At the Coalface: The memoir of a pit nurse

Bert sneered until I explained that I really wanted his opinion on the equipment I already had in there. It seemed to work, because moments later I was giving him a guided tour.

‘And this is the autoclave,’ I explained.

Bert tried to hide it but I could tell he was impressed. He liked the new medical centre, with its sterile environment and equipment; he just didn’t want to take orders from a girl. However, Bert’s resolve must have melted, because hours later he returned with his three Medical Room Attendants (MRAs).

‘And this is the steriliser, state of the art,’ he said, demonstrating it.

I’d used my charm and womanly wiles and, sure enough, I’d eventually won him over. Only six weeks after starting at Brodsworth, Bert and his team left the freezing-cold hut and moved into the medical centre. My team of one had expanded to a team of five overnight. Soon it became a little crowded with the extra bodies, but I didn’t mind because I loved the company and having Bert to call on whenever I needed advice. In return, the MRAs were so thrilled at having a sterile, warm and comfortable office to work in that they kept it absolutely spotless. In fact, they’d spend the entire week just mopping the floors until they were so clean that you could’ve eaten your dinner off them.

‘Again?’ I asked when I spotted one of them mopping the waiting-room floor for the third time that day.

He stood up, held his hands at the top of the mop and rested his chin down on them. ‘Can’t be too careful, Sister. Better to be safe than sorry.’

I stifled a giggle. The men certainly took pride in their work. Still, none of them accepted the fact that I was a married woman. Instead, they referred to me as either Sister or Sister Smith, using my maiden name. But it was better than ‘the head girl from Woodlands school’, so in many ways it was progress.

It was a good job I’d managed to get Bert on board, because only a few weeks later we were faced with a horrible situation when two workmen rushed into the medical centre with a man on a stretcher. They were still in shock as they explained how the contractor had fallen 30 feet from scaffolding against the water tower, where he was carrying out a repair. It hadn’t been a straightforward fall because he had caught his head on the sharp scaffold poles on the way down and had managed to scalp himself. The patient was disorientated and thrashing around. Taking his head in my hands, I held it tight against my chest to try to compress the wound because he was losing such a frightening amount of blood. But with my legs either side of the stretcher, holding him close, I was having trouble keeping him still. I looked up at Bert, who was busy searching for a compression bandage.

‘Please don’t leave me,’ I said, with fear trembling in my voice.

‘I’m going nowhere, lass,’ he replied as he held down the man.

The poor lad didn’t have a clue where he was and he was clearly in agony. The medical centre didn’t have Entonox (gas and air) back then, but we somehow managed to hold him for long enough to wrap a compression bandage around his scalp to try to stem the flow. Bert and I had decided that there wasn’t enough time to call a doctor – the patient would’ve died either from shock or loss of blood while we waited – so we loaded him into the navy-blue pit ambulance. By the time we arrived at the hospital, the surgeons were waiting. The relief medical attendant had rung through from the pit switchboard. I’d held the patient’s head together in my lap all the way, and I was soaked in blood. As they rushed him off to theatre, Bert turned and looked me up and down.

‘Tha looks like a horror movie, lass,’ he said bluntly.

‘Yes,’ I replied, glancing down at my uniform. ‘I think I need to get scrubbed up.’

‘Aye, tha does, but tha did a great job too, yer know. That lad would’ve died if it hadn’t have been for thee.’

It was high praise indeed. Afterwards, Bert had nothing but the utmost respect for me. We were in it together now. I’d proved I wasn’t just some silly little girl with canary-yellow walls and a romantic notion of caring for people; I was a qualified nurse, and someone who’d be there in times of crisis. Slowly, he began to trust me.

It was my dad who had first mentioned going underground into the pit. ‘It’ll help you to see where the miners work so you can get an idea of what they’re faced with every day.’

I agreed. I wanted to go down the pit for the very same reason. I spoke to the Safety Department officer, but he seemed a little reluctant.

‘Well, we’ve never really taken a woman down t’pit before, but if tha’s sure tha wants to,’ he said, scratching his head.

‘Oh, I do,’ I insisted. ‘It’d be great to see their working environment and what dangers they face on a day-to-day basis – it’d be invaluable.’

In the end, he couldn’t refuse, although the miners were taken aback when they saw me underground. I stood out like a sore thumb, even though I was dressed in a regulation boiler suit, because it was way too big for me. In fact, it was so big that I’d had to sew the hems of the legs up just so I could walk in it properly.

Although I felt a little out of my depth, I smiled as I was given a guided tour. The light from the lamp on my helmet danced against the pit walls, and in some quieter areas I heard, and was certain I saw, mice scuttling around in the shadows. It was noisy, humid and so dark that, without our headlamps, I couldn’t see my hand in front of my face. But I didn’t let my fear show because I wanted to prove I was as tough as the men. The pit continued to creak and drip as we ventured deeper. It was like being in the underbelly of a living, breathing creature, only one you couldn’t control.

‘Ay up, its Harry Smith’s eldest,’ one of the miners called as I passed by. The others stopped what they were doing, straightened up and scratched their heads in unison.

A woman. Down the pit?

They’d never seen the like before!

During the course of our visit, I checked the first-aid boxes to make sure they contained everything they needed.

‘Thanks for showing me around down there,’ I told the Safety Department officer as we finally stepped out of the cage onto the pit top.

He sized me up for a moment as though he didn’t quite know what to make of me.

‘No problem. No problem, lass.’

My second time underground followed a few months later. Dad agreed to take me down himself, so that I could do another general inspection and check the first-aid boxes. Again, it felt as though I was scrambling about in a cave. In some places it was as hot as hell, while in others it was humid and the condensation soaked into your skin.

‘I’m not sure what t’men will make of it, but as long astha does tha job tha won’t go far wrong,’ he said, giving me a pat on the back. He never said it directly, but I think he was proud that his daughter was becoming as tough as the miners she treated.

The third time, however, was a totally different matter. A call had come into the medical centre to say there’d been an emergency in the pit. A miner had trapped his leg between two tubs of coal and broken it. The deputy was a trained first aider, and although he’d bandaged and splinted the poor chap up I needed to examine the patient before they moved him to check he hadn’t done any further damage.

‘I’ll not be long,’ I told Bert, who agreed to staff the medical centre in case we had any more walking wounded through the door.

Once again, I pulled on my overalls, now more familiar to me than they had been before, and headed over towards the pit shaft and cage. One of the men was waiting to take me down.

‘Ready, Sister?’ he asked.

‘Ready,’ I said, nodding, as the cage descended into the dark bowels of the earth.

We located the man quickly. I gave him a thorough examination, checking him for spinal and head injuries in particular but, thankfully, apart from a fractured leg, he was fine.

‘He’s good to move,’ I told the deputy.

Four men lifted him up and loaded the stretcher on to the seat of a waiting paddy train. They placed him flat and perched themselves either side to hold him in position. The deputy gestured for me to board the train, which I did, travelling with the patient to the pit shaft. We brought him up to the surface where the pit ambulance was waiting to take us to Doncaster Royal Infirmary. After admitting the man to hospital, I was free to leave. There was no point in me hanging around, although a few people did a double take when they saw me coming in through the hospital doors dressed in pit boots and filthy overalls. But by now I was getting used to it.

‘I’m a nurse,’ I told one woman. She sniffed as I passed, blackened head to toe with coal dust. She shook her head as though she didn’t believe a word of it.

The miner eventually returned to work. I’m not sure how bad the fracture was so I don’t know if they put him in traction or just plastered his leg, but he was off work for a good three or four months.

A few weeks later, we received another call. A miner had suffered another leg injury, only this time it was a serious underground incident. The man had bored a hole in the coalface and had tried to fire it, using shot, which is candle-shaped and similar to a stick of dynamite. Normally it’d cause the roof to crack, loosening the coal and making it easier to extract. Only this time the shot had partially fired and ricocheted back towards the miner, who was crouched at what he thought was a safe distance away. The shot had then detonated fully next to his right leg, partially blowing the top part off above the knee.

I immediately telephoned Dr Creed, one of the Coal Board doctors based at Doncaster. The disordered blast had caused coal to fall in on the patient, so he’d been trapped underground with his leg hanging on by a thread. That’s when the full impact hit me – Dr Creed and I would have to travel into the pit to carry out an emergency amputation to free the man. Feeling sick with nerves, I grabbed the amputation kit and checked it over. It was pretty basic, containing artery forceps, a tourniquet, sterile saw and several sharp knives of different lengths. I knew Dr Creed was on his way with morphine, so I changed out of my nurse’s outfit and pulled on my boiler suit and pit boots.

‘Good luck,’ Bert called as I headed towards the door.

I nodded and left him in charge of the medical centre. By the time I’d reached the pit top, Dr Creed had pulled up in his car. I’d never been more relieved to see a doctor in my whole life. He’d already changed into his overalls, so we walked over towards the shaft side. Dr Creed was a lovely middle-aged man who was very experienced, but I could tell the thought of performing an amputation in the dirt, miles underground, concerned him too. Before we entered the cage, he turned to face me.

‘Are you nervous, Sister?’ he asked gently.

I was absolutely terrified – my fear betrayed by my hands, which were trembling at my side. I grabbed the handle of the amputation kit for courage.

‘Yes, I’m frightened to death,’ I admitted.

Dr Creed turned away and fumbled around inside his bag. Moments later he pulled something out – a silver hip flask. He unscrewed the top and held it out towards me.

‘Here, have a nip of this, Sister,’ he insisted, pushing the bottle into my hands. I looked up at him, wondering if it was a test.