Patricia was a teenager in the 1950s in England when she got a job as a Junior Nurse.
She first worked in the Guy-nee ward (Gynaecological Ward) in the Old Workhouse in Balby, a suburb of Doncaster.
In Victorian times the Workhouse was a hard place where homeless people and others were left. It was part of the Victorian system of looking after people who couldn’t look after themselves. The Workhouse was later turned into the Western Hospital. One side was residential accommodation for old people and the other side was a hospital proper with midwifery services and treatment for gynaecological complaints. In turn the Western Hospital was pulled down many years ago.
Women would often come into the Workhouse because they were having a natural miscarriage. There were no pregnancy tests in those days of course so it was generally later in her term that a woman would know she was pregnant.
On this particular day (Patricia had only been working there for a few short weeks) she was in the dressing room cleaning out bedpans:
‘A nurse came rushing in with a premature baby in a kidney dish.
It was a little girl and perfectly formed and her little mouth were opening and shutting, as if she was crying but with no sound coming out. The nurse was in a hurry because she had to get back to the mother. Only the baby was in the dish, not the placenta, so the nurse probably had to get back to Mum to help with the passing of the placenta.
In those days no help was given if the baby was four and a half months gestation or less. Pat told me how she would never forget looking at that little one and feeling helpless, seeing the humanity of the child, watching it struggle to survive, knowing with utter certainty that she was a little human being, worthy of our comfort, our help and our love.
She was the biggest baby I had seen not survive in my nursing career. She didn’t last long and she was never shown to the mother. I probably nursed the mother but never knew which one of my patients was mother to that particular little girl.
I realised though that one thing I could do though was baptise this little one. I was terribly afraid because I was a junior nurse – not even officially a trainee at the time – and I would have been in a lot of trouble if someone came in and saw what I was doing.
I was born a Methodist but I was in the process of becoming a Catholic back then. A nursing friend of mine had taken me to a Benediction. I thought it was so beautiful that I wanted to be a Catholic.
The priest conducting the Benediction referred me to a little priest called Father Halpenny – and I took instructions from him. He was a very devout priest. He used to cycle around Balby, a suburb of Doncaster in Yorkshire on his bicycle, prepared to Minister to anyone in need. In fact he caught tuberculosis from the people he had been seeing and ended up in a sanitorium for quite some time before eventually getting better. Anyway he instructed me on becoming a Catholic.
He taught me about the seven sacraments and he particularly taught me about Baptism.
He taught me that anyone can baptise someone if they are in danger.
All you have to do is pour water on their head and say in the name of the father and the son and the Holy spirit I baptise you (name).
I eventually converted to Catholicism about 1954.
On April 2nd, 1955 God provided me with a Catholic husband who had not long come to Doncaster from Waterford in Ireland. In fact it was Father Halpenny who married my husband John and me.
Shortly after we were married – on Christmas Eve actually – John got his call up to do National Service. But he couldn’t bear to leave me so he took a job as a coalminer (coalminers were exempt from national service) and later became a bricklayer. He was a hard worker all his life.
Maggie Thatcher intended to close the pit down where John worked (the Yorkshire Main Colliery, which opened in 1912) and there would have been no other work in our village so that is what helped us to decide to come to Australia in 1968. The pit eventually closed, along with many other coalmines, in the 1970s.
We had two boys and a girl before coming to Australia as Ten Pound Poms. Our children were 12, 6 and 3 1/2 when we came to Australia. Since then of course we have been blessed with seven grandsons, one grand-daughter, nine great-grandsons and one great grand-daughter, all born in Australia. We were married 68 years before John went to the Lord in 2023.
Anyway getting back to this little girl in the dressing room of the guy-nee ward: I decided to baptise her even though I was very afraid. I called her Mary.
Mary didn’t last long and when she died she was wrapped in newspaper and thrown in the bin – which I thought was terrible but I had no say over what happened. I suppose the contents of these bins were burnt in the hospital incinerator.
There was no Right to life in those days and certainly no other group advocating for these little ones or taking on the role of educating people on what abortion really is.
Anyway I migrated to Australia in 1968 and and got a job as a state enrolled nurse at Bentley Hospital. I was there for nine years. In those days they were just starting to lobby to legalise abortion.
The feminist movement were teaching everyone that they weren’t babies they were just blobs of jelly. I knew this to be very wrong – but the nurses often agreed with the feminist movement.
The nurses used to talk about it around the coffee table during our breaks. I would say that I had seen children at all stages of gestation and they certainly weren’t just blobs of jelly but not many people agreed with me.
And of course like so many hospitals Bentley Hospital was performing abortions back then – even though it was quite illegal.
I once talked a mother out of an abortion at Bentley Hospital. She was about three months along and she felt she didn’t want to go through with the pregnancy. She was put in a ward with a woman who couldn’t have any children. I think my talk and where she was placed changed her mind.
I remember saying to her that the most precious thing she could give the baby was its life. If she was not sure she shouldn’t go through with the abortion because she would regret it so much later.
The ward sister was really angry with me when she found out the mother had changed her mind. She demanded to know what I had said. She was angry because she now had to ring the doctor to explain that the woman had changed her mind and he wasn’t needed.
Abortion is one of the worst things that is happening in the world today. I think the politicians should be made to see what I saw as a young nurse. They should be forced to see an aborted baby that is born alive – before they be allowed to vote on it. How could they then vote to end the life of a child? How could they forget a baby in a kidney dish, with its little mouth opening and shutting? I know I will never forget that little angel I baptised so long ago’.
- As described to Steve Klomp, December 2024