The Midwife’s Here!: The Enchanting True Story of One of Britain’s Longest Serving Midwives

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After that we strolled along Carnaby Street, admiring the fancy window displays and ultra-fashionable shoppers. London girls wore similar clothes to us – mini skirts, babydoll dresses with matching coloured tights, kinky boots and ‘Twiggy’ shoes with fancy buckles – but everything seemed exaggerated, somehow. The colours were brighter, the skirts shorter, the belts wider and the shoes shinier – or at least that’s how I remembered it. My eyes were on stalks the whole time, and Graham’s eyes nearly popped out of his head when he saw the prices of the clothes at the men’s outfitters Lord John, as they were far more expensive than in Manchester.

The concert was really great. A kindly usher noticed that Graham and I didn’t have a very good view from up in the gods and offered to move us nearer the front. Our new seats were practically on the stage, and when Cliff began to sing I felt as if he was singing just for me. It was very hot and quite stuffy, with dry ice and cigarette smoke filling the air, and by the end of the evening my mustard and black smock dress was thick with perspiration, not to mention the pungent smell of Capstan and Park Drive cigarettes. Graham was so hot he had to remove his tweed jacket and skinny-striped tanktop, but Cliff somehow remained cool and impeccably presented in his sharp-cut suit throughout the show. I adored him!

‘We’re All Going on a Summer Holiday,’ the students on Oxford Road continued to sing badly, jolting me sharply back to this Manchester night in the summer of 1967. I envied the students’ freedom, their joie de vivre. Just a year or so earlier I had left the Palladium singing that song without a care in the world, just like them. Now life had become much more serious, even though I was still only nineteen years old.

‘I guess we all have to grow up some time,’ I remarked to Linda wistfully, ‘but I feel so old compared to those students!’

‘Hey, we’re still “Young Ones”,’ she joshed, recalling another Cliff song, but I think she knew exactly what I meant. We were young, of course, but as student nurses we were no longer carefree.

Chapter Four

‘People are dying … This is harder than I thought’

One morning about twenty student nurses in my intake assembled in the hospital car park and clambered onto a coach with Mr Tate. Our destination was Booth Hall Children’s Hospital in Blackley, north Manchester.

I knew it had a reputation for being one of the finest children’s hospitals in the country, and I hung on Mr Tate’s every word during the journey as he explained how Humphrey Booth first opened the infirmary in 1908, caring for the sick and destitute from the workhouse after the devastation caused by the plague. In 1914 it took in wounded soldiers from the First World War, and when war was declared a second time the hospital relocated its existing patients and installed a decontamination unit to treat victims of gas attacks.

‘Fortunately for the region, the anticipated casualties never materialised and within six months Booth Hall reverted back to caring for sick children,’ Mr Tate said. ‘The inscription on Humphrey Booth’s headstone reads “Love his memory, imitate his devotion”, and I think you will all agree that is an excellent standard to aspire to.’

I felt quite emotional as the coach pulled into Booth Hall. It was a privilege to be a part of the NHS, continuing the good work of the likes of Humphrey Booth, and I was eager to learn about caring for children. I imagined it would be a worthwhile and rewarding branch of nursing, looking after little ones and then returning them, fit and well, back to the bosom of their family. Maybe I might think about being a children’s nurse in the future?

It was windy as we walked across the car park to the hospital entrance, where a smiling but straight-backed Matron stood resplendent in a thick cape, arms held wide and welcoming like a priest on a pulpit addressing the congregation.

‘Welcome to Booth Hall,’ she enunciated with immense pride. ‘My staff and I are very pleased to have the opportunity to show off our fine hospital. I hope the visit will serve as an inspiration for you all, girls.’

I caught a glimpse of Linda, who was trying hard to suppress a giggle. ‘What?’ I whispered.

‘Mr Tate,’ she said, flicking her eyes over my shoulder.

I turned and saw our tutor grappling unceremoniously with his comb-over, which had become unstuck and was flapping wildly in the breeze, revealing his bald, shiny scalp in all its glory. The escaped hair must have been at least a foot long in full flight.

‘Linda, you are awful,’ I said. ‘Poor Mr Tate!’

We were taken on a whistle-stop tour of several wards and day rooms, which I was heartened to note had colourful bedclothes and curtains and bright pictures on the walls. Children wrapped in dressing gowns and slippers sat quietly with nurses, playing with wooden farmyard animals and train sets. I’d like to do that, I thought.

Our final stop was the burns unit. The smell and stiflingly high temperature hit me as soon as we stepped through the door, and my head immediately started to spin. In here, children were undressed save for their underwear and bandages wrapped around legs, arms, torsos and heads. There was a sickly-sweet smell of flesh mixed together with a petrol-like odour.

Sister Pattinson, who was in charge of the burns unit, patiently started explaining how burns were dressed with open-weave gauze impregnated with Vaseline, which was designed to stop it sticking. I thought how cool and composed she appeared – or was that just in comparison to me? By the time Sister Pattinson got up to the bit about placing the gauze very delicately over the wound so as not to cause more damage to the raw flesh, I was feeling hot and flustered. I was fainting, in fact, and I couldn’t stop myself.

I remember hearing the scraping of chair legs and the words: ‘Put your head between your legs, Nurse Lawton,’ as the ward began to swirl around me. Then I blacked out.

‘Never mind, Linda. Happens to the best of us,’ Lesley Bennyon told me back at the MRI the following evening, when we signed in for a night shift together.

‘I just felt so stupid,’ I said. ‘What must the children have thought? They are such brave little souls, and there’s me, with nothing wrong, collapsing like that in front of them.’

‘Put it behind you,’ Lesley advised. ‘Onwards and upwards! Come on, let’s see what’s in store tonight.’

Glancing down the ward, I noticed that Mrs Pearlman was fast asleep, which was unusual at the start of a night shift. The night sister had not yet given me my orders, so I walked over to Mrs Pearlman to check on her. She was very still and very quiet, and her black hair had fallen messily across her face. Strands of it were lying across her nose and mouth, and as I got closer I held my breath. Her hair was as still as she was. There was no breath coming from either her nose or her mouth.

I reached for her wrist. There was no pulse, and my own heartbeat quickened, as if to compensate. I smoothed her hair neatly off her face, and pulled the curtain slowly around her bed.

‘Lesley,’ I said, tears starting to well in my eyes. ‘Mrs Pearlman is dead.’

Half an hour later, Lesley and I were tasked with the job of laying out Mrs Pearlman’s body. Lesley was an old hand at this by now, but it was my first time and I didn’t mind admitting I was a little frightened.

‘I don’t know what to expect at all,’ I told Lesley. ‘I’ve never seen a dead body before, let alone touched one.’

‘We’ll work together,’ Lesley said. ‘It’s not half as bad as you might think.’

I nodded, silently asking God to help me in my job, and to take good care of Mrs Pearlman.

‘She was a very good lady,’ I said, telling myself she had lived to a ripe old age and appeared to have died in her sleep, which was a blessing. I guessed that Mrs Pearlman might have anticipated her death, and that is why she’d wanted to give me her gold watch. She was preparing to leave. ‘She deserves the best possible care. Please, God, help me to work well, and please may she rest in peace,’ I said silently.

Lesley had fetched a trolley upon which she had placed a basin of water, some cloths, cotton wool, bandages and fresh white sheets. There was also a label attached to a piece of string.

‘First we have to wash her,’ Lesley said quietly, dipping the cotton wool in the water and setting to work, delicately wiping Mrs Pearlman’s face. There were some faint smudges of mascara below the old lady’s eyes and some spittle around her mouth, which Lesley tenderly removed.

‘There we are,’ Lesley said brightly. It was almost as if Mrs Pearlman were still alive and Lesley was chatting to her as she gave her a bed bath.

For a moment I had to remind myself that Mrs Pearlman was very much dead. I stared at her face and could scarcely believe she could no longer talk or smile, because she looked for all the world as if she were in a deep sleep and might wake up at any moment.

Lesley caught my eye. ‘Let’s pop her teeth back in, shall we?’ she said, reaching for Mrs Pearlman’s dentures.

I’d been taught the theory of laying out a patient in school, but putting it into practice was another thing entirely.

Lesley opened Mrs Pearlman’s mouth gently and inserted the false teeth effortlessly, before flashing me a sympathetic smile. ‘There now, she looks better already,’ she said. ‘Once, I had to lay out a man whose body was cold and rigor mortis had started to set in. It took the strength of two of us to prise open his jaw and squeeze his dentures back in place!’

I smiled gamely, and Lesley kept talking. ‘How about we pop a little label on her toe?’

Lesley picked up the brown label upon which she wrote ‘Moran Pearlman’ and her dates of birth and death. I calculated she had been seventy-six years of age, and was glad she had lived a long life. ‘Here, Linda, this needs tying around her big toe,’ Lesley said, placing the label in my hand and giving me a nudge of encouragement as I got to work.