by Emma Cheatle
The women and their babes are waking as I put up my hat and coat on the hook in the corridor––the stink in the wards is that high I already cover my nose with the cloth. There are usually three or four women in each room. Some are moaning as they have more pain in the morning. Some is very sick and will die I think. When I started here, one lady was as cold as anything and I screamed and Matron told me off. Women die each week in these long days after birth, and the babes too mostly during. We’ve grown used to it but I still daren’t look in the ‘dead house’ out back. At least one woman each day is in labour and I hate to hear their noises. The babes all starts to cry as well. I always gets a curtain for the woman and hopes the midwife will come quick and move them to the delivery room.
My first task is to stoke the fires in each room. If the outside air ain’t too miasmic, I open lots of the windows to try and deal with the stink, before starting to be emptying the pots. This takes many trips up and down the stairs and out to the street for the soilman. There’s talk of putting in some of the new water closets and baths but we can only wish.
Once I’ve sorted the pots, there’s the beds. Some women are oozing and bleeding and, if they are able to sit on a chair, we must change their linen. If it’s not too bad I haul it off the bed and put out to air in the yard. The really dirty things go to the linen room downstairs. Once a week we wash and boil the linens. The stains rarely shift and our hands are all chapped with the effort. All the women are poor, why else would you be in a hospital? But some women has means enough to bring in their own linen and their families come and change it for them. Some families will also bring food, a welcome change from the soups we feeds them three times a day.
Now I gets the women comfortable on their beds, and sets to sweeping the hearths and floors – Matron insists we sweep and dust three times a day. On sunny days light pours through the vast windows, and I watch the dust settle elsewhere.
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