Underneath the uniform we were to wear thick black Lyle stockings, which had to be darned immediately if you got a run or snag (we did the darning at night, ourselves). This was all finished off by black lace-up sensible shoes, which had to be buffed until they shone. There was an absolutely ‘no jewellery’ rule, except for a brooch-style Smiths watch that I pinned on my right apron breast. This was to be used for taking patients’ pulses. Also, definitely no make-up allowed, and our nails had to be inspected daily for cleanliness. Then hair had to be scrimped back tightly under our hats and any wayward hair (and mine was extremely wayward, like the rest of me) had to be pinned tightly into place. In fact, I’d cut off my beloved black plait, which reached nearly to my waist, in Ireland before I came, to my mother’s horror, so I had a newly manageable short style with a fringed bob.
Most importantly, our belts reflected our status: a virginal white belt for our first year, a royal blue one for our second and a serious black one for our third. This last belt had a special silver buckle which denoted we’d made it through, once we’d passed all our exams and had qualified – and survived. But what I really loved, most of all, were the outdoor capes. We had waist-length navy-blue woollen capes with a fabulous crimson lining, which we wore over our uniforms. It was a real Florence Nightingale touch and I felt wonderful in mine. They had red cross-over tapes to keep them in place – oh, I did feel like a proper nurse as I flounced along, my cape swishing in the wind. Very heroic, like something out of a film like Gone with the Wind.
But, horror of horrors, there were the hats. At first, making my hat correctly (which I had to most days) seemed like trying to climb a mountain like Everest (which wouldn’t be conquered until the next year, in 1953). We were given a fiercely starched square of white linen and we were taught by Sister Tutor (our lovely teacher, Angela Frobisher, who was kind, motherly and stocky), over and over, how to fold it into proper nurse’s attire. It seemed a total impossibility at first and I was all fingers and thumbs. I was half waiting for Sister Margaret’s ring to grind itself into my fumbling fingers or thump me in the temple, as I struggled to fold the blasted thing into a butterfly shape resembling a pukka Putney nurse’s hat. I had to fold it on my knee, and then pleat it, and it had to be pinned to my head, perfectly. The air would turn blue while I struggled, at first. In the third year, when we became staff nurses, we got two strings and a bow under our chins, as did the sisters, so the hats looked like little bonnets. The hats also changed in shape according to status: so staff nurses’ hats were different from Sister’s, which was different from Matron’s, whose was the most elegant and refined. We did look a sight, but I was secretly pleased and proud at finally being eligible to wear a trainee nurse’s hat at all.
The nurse’ home was at the north end of the hospital, and was three storeys high. We first years were on the middle level, with the second and third years on the top floor, and the doctors’ on call and sisters’ night duty sleeping rooms (separate, of course) on the ground floor. Our own bedrooms were small, cell-like but pleasant; clean, but very basic. I could see a large rambling lawn out of my window and, beyond it, Putney Common’s trees and bushes and local red-brick terraces. There was a single bed, with a wooden headboard, a tiny gas fire (no central heating then), an ottoman (storage chest), wardrobe, a little basin under the window and a small brown dressing table and mirror. I had two pairs of flowery winceyette pyjamas and a vest, which my mother insisted on me wearing to keep warm.
I had to learn a whole new routine. A maid knocked on the door at six thirty every morning, and I had to get straight up, spit spot, no messing. In the winter, it was tough to get up to no heating and in the dark. I had a quick wash at the basin, then it was on with all the uniform, and a clean apron (which crossed over at the back) every day. There were no tights then, so the Lyle stockings were held up with suspenders which hung from a suspender belt, which we wore over our knickers. When we lost our suspenders, we used buttons or pennies which we twisted in the tops to keep our stockings up. We were allowed silk as we got more senior, and tights (American Tan, of course) didn’t come in until the early 1960s – so thick, mendable stockings were the rule. In my pockets I always had to have a pen and a pair of scissors – and my only allowed adornment was my little pinned-on watch. When our clothes were dirty we put them outside the door, in a marked laundry box, and they were taken away and laundered and brought back crisply starched and ironed in a week. It all had to be absolutely perfect.
Then I had to make my bed, using ‘hospital corners’ at the ends with the sheets and blanket, folded over tightly like an envelope shape, to keep everything in. Then I had to tidy my room for daily ‘inspection’. There was no privacy at all, as Home Sister would suddenly burst in, unannounced, and if your room was not tidy, or the bed corners not made properly, she would rip off all the bedding and throw it on the floor and shout, ‘Do it again, nurse, not good enough!’ Or she would throw open my dressing-table drawers and, if things were not tickety-boo, tip the contents out onto the floor, and snap, ‘No, no, no, this will never do – now tidy it up, nurse. Jump to it.’ I was actually quite tidy by nature – my mother had trained me well – so I was pleased when Home Sister pronounced after a couple of weeks, ‘Tidiest drawers in the whole place, Powell. Well done.’ It was like one of those Carry On films, very Hattie Jacques. It was hilarious. After so many years with the nuns I felt there was nothing I couldn’t handle, although Home Sister was very scary at first.
On Sunday mornings we went to church. So it was up at seven, and then we would be trooping down the road together to mass. We had to put money in the collection, but because we were broke most of the time we’d put in our stocking buttons or anything else that came to hand, much to the Father’s disdain. Then we had to be in bed by ten o’clock at night and there was official ‘lights out’. It was a complete institution and there was no messing about it. It was certainly like my home all over again. In fact, the nurses’ home was like I imagined a strict boarding school would be like in the kind of Angela Brazil book that I had loved reading back home. I’d run away from the overly pious and unforgiving strictness of Ireland only to land in another fierce regime.
We earned ten pounds a month while we were training. Right from the beginning we needed to buy Woodbines from Bert the porter. I had learned to smoke surreptitiously at thirteen, and, sad to say, smoking had already become an essential part of my life, ironically for someone concerned about health. Of course, we didn’t make the connection between smoking and health back then, as doctors often recommended cigarettes to patients to relax them. It was seen as a sophisticated pastime and almost everybody did it, without thinking. Plus, I was always hungry and tired, so smoking was a way of quelling my appetite and exhaustion. Buying the Woodbines, which were fiercely strong, was a total secret, of course, but we knew when we got our wages the first person we paid was Bert – and at four old pennies for a packet of eight, it soon mounted up. Bert would keep a tab when we didn’t have any money, and we’d have to cough up (literally) once our wages came in. He would also get us the Merrydown cider that we liked to drink illicitly after lights out, to relax and have a giggle, so we could easily spend a third of our wages without even going out of the nurses’ home. Our daily food was served in the hospital dining room. It was cooked on site, and was very basic. It was always quite plentiful and hearty, but stodgy: pies, puddings, potatoes, lots of starch. I remember we were always starving, and always demolished what was on our plates.
In 1952, Putney took in about twenty new trainee nurses – mostly from Ireland, like me, but also from Holland, Germany, Hungary, Italy and England. There were strong unresolved post-war feelings and I’m sorry to say that racism abounded, unchecked. Matron, a small, intense woman called Miriam Sturgeon, said quite baldly to us that ‘I’ll take the Irish, because I need you, but I don’t have to take the coloureds.’ However, the Dutch would not sit down with the Germans, even if they were Jewish, and there was a hell of a lot of strife between them then, which I found quite bewildering at first. One of my first new trainee friends was a