ninety years of service - University Hospital Southampton NHS ...

stood outside the front of the hospital. I was then very pregnant so one of the nurses lent me her cloakBursledon in 1956Sandra Walker aged 11 was in Bursledon with rheumatic fever for 4 months. “We used to go for walks, 10 minutes at first,but increasing by 10 minutes at intervals. We were taken down by the river, through the fields, which was a greatexperience. If we felt we had run about too much, we used to rush to put our wrists under a cold tap in the hope ofbringing our pulse rate down before the nurse could check it. We kept silkworms, which fed on the leaves of the mulberrytree by the entrance. We used to wind the fine silk from the cocoons. Sometimes, at night, my bed would be wheeled intothe hall because I kept the other children awake by talking too much. I still do!” Sandra’s elder sister, Pat, was also apatient in Bursledon in 1949 she remembers being warned that if you went upstairs you would encounter the big blackwasherwomen who would grab you and take you away.Hospital GhostsMost hospitals have their ghosts and Southampton Children’s was no exception. Several nurses recall hearing footstepson the stairs outside Ward II while on night duty but Mary who was a S.E.N.. at the time had a more frighteningexperience. “I was busy with babies feeds at 3 am, on the Gastro-enteritis ward. All was very still in the cubicle; the streetlight was as bright as ever, when a very eerie atmosphere developed. I felt intensely aware of something very frighteningand sinister behind me. The window there overlooked the old Vicarage lawn but I dared not turn in that direction for fear ofwhat I might see. When I asked the sister on Surgical (Sister Hodges), when taking up the night report, if she was awareof this happening, I was a bit surprised to be told never to look over the next garden if this atmosphere occurred again asthere had been some terrible happening in the past. I think she said that someone had been murdered and some horribleapparition had been seen there since.”Casualty staff to the rescue.A memorable event occurred in 1957 when one afternoon an emergency call was received that a man working on the firstfloor of a new building up the road had been seriously injured when a reinforced concrete girder snapped and two of thesteel rods had transfixed him through his abdomen. Sister Jenny Tutcher and Dr Bridget Jepson immediately rushed toassist. They had to make a very precarious climb across the framework of girders to give first aid, The man made acomplete recovery.Nurse Coady and Sister Tutor’s Cat.Miss Morgan remembers when her tortoiseshell cat ‘Bunty’ disappeared one evening and was located high up in a treenear the nurses’ home. Flo Coady, dressed to go home, climbed a ladder with a plate of fish, which she held up at arm’slength. In grabbing the cat she dropped the plate of fish. Later when travelling home in the bus she was aware that otherpassengers were commenting on her but it was not until she had reached home that she found a large slice of fish stillsitting on her shoulder!The Newly-wed Houseman.When we appointed Dr James Scobie as R. M.O. we had no idea that he was about to get married ... “I shall never forgetthe day I arrived at the Children’s Hospital. It was January 1st 1962, the day after my wedding and it was snowing.Bursledon seemed a very gloomy place. My wife went back to her work in London the following day, and I started workingwith chronically ill children.The Children’s Hospital itself was very busy, especially in winter time. There were two consultant paediatricians. DrGeorge Ormiston was a Scot with a fund of amusing stories and a reputation for severity. Dr David Williamson was moreprogressive. His life seemed very varied; one moment visiting gipsy children under a tarpaulin in the forest, the nextattending the offspring of grand lords in great hooses interspersed with visits to hospitals in Winchester and Alton.There was a very competent registrar, Dr Eric Jones, and a succession of house physicians The junior doctors shared arota involving working at Bursledon, the Children’s Hospital and the infectious fever unit at the Chest Hospital.My wife used to come down on alternate week-ends when I was on duty, and we were always getting into trouble with thehospital authorities; hanging washing out to dry (forbidden), and complaining about the guest supplement, which includeda fee for having someone else in the one narrow bed, although not even a second towel was provided.At the beginning of March we hired, through the almoner, a caravan which we kept, with a licence from the Verderers, inan open meadow on the upper reaches of the river Beaulieu, south of Ashurst. It was isolated with only occasionalwalkers passing by, though ponies would wake us up at night, scratching themselves on the corners of the caravan.Meanwhile I was learning a lot about sick children. There had been some cases of smallpox brought by visiting seamen,so there was a big vaccination campaign. Two children with eczema developed the generalised form of vaccinia from thevaccination and both died. The only other deaths during the seven months that I worked at the Children’s Hospital werefrom leukaemia, effective treatment for which was just beginning.