunities in my part of rural Dorset. Max Factor had a large factory near Poole and paid well but that was about it. They laid on a bus to collect their workers from round our way so, because I would have no problem in getting to work, my dad was keen for me to join them. I hated the idea of working in a factory even more than selling bunnies.

‘Not good enough for you?’ he challenged. Dad and I were always at loggerheads.

‘No, it isn’t that,’ I said confidently. ‘I don’t want to be stuck indoors all day and besides, I want a training. I want to make something of my life.’

He harrumphed and made it plain that I couldn’t manage that so of course I had to prove him wrong. I was determined to find something which would give me a certificate and a qualification at the end of it. The only problem was, what? As soon as I could, I spent my lunch hour with the careers officer in the little market town of Ringwood where I worked, and collected a sheaf of brochures.

I could join the Navy – I quite fancied that. I spent the next few evenings browsing through and drooling over the pictures of all those handsome young sailors … but as yet I was far too young (I had to be eighteen) and besides, they said you had parade ground duties and the thought of all that marching put me off a bit. What if I became a secretary? But the thought of hours and hours sitting in a typing pool and not being allowed to talk was a complete no-no. My ambition even reached as far as becoming a barrister but that was only because I loved the idea of wearing a wig and gown and arguing in court (thanks to Dad, I was an expert when it came to arguing). But when I looked into it, I didn’t have the right education. There was no chance of going to university because Dad was a bricklayer and my Mum cleaned people’s houses for 2s 6d an hour. Whatever I did, I had to pay my own way. I toyed with the thought of nursing but there are certain things in life which have no appeal at all and dealing with brimming bedpans was one of them. I had worked my way through the whole pile of brochures when I came across a leaflet on being a nursery nurse. It fitted the bill beautifully. What’s more, Surrey County Council offered to train a girl in exchange for a commitment to work an extra year in a nursery when she had passed the NNEB, the initials given to the certificate issued by the National Nursery Examination Board. I sent off the forms and to my absolute delight, got an interview. Mum and I travelled to Kingston upon Thames together and went to County Hall. By the end of the day, I’d been told I was accepted by the person conducting the interview, Miss Fox-Talbot, who was supervisor for children’s residential homes and senior child care officer for the county. A week later I received a letter confirming my appointment. It laid out the terms of my training contract, and my pay. I was to be paid £194 a year, in accordance with the statutory agreement with Whitley Council of the Health Service, less £101 a year for my board and lodging. This equated to £1.79 a week in today’s money, however all was not lost. After a year’s service my wage would increase, giving me an extra £11 per annum! The letter included a list of clothing I would need to bring with me. Despite having a grammar school education and leaving with three GCEs, I had to report to Guildford and take an entrance exam to ascertain my level of education and I also had to arrange to have a chest X-ray. It was very exciting because once all that was done, I was at last taking the first steps towards my career.

Now that I was actually employed in a nursery, I had to make it work. Because I was a minor, Dad had been asked to sign a contract as my guarantor, which committed him to paying back any expenses the council had incurred, should I give up before the end of my training. Because of that, I was more than anxious to please people. It didn’t take me long to work out that if someone in authority said you should do something, you didn’t argue, you just did it.

Because I was on ‘Lates’, I had to have my supper half an hour before the other girls. Alone in the staff room for the first time since I had arrived a week before, I ate my supper – lukewarm tin tomatoes on soggy toast – and gulped down a mug of scalding dark brown tea. I cleared away the dirty crockery and reset my place for someone else. I looked at the clock. It was almost seven p.m. so I went into the hall, where the other members of staff had gathered before going off duty. No one spoke to me. The bell went for supper and once again I was left alone.

The first thing I had to do was check on the children. They were all in bed of course and hopefully already asleep. The dormitory rooms were dimly lit but I checked that they were still covered by their blankets and made sure they had their special toy in the bed with them. One or two were still awake so I tousled a head here and there or gave them a goodnight kiss.

Before I went for my supper, I had been shown a small cloakroom and a box full of dirty shoes. I found the shoe polish and set to work. The shoes were all different colours so I polished all the red shoes first, then the blue ones, the brown and finally, the black ones. After that, I had to find the owner (the inside of the shoes were marked with the child’s name) and put the clean shoes on top of their pile of clothes ready for the morning. That done, I returned to the main hall and looked into the mending basket. There was a jacket with a button missing, a skirt with a torn hem, a coat with a ripped pocket and a pair of trousers with a broken zip. The zip looked far too complicated and surely I would need a sewing machine to do that, so all things considered, I reached for the button box and sat down.

It was taking a bit of getting used to but everybody used abbreviated names for our various duty times. ‘Lates’ meant that a girl (who had already been working since seven in the morning) would come off duty at six-thirty in the evening, eat a quick supper and then go back to work until nine o’clock, when the night nurse arrived. Sometimes, the night nurse would arrange with a friend to do a ‘Stand-in’. That meant the friend would come back on duty at nine and the night nurse could have an evening out before going on duty.

As it turned out, that evening Miss Carter was doing a ‘Stand-in’ for Nurse Adams. I carried on with the mending in between checking the children about every twenty minutes. The nursery was quiet. Everyone was asleep. Miss Carter came to relieve me at nine, assuming that her friend had already gone out with her boyfriend, and I went into the staff room to enjoy some TV.

There were three girls in the sitting room. One was writing a letter at the table, a second was cutting her toenails over a wastepaper basket. Only the third girl looked up when I walked in. Isolde worked in the Toddler room, a tall girl and, at nineteen, older than me, with very short fair hair and mischievous eyes, was more interested in travelling than working with children. A free spirit, she made no secret of the fact that she hated the discipline and routine in the nursery.

‘Well?’ she said. ‘How was your day?’

‘Fine,’ I lied.

‘Good for you,’ she murmured. ‘Personally, I can’t stick this bloody place. I’m jacking it in. Three months of this hell on earth is quite enough for me.’

I stood in the doorway, feeling a bit awkward. What should I say to that? I hated it too and I was homesick as well, which was something I certainly hadn’t bargained for. I had thought I might miss Mum and Dad and the dog a bit, but I had this gnawing ache in the pit of my stomach all the time. It made me feel ill and I couldn’t eat properly. I couldn’t admit defeat but already I was beginning to think anything would have been better than this, even the make-up factory or selling bunnies. The staff were so unfriendly, I was terrified of putting a foot wrong and the work was relentless and hard. I longed to be back in the little two-up, two-down cottage where I had grown up and already, the draughty little sitting room with its meagre coal fire had taken on a romantic, rosy hue. I swallowed hard. I mustn’t start crying again – they would all think I was a big baby. Surely things couldn’t get any worse?

‘Don’t just stand there,’ said the girl cutting her toenails. ‘For goodness sake put the wood in the hole. You’re creating a hell of a draught from where I’m sitting.’

I slunk in, closed the door and sat on the edge of the chair. It was Wednesday night and on the TV, the credits for Wagon Train were already rolling against a backdrop of the dashing Flint McCullough played by handsome Robert Horton. I sighed. Things had just got a whole lot worse. It was my favourite programme and I’d missed it.

All at once the door burst open and a furious-looking girl burst into the room. The door banged against the table behind it and an HP sauce bottle on the top fell over. The girl’s blonde hair was dishevelled and her eyes still red and puffy from sleep.

‘Who was on Lates?’ she blazed.

I gulped. That was me. Oh Lord, what had I done wrong? Think, I told my panicking brain. What did you forget? I went through everything I’d done in a split second. I’d done the mending (apart from the zip), I’d remembered to check the children every twenty minutes and when Miss Carter took over, everything was fine. I’d polished twenty-two pairs of shoes, hung up the nappies in the laundry, and put out the drinks tray ready for the morning. What else? Whatever it was, it was obvious who was to blame. Everyone else in the sitting room looked up at her in mild surprise. I was the only one who was beetroot red and already feeling utterly suicidal.

‘Me,’ I squeaked as I tried to make my voice sound as small as I could.

‘Why the hell didn’t you wake me?’ she bellowed.

‘Wake you?’

‘The person on Lates is supposed to wake the night nurse,’ she shouted.

‘Er … I’m sorry …’ I tried my best to ignore the fact that she was standing there, screaming at me with only her see-through nightie on. ‘Nobody told me.’

Actually, that was a lie. Miss Carter had told me but I had forgotten.

‘You stupid little fool!’ she ranted. ‘I was supposed to be meeting my boyfriend at eight!’

‘I’m sorry …’

‘What am I going to tell him? More importantly how am I going to tell him? I don’t even have his phone number!’ She was beginning to sound hysterical.

‘I’m sorry …’

‘You stupid idiot. You’ve ruined my whole life …’

‘I … I’m sorry …’

‘Didn’t Miss Carter tell you to wake me?’

I shook my head. ‘No.’

That was another lie and now I had a new dread. What if Miss Carter walked in right now and heard me saying she hadn’t told me to wake the night nurse? I looked anxiously over Nurse Adams’ shoulder.

‘I’m sorry …’

‘And stop saying you’re sorry, you silly cow!’

‘I … I’m …’

I froze. She was so angry I felt sure she was going to hit me. She glared for a few seconds and then swept out of the room and slammed the door. This time the glass in the window frame shook.

‘Ha, ha, ha!’ Isolde rolled herself backwards on the sofa and kicked her feet in the air. ‘That was terrific. What a laugh!’

‘Actually,’ I confessed, ‘I think Miss Carter might have mentioned waking the night nurse.’

‘Who cares,’ Isolde laughed.

‘Serves her right,’ said the girl cutting her toenails. Her voice was toneless. ‘She always was a stuck-up old cow!’

‘Miss Carter?’

‘No, you goon! Audrey Adams.’

I was too upset to comment. ‘I think I’ll go to bed,’ I said, slinking out of the room.

Oh Lord, what had I done? I had signed myself up to a year in this place, then two years training in another nursery and finally a further year somewhere else when I’d finished my training. Alone in my room, I undressed and lay my head on my pillow. I wept silent tears as I wondered just how much of the money my dad would have to pay the council if I turned up on the doorstep tomorrow. Should I go and see Matron in the morning and tell her I wanted to go home? But even as the thought entered my head, I knew I wouldn’t do it. Somehow, I had to stick this out.

The person in charge, Matron Thomas, lived in a flat within the building. Matron was a highly-strung woman, who constantly complained about ‘having a dreadful head’. We didn’t see a lot of her except perhaps when there was a new admission, or the parents came to visit. We would hear her coming, her blue nylon overall with its pleated skirt rustling as she walked into the nursery, usually to complain that the children were too noisy or somebody had left something where it shouldn’t be. She was a little aloof but came down on us like a ton of bricks if she saw something she disapproved of.

Life in those nurseries was hard. A lot has been written about the injustice done to the children, and quite rightly so. It’s heartbreaking to hear about children being beaten and abused, especially in a place which is supposed to be a place of care, but I have to say that in the nurseries where I worked, everybody did their best to give the children a happy experience. Sometimes the girls, myself included, took a child out on their days off. We would buy an extra toy out of our own money for the children who were upset and we were always there for a quick cuddle when it was needed. The rigid routine was hard for the free- spirits like Isolde but equally difficult for people like me. I didn’t mind being told what to do, but sometimes it felt as if I was owned body and soul by those in charge of the nursery and it was hard to please everybody.

At sixteen I was only a few years older than the oldest child, and we nursery assistants were all treated like dogs. We worked a twelve-hour stretch, with two hours off during the day. Off duty was either 9.30–11.30, 2–4 or best of all 5–7, because tea was at 4.30, so it meant you had an extra half hour and a lovely long evening to yourself. Having that afternoon break was a definite advantage in the summer, but the evening was great if you were going out. We were only allowed to stay out until ten p.m., or if you had a ‘Late Pass’, you could stay out until 10.45 p.m. It made having a social life hard because by the time you’d come off duty at seven and got ready, you were lucky to have two hours away from the Home. Matron Thomas didn’t seem to understand that dances went on until 11 p.m. and had hardly warmed up by the time you had to leave and catch the bus. It was tough if you were going to the pictures as well. You didn’t always get to see the end of the film because you had to make the bus stop in time for the last bus up the hill. I saw most of the films of the day in two halves. You could walk into the pictures any old time so I would get there in time to see the end of one showing and then stay for the beginning. Whistle Down the Wind, A Taste of Honey, Carry on Regardless … I saw them all, back to front. And when you got back to the nursery, if you rang the doorbell to get in after 10.45 p.m. you would forfeit some of your precious off duty another time.

Anyone out after 10.45 p.m. was, according to Matron Thomas, ‘up to one thing and one thing only.’ She was probably right. We would be up to one thing and one thing only – running like mad up the hill because we’d missed the bus and we wanted to get to the door before 10.45 p.m!

We did ‘Lates’ two evenings a week and everybody had to take turns to do ten nights of night duty, which lasted from 9 p.m. until 8 a.m. After the ten nights on duty, the bonus was that you got two days off together. Normally we had one day off a week but you could never guarantee when it would be. You might get Monday off one week and then Saturday the following week, which meant you’d work eleven days on the trot. Because of the uncertainty, it was hard to commit to anything outside the nursery or to join a club.

Not only did we work long hours but we also had very low pay. My first salary was nine pounds, four shillings (nine pounds, twenty pence), which in today’s money worked out at two pounds, thirty pence a week! That was for six weeks’ work because we always worked ‘two weeks in lieu’, as they called it. That meant when you left a post, you would get the extra two weeks pay in your final wage packet. And when I started my training a year later, my salary actually went down because the council took back some money to offset the cost of training me. As a result, for two years, from 1962–64, I had an average of six pounds, fourteen shillings a month. At that time, a shop girl would be on three pounds, five shillings a week – i.e. thirteen pounds a month, but of course she would have to pay her living expenses out of that. Our wage was what they called ‘all found’, which meant all living expenses had already been taken out.

Life in the nursery was also very insular. With so little time off duty, the rest of the world passed us by. Of course we saw the news on TV, but the milestones of history meant little to us at the time. But perhaps that’s always the case – you only realise the importance of an event with the passing of the years. Hence, the inauguration of President Kennedy in January 1961 was only worthy of note because he was relatively young at the time. By comparison Harold Macmillan, our own Prime Minister, seemed like a dinosaur. Personally, I found listening to The Shirelles singing what I considered the best song ever written, ‘Will You Still Love Me Tomorrow’ on my Dansette radio far more exciting.

Back in my room after upsetting Nurse Adams, I lay on my back, staring at the ceiling as I chewed over the events of the day. The room itself was a mishmash of conflicting colours. The walls had two completely different wallpapers, both floral, but neither of them complemented the other. One was a very busy flowery pattern in predominantly yellows and browns while the other three walls had pink flowers on a bright blue background. The candlewick counterpanes were both purple but not matching and the furniture – two bedside lockers, two chests of drawers, one with its own built-in mirror – were a heavy dark brown. There was a kitchen chair painted white in one corner and an easy chair with wooden arms and mustard yellow fabric covering the seat in the other. The curtains were yet another floral pattern. Above the door was a plain glass window, which let in the light from the corridor.

When I had arrived at the nursery the week before, I was told I would be sharing my room with another girl but as yet, I hadn’t met her. She’d been on holiday when I arrived but the others had done their best to fill me in.

‘Her dad’s a vicar,’ said Margaret.

‘And she’s very religious,’ Isolde informed me. ‘She sings hymns all night. And of course,’ she went on, ‘she’s an awful lot older than you.’

I could just picture her. She was bound to be an ancient po-faced religious bigot, who would spend all her time trying to force me to join in with her holy activities. Oh boy, I could hardly wait to meet her! I switched off the light and sometime later, she crept in, but after my brush with Nurse Adams I didn’t feel much like singing hymns, so I rolled over and pretended to be asleep.

When the night nurse brought us our early morning cup of tea at six, Hilary and I peered gingerly at each other over our bedclothes. Her appearance was quite a shock. She was older than me, but only by a couple of years, and she was slim and attractive with dark curly hair and an engaging smile. It turned out that her dad was indeed a vicar, but she never let that deter her from doing exactly what she wanted.

When we got to know each other we discovered that the others had good-naturedly done their best to wind both of us up. Apparently I was from the deepest part of Africa and my father had been a missionary-eating cannibal! They had been so convincing, she was really nervous about sleeping in the same room as me.

Hers was the first really friendly face I’d seen at the nursery. She was working with the toddlers and I was in the baby room, but the house wasn’t that big. We’d wave to each other, or meet at meal times and have a chat and she promised that if we could both wangle the same day off, she would arrange to take me to her house. From the moment I met her I began to feel a whole lot better. She was lively and fun to be with, but she also had a dare-devil streak. Hilary wasn’t afraid to try new things and with someone to lead the way, I wasn’t either! I began to feel that perhaps being a nursery assistant wasn’t so bad after all.

The home had about thirty children altogether. They were in care for many different reasons. Homelessness was the main one but some had a sick parent who had no one to look after them while they were in hospital; some had been ill-treated or were living with parents who couldn’t cope with small children; some parents were alcoholics or had no job and no income; others were in the process of being adopted. Some stayed for only a few days while others were in the home for long periods of time, perhaps years. Apart from the times when we all met in the garden, the children were totally segregated by their ages. The rooms were divided into Babies, Tweenies and Toddlers. The Baby room took the little ones until they were a year old, the Tweenies were aged one to two years old and the Toddlers room was for the three to fives.

As a direct result of this policy, it would churn me up to see brothers and sisters clinging desperately to each other when they met. No one had, as yet, realised the devastating effect this kind of separation had on the children. The poor kids must have felt punished for something they didn’t understand and at times the feelings of loneliness must have been unbearable. Cut off from a mother and sometimes a father too, your brother or sister might be somewhere in the building but you’d only catch a glimpse of them once in a while. You would be put in a room full of strangers behind a closed door and it must have been very hard to adjust. We were all taught to obey the routine at all costs, which was hard enough when you’re sixteen and you’ve made your own choice, but when you were only three, how bewildering life must have seemed. The whole routine in Tweenies seemed to revolve around potty training. The basic philosophy appeared to be pot them every half an hour and they will be trained! As a consequence we gave them breakfast and went to the toilet. The children played for half an hour, either in the Tweenie room or in the garden, and then went to the toilet. We took them for a walk and then they went to the toilet, etc. etc. all through the day.

For all its faults, routine brought stability into the children’s lives and we never ill-treated anybody. It may have seemed a little cold at times because very close attachments were frowned upon. The staff would probably move on in life, whereas the child would have to remain; the thinking was that the child had to be protected from another sense of loss and bereavement when you left. The trouble is, we all crave relationships and this edict left a lot of children feeling unloved and unwanted. Yes, the system was misguided but for all that, I remember lots of laughter and plenty of cuddles.

I began my career in the Baby room. It was a light airy room with six little babies in six little cots. It was considered a great privilege for a nursery assistant like me to be allowed to even touch a baby and in those first few days I certainly wasn’t permitted to hold one. First, I had to prove my worth. This meant endless floor polishing, bin changing and nappy washing. The floors were like mirrors, and as my mother would say, ‘you could eat your dinner off them.’ Every day it was part of the routine to sweep, wash and polish them. The sweeping and washing was done by hand and on your knees, as was the application of the polish. The nursery had an electric polisher to get a decent shine, but it was a real skill learning how to use it. Press the control on the handle a little too hard and you’d be flying around the room and banging into everything. Press too lightly and you couldn’t get a decent shine off the linoleum floor. The whole exercise was a back-breaking and thankless task.

Before I was allowed to handle the babies, my other job was nappy washing. Funnily enough, bearing in mind my squeamishness about bedpans, I didn’t mind doing it and besides, they taught us how to make an art form out of it. All the nappies were sluiced in the nursery, and then rinsed in cold water in the laundry. The laundry itself was outside the main building and cold, freezing cold in winter. It was also dark and damp. After the nappies had been boiled for what seemed like forever in huge boilers like vats, they were pulled, scalding hot, over to the sinks with wooden tongs. (I wonder what today’s Health and Safety regulations would make of that!) Then we rinsed them twice by hand and spun them in an industrial spin-dryer. When I arrived at the nursery, the industrial spin-dryer wasn’t working so we had a domestic one. There was a loose connection on the lid so you had to sit on it in order to make it work. It really shook your bottom but one girl reckoned she’d lost pounds by sitting on it, so nobody minded too much. Soap powder was strictly rationed and Matron Thomas watched us like a hawk. We were constantly suspected of using the washing powder for our own clothes but poor as we were, none of us wanted to wash our clothes in those stinking soapsuds. They smelled like Jeyes Fluid (a very pungent disinfectant with a distinctive smell of its own) and stale lavender all rolled into one.