Anna Louise Tittman Memoir - University of Illinois Springfield

Anna Tittman
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toward the front. Tne one back of m, ms. Harness, she tl run out af
things and she'd corn and borrow mine, and somtbm would forget to pay
them back, (chuckles) rqy equipnmt and so on.
Q. Would you go borrow it back again?
A. No, I'd speak to her off duty. Naw she'd like to mke her
so nice. She'd keep the babies, on hot days they'd have to
had been just tucked in ti&t in their little coverings apd
like they would on cold
ket, too. But I would
and let the babies t;hrow
them,
comfortable. Either way, whichever they needed, and she Fhought that was
terrible. Of course the ward didn't look so orderly, but/ then who cared.
Q. Was there mre prickly he& in her ward? I
A. (laughter) I didn't ask her. There were two wards ofl one side and
then two wards over on the other side.
Q. About how many babies in each ward?
4
A. Ivd say there were ei&teen or twenty. There would b som at the end,
a couple of beds at the end. But back to the rear of ea ward would be
a workroom. You took the baby in there to bathe it, on table that was
for that purpose, to dress them or clean them up sometime .
Q. How rrany babies would there be in this mnt ward? e one you ,mentioned
directly . . .
A. I think that would be twenty-two, no twenty. I
Q. On each side? So another forty.
A. Yes.
Q. Now were these babies there for longer periods of tin@? Were t
1
ese
sicker babies than the ones up on the day deck?
A. Well, it depended what their diwosis was. We lost
You see tho= were the days of dirty milk. Therefore the
have their milk taken care of; that is we taught them ha
the germ but you didn't kill the rn3-Uc entirely, it's use
9. You man you tawt them pasteuriiatirn.
A. Yes, simple at horn. Also they didn't have ice, and
to make a little refrigeration affair that was big eno@
their mLlk bottles and to have a milk bottle for ea& fef
up all at one tim, and put iq in there. That was neces:
you didn't get real -sh
7
mi , which isn't possible in f
cikies, it wasn't. I think great many things have ch;
dAhg that. The teaching pa%, now when sick babies wen
go h-, I tahlght the mthers,;when they were taking thej
1 lot of the babies.
were taught to
to. You kill
'or them.
re tawt them how
to take care of
ling and We it
ry. Of course if
~e slums 08 big
ged since I was