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

The house was set in quite large grounds. There was plenty of space for the children to run around, but they had few toys. Miss Carter, the nursery warden (a kind of nursery teacher), kept the better things under lock and key. Some of them only put in an appearance on special occasions, usually when someone important came to visit the home. Appearances were all-important, and money was tight. I remember one time when we had had a delivery of something in three large boxes. We put the boxes in the playroom and the children had a wonderful time playing in them. It all came to an abrupt halt when Cassie fell over and sliced the top of her finger off on the edge of the box. Of course Matron Thomas went bananas, not only because the poor child had been injured but also because the powers that be would be onto her like a ton of bricks. Cassie was rushed to hospital for treatment (she was fine and amazingly, her fingertip grew back) but the boxes were removed and banned.

The nursery backed onto a park and we often took the children for walks there. We never simply ‘fancied a stroll’ – each walk had to have an objective in view. It might be to pick flowers, or to spot how many different kinds of car we could find, or to look for wildlife in the park. The idea was to teach the children how to be observant and to help them foster a keen interest in what was going on around them. Of course in talking to them we were also giving them a good command of language and understanding. Sometimes a child’s comment would raise a bit of a smile. Mark was nearly two years old. Back in the nursery, we were showing the children pictures of the things we had seen on our walk. ‘Look,’ I said, ‘a tree.’

Mark studied the picture and beamed. ‘One, two, tree,’ he said.

Because they were so young, we couldn’t do much with the babies. We sometimes took them for ‘walks’ but of course they slept a lot. When they were awake, I was taught to speak to them even if they didn’t understand and I began to see that it was a wonderful way of creating a bond between child and carer. The big prams meant that the baby always faced the person pushing it so it was easy to keep up a conversation with the baby. The modern buggies have the child facing away from the person pushing it and although it means the child can see what’s coming rather than what has passed, something is lost in the relationship he can have with his nurse. I didn’t stay in the Baby room all the time. We were constantly being moved around so that we could have a well-balanced understanding of the needs of the children in our care. When I was with the toddlers, the girl in charge of the room even wanted them to listen for and recognise bird song when we went out for walks. I had lived in the country all my life so I could easily recognise the birds we heard in the park – blackbird, pigeon and the occasional robin, but those who had been city dwellers all their lives struggled a bit. The nursery warden never liked us to use slang words either. For instance we had to teach the children that it wasn’t a ‘conker’ tree but a horse chestnut tree and it was never a ‘doggie’ but a dog.

Being observant wasn’t exclusively for the park setting. We had to use the same values when we walked about in the built-up areas or down the town. Thus the children knew all about zebra crossings, pillar boxes and the blue and white police box (made famous in later years by Dr Who), where members of the public could dial 999 were all part of our outdoor classroom.

When we went out we were expected to walk in such a way that the children felt happy to talk to us. Of course if the staff went out in convoy or just two prams, with toddlers walking beside it, we would talk to each other but the children took priority and we would answer any question as fully as we could.

Whenever we crossed the road we took time to teach the children Kerb Drill. The mantra was ‘Halt! Look. Quick March!’ The Royal Society for the Prevention of Accidents issued a booklet about the adventures of Tufty Fluffytail, a red squirrel, in 1953. Tufty was the invention of Elsie Mills MBE and proved to be so popular that in 1961 they formed The Tufty Club for under five-year-olds, which in its heyday had two million members. Kerb Drill was eventually replaced by the much simpler The Green Cross Code – ‘Stop, look, listen and when it’s safe, cross carefully’.

I enjoyed the walks in the park best. I remember running with the children through the autumn leaves and together we’d throw them in the air. Sometimes we stood as still as statues to watch a deer walking in the distance and in the summer we’d see the day-trippers and families having picnics. We tried to encourage the older children to run whenever they could do so safely to burn up their excess energy and also to strengthen their legs. Often the home conditions they’d come from meant that so far they hadn’t had a very healthy upbringing. They may not have had a healthy diet before they were brought into care and that could have affected their mobility and climbing skills. Some had been stuck in high-rise flats with no play areas or in one room with several other siblings and a sick parent. Being in the park always brought fun times and laughter. One day we found some blackberries. It was late in the season so they weren’t all that wonderful and some had maggots but we managed to eat a couple straight from the bush. I was also taught never to laugh at a child, so when Alice got back to the nursery and she told one of the other girls all about it, I suppressed a grin.

‘Did you bring some back for me?’ asked Hilary.

‘Oh no,’ said Alice gravely. ‘They were full of magnets!’

It was important to make sure we allowed enough time for the walk home. If we had been running about in the park, the children might be feeling tired. If we had a pushchair all well and good, but for the children walking beside the pushchair we had to make sure we didn’t overtax them.

When we were out for walks it was a good opportunity to talk about stranger danger and that the man in the policeman’s uniform is our friend. Back in the nursery, we would sometimes create a street in the playground and give the children the opportunity to practise crossing the road in front of a child in a pedal car or on a bike. It was done in such a way that it was a fun game but we were reinforcing attitudes and understanding which would be invaluable as they got older.

Up until I’d wanted to be a nursery nurse, I had always regarded play as something children did to while away the time. It had never occurred to me that play was important to a child’s development. I began to understand that play was not simply a way of letting off high spirits and excess energy but it was also an outlet for emotions and helped children to prepare for life. We often learned a lot about a child’s history by the way he or she played. When Sarah was in the Wendy house, she handed a dolly by the foot to Ian, saying, ‘Here, you can have the little bugger – he’s driving me bloody mad!’ It didn’t take much imagination to work out what might have been going on in her home before she was taken into care.

The staff in the nursery helped me to notice how children played. I began to see that play helped them develop social skills as well. Up until a child is about two years old, they mostly play on their own. From two years onward, they are aware of another child and play in a parallel way. In the Wendy house, for example, they’d still play their own game, but they were now conscious of the other children with them. It’s only as they get older that children learn the concept of sharing, taking turns and finally creating a world of their own together.

I began to see how concentration developed. It might start with building a short tower of bricks or making a simple puzzle, but it would gradually move to more complex games. By the time a child had progressed into Toddlers, it was possible to play simple board games like Lotto, where you match animal cards, with an adult. Play not only helped the children develop intellectually but it also helped with their physical progress. Their large muscles were strengthened by climbing, jumping, running, pushing and pulling, while their smaller muscles developed by picking up and placing things or painting, modelling with clay or playing with the water tray. Even in the Baby room I saw them changing. At first a baby would use the third finger and palm to pick something up and then that progressed to the thumb and forefinger as hand and eye coordination got better. Even throwing toys out of the pram meant the baby was using his arm or learning how to release his fingers.

Perhaps the most intimate form of interaction between the staff and the children came through storytelling. I have always loved storytelling myself, which is why whenever a child asked for a story I was keen to do it. The book corner was well stocked with good books. The children had their own little chairs and we always tried to make it homely so there was an adult chair where we could sit with a child on our lap, if required. Books which talked down to children were frowned upon, which is why we didn’t have a single Enid Blyton book in any of the council nurseries. It didn’t matter that children adored her books. I had been one of them. I’d read all the Famous Five books and the Secret Seven but in the early 1960s, probably because she had dominated the children’s book market for so long, the professionals were quick to voice their disapproval. Later, when I moved on and became a nursery student my college lecturer, Mrs Davies, quoted from Enid Blyton. Apparently she once told a reporter, ‘I sit at the typewriter and it just drips from my fingers.’

I’m sure if she did say such a thing, Enid Blyton meant it in an entirely different way but Mrs Davies wrinkled her nose in scorn and said, ‘Well, that sums up her writing skill perfectly.’

The sort of stories which met with approval were books like The Happy Lion by Louise Fatio, Millions of Cats by Wanda Gag and anything by Beatrix Potter. Magic was considered taboo for the under-fives (I don’t know why), as were very ‘wordy’ stories.

One thing always puzzled me. When I had gone to the council offices for my interview for the job, like all those before and after me, I’d met the nursery supervisor for the council, Miss Fox-Talbot. A formidable woman, she was short and stocky in build but famed for her fabulous hats and her racy red mini car. She told my mother and me that my uniform would be ‘an attractive pink gingham dress’. It turned out to be a shapeless, round-necked garment with a matching covered belt and a Peter Pan collar. It had three rubber buttons down the front, so that they could be boiled, and apparently size twenty fitted everybody. The skirt was just below the knee and considering the rest of the world was waking up to the sack dress and later on, the mini skirt, we all hated it. Most girls hoiked up the skirt and took in the sides in an effort to look a little more twentieth century than eighteenth century.

The thing that puzzled me was this. In the letter Miss Fox-Talbot had sent me was a list of things I’d need to take with me to the nursery. At the bottom of the page, alongside a toothbrush and comb, it said two pairs of ‘garden knickers’. My mother and I scratched our heads. What on earth were garden knickers?

I was all for leaving it, but much to my acute embarrassment, Mum dragged me round all the major stores in Bournemouth but in every single department we were met by blank stares. Mum even insisted we go to a corset department where some old fossil, who had probably been working in the shop since Mrs Noah left the ark, suggested they might be powder blue silk drawers with an elasticated waist and long legs, which stretched as far as the knee. As soon as I saw them, I recognised them as the type of garment my old granny used to wear. I rarely, if ever, defied my mother but I put my foot down right there and then.

‘There is no way I’m going to wear them!’ I said in front of the shocked assistant. ‘I’ll work in the garden with no knickers at all if necessary, but I won’t wear them!’

I worked for the council for four years. Nursery assistants like me came and went. We discussed the subject of garden knickers ad infinitum but I don’t think any one of us ever discovered what they looked like and although I never carried out my threat to go bare bottom in the garden, I certainly never wore my granny’s silk drawers.

Chapter 3

One early morning we got a call. It was an emergency admission. A mum had been rushed to hospital with internal bleeding. It was possibly a miscarriage so there was no telling how long or short her stay would be. If Mum had already lost her baby, it would only be for a few days. If the baby had survived, it may mean months of complete bed rest until it was born. Whatever happened, someone had to look after her other child, a little boy. The problem was that Mum and Dad were Polish and only spoke Polish.

We had never had a Polish child before, and the prospect of such a child coming to the nursery threw everyone into a complete flap. It was nothing to do with prejudice – after all, we had children whose parents had come from the four corners of the world. They might be West Indian, African, mixed race, English, Irish or Welsh but they were dealing with the same problems as everyone else. Homelessness, illness and unemployment can come to anybody. The problem here was that nobody spoke Polish. How were we going to communicate with the poor child? Our sympathies were aroused. To be torn from the arms of your mother would be bad enough, but to be thrust into a situation where you were unable to communicate or make yourself understood would be horrendous.

We wanted to make the usual preparations but even that wasn’t possible. Usually by the time a child arrived in the nursery a pile of clothes would be waiting, and once we were sure of the size, each item marked with the child’s name. The child’s personal clothes would be put into a box and kept until he or she was ready to leave the nursery for good. No one had told us the name of the child or whether we were to expect a boy or a girl.

About half an hour later, a police car drew up outside and a WPC climbed out of the back seat with the child in her arms. To everyone’s surprise Robin Kowalski turned out to be eight months old and his mother was English so there was no need for an interpreter after all! He was a delightful baby. As bald as a coot, he was quite content even though his mother wasn’t with him. Robin only stayed a while. Sadly his mother had a complete miscarriage and she would nurse her pain and loss for years to come. Robin accepted his lot and smiled his toothless grin as a few days later we waved him goodbye and good luck.

I had only been in the nursery a couple of months when I began to feel increasingly ill. I was born with narrow Eustachian tubes in my ears and so a cold quite often resulted in me going deaf. Usually after a few days, my hearing would return and I’d be back on top but in the winter of 1961–62 my cold simply got worse and worse, and I remained completely deaf for more than a week.

I desperately wanted to go to the doctor but I was under the impression that I needed Matron’s permission to do so. She exploited that belief and kept me working. In fact, rather than address the problem, she put me on night duty. It was not a good move. She had removed the problem of everyone having to shout at me and the irritation people feel when they can’t make a deaf person understand what they want, but how could I possibly look after the children properly if I couldn’t hear them? At least in the daytime there were other people about to cover my back and make sure the children were well cared for.

One night, as I was preparing the children’s morning orange juice, Miss Carter appeared in the kitchen. It was the wee small hours of the morning and she was in her night clothes and dressing gown. Using hand signals, she made me go into the night nursery. When I switched on the light, every child was sitting up in bed and screaming. I have no idea who or what started them off, probably one child waking up after having a bad dream, but I hadn’t heard a thing. Even when I was standing in the room, I still couldn’t hear them.

By the time I came to the end of my ten nights, I was feeling a tad better. I went home to West Moors and a couple of days of Mum’s cooking and pampering had me feeling a lot better. However, as soon as I got back into the nursery, I was ill again and before long, I had two lumps in my neck. The pain was becoming unbearable but still Matron turned a blind eye. I should have just gone to the doctor myself but by then I had learned that the way you spelled the word Matron was G-O-D. She cleverly avoided my pleas to have time off to go and see him.

One day, I had two hours off duty in the afternoon and I was feeling so lousy I went to bed. I was supposed to be back on duty at 4.30 but when someone came to find me, I refused to get up. ‘I’m too ill to get up,’ I whined. ‘I need a doctor.’

The girl went away and about half an hour later, one of the more senior staff came to summon me to Matron’s office. To say that Matron Thomas was unsympathetic would be an understatement. She gave me a right rollicking, threatening to write to my mother to say I was not fit to be a nursery nurse and to ask her to take me home. I was devastated. To get a qualification was the only thing I really wanted. I couldn’t bear the thought of failure. How could I go back to the village with my tail between my legs? I’d endured months of homesickness, which still hadn’t fully gone away, and the slave-like conditions and now she was threatening to stop me from going for my training. She finished off by telling me to go back on duty at once.

‘But I need a doctor,’ I whimpered.

‘Then go,’ she said. ‘And when he sees you, he’ll tell you you’re making it up. He’ll tell you there’s nothing wrong with you.’

I crawled away in tears. The doctor was a bus ride away. My head was banging, I felt dizzy and sick but if I was to get that sick note, I had to get there somehow. I had to make my own way and I was unfamiliar with the roads. Being completely deaf didn’t help either. If I asked directions, I couldn’t hear them and it will surprise you how often people turn their heads away from you as they give directions. Without seeing the person’s mouth, with perhaps the small hope that I could lip read, it was useless. The night itself was foggy and dark. The Clean Air Act had been in force since 1956, so the fog wasn’t as bad as the infamous London pea soupers but it certainly added to the stress of the journey.

Sitting in the waiting room, waiting for my turn, I only knew I’d been called when several other patients gesticulated towards the doctor’s office. He examined me and told me off for coming out with a temperature of 102ºF, but he signed me off sick. I was so relieved.

Next I had to find a chemist to get the prescription made up. I dared not turn up without my medication. Matron Thomas would have left it until the next day before sending anyone out for it and I was desperate to be well again.

With my medicine safely in my pocket I set off for the nursery again but in my misery, I got on the wrong bus and added a half-hour walk to my destination. Matron was furious when I got back and gave her the sick note. She snatched it from me and the look on her face said it all; she obviously hadn’t expected the doctor to sign me off. Her pet worry was that the nursery would be short-staffed and so girls worked all the time when they were unfit and should have been in bed. Back in my room, I crawled under the covers. My roommate was away for a few days, so I was alone. No one came to see me all the next day and frankly, I was too ill to care. Luckily I was right next to the bathroom so I managed to get to the toilet and I drank water from a tooth-mug on the window ledge. It was a miserable time.

Things get a bit hazy after that. I had a pot under the bed and because I felt too ill to go into the bathroom, I used it. No one came to see me or to ask if I wanted food or drink and when the pot was full, I was forced to stagger to the loo with it myself. My salvation came in the form of the doctor. He must have been slightly concerned about me because he turned up a couple of days later, unannounced. That was the first time Matron Thomas came to my room, and she stayed while he examined me. There was a heated discussion at the foot of my bed and they both left. A few minutes later, Matron came back up again, this time with a bowl of water, a flannel, a towel and one of her own nightdresses. She washed me and changed my bedclothes and an hour later, I was in an ambulance and on my way to hospital.

It turned out that I had an abscess on each eardrum and at last Matron understood that I wasn’t making it up, nor imagining it. I was put onto four-hourly penicillin injections and given heat treatment on my neck. Both abscesses were so large, I had already discovered that when I lay on my side, I rested on the lump and not my neck. The only way I could sleep was to lie on my back. Matron Thomas’ uncaring attitude was extended to my parents. No one informed them that I was in hospital, or ill for that matter and it was only after I’d been in hospital two days that they discovered I was there. A working-class home with a telephone was virtually unheard of back then. My mother had asked the local farmer, Mr Wellman, if she could use his phone in a case of emergency. When the hospital decided to operate, because I was still a minor, they needed my father’s permission, so they rang him.

When the call came, Mr Wellman set off from Woolslope Farm to find my mother. She was at work but she left immediately and used the public telephone to call my dad’s boss. My dad was a builder and Mrs Hayward ran two miles across open fields to reach the bungalow Dad was working on at Ashley Heath, near Ringwood. There was panic all round but Dad gave the hospital verbal permission and the next day he and Mum came all the way from Dorset by train. Ward sister allowed them in, even though it wasn’t visiting hours until the afternoon, and I was overjoyed to see them.

By now, the penicillin was taking effect and I was making a slow improvement. Matron had invited Mum and Dad to go to the nursery for tea and Mum told me afterwards, she put on the performance of her life. She appeared distraught, wringing her handkerchief and saying, ‘If only Pamela had told us she was ill. We had no inkling she was unwell.’

Mum bit her tongue. She knew I was terrified Matron would stop me doing my training, so much against her better judgement, she said nothing. Years later she told me just how hard that had been. ‘I was furious with that Matron,’ she said. ‘Everything in me wanted to confront her and tell her I knew she was lying, but you had asked me not to say anything.’

Once I started getting better, I made some friends in the ward. It was very large and if I close my eyes I can still smell the floor polish and disinfectant. The girl in the bed next to me had had an illegal back-street abortion and almost died. I think she was about twenty. She seemed so sophisticated, so grown up, and she wore her make-up in the most amazing way. Her mascara was halfway down her cheeks like a spider’s web, making her eyes look enormous. She had the palest pink lipstick, giving her an almost ghostly look, and her bouffant was parted down the middle and framed her face. It was a look which was soon to become very fashionable.

As my health improved, I was able to join in the fun and laughter patients share on a ward. We were all made to rest after lunch and I woke up one afternoon to the sight of a female patient, aware that men might be around, backing out of her bed to go to the toilet. She told us afterwards she did it that way because she didn’t want to swing her legs over the bed because she had no panties on. The only trouble was, she was wearing a hospital gown which opened down the back and only one of the tapes, the one at her neck, was tied!

Then there was Nurse Driver on the ward. She was an SEN (State Enrolled Nurse, a title given to girls who had completed the three-year training course but had failed their exam. They were limited to general duties and were not allowed to do the medicine trolley). One day, the morning drinks had just been served when she turned up at my bedside.

‘Have you got a headache?’

‘No.’