THIS ENGLAND.

Auckland Star, Volume LVIII, Issue 112, 14 May 1927, Page 8

THIS ENGLAND.

XVII—THE MOTHERS. (By EDGAR WALLACE.) A very nice woman got out of the taxi. The driver lifted out her bag and rang the hospital boll, and the brown doors opened. I had just a glitnpso of her, in her long ulster, and then a mirse came forward, and, taking the little suitease, went up the stairs before her. A woman on the verge of tears. Her first visit to Queen Charlotte's, and full of dread at the coming mystery. "Providing she fulfils certain requirements, a married mother may come here as often as she wishes," said an official. "The unmarried mother wo can only take in once; not because we make any moral distinction between one and the other, but because, owing to our limited accommodation, we must make some sort of rule to keep our numbers down." Five or six babies a day arc born at Queen Charlotte's, and very nearly as many outside the hospital attended by Queen Charlotte nurses. ' Half the art of producing healthy babies is the pre-natal work of the hospital, which is comparatively a new branch of medical activity. And the clinic at Queen Charlotte's is growing in popularity. There is an idea —and how it came into existence nobody seems to know —that Queen Charlotte's is a hospital that deals only with the unmarried mother; but, in point of fact, only twenty in a hundred of its inmates are in that unfortunate position. That this place has been a godsend to hundreds and thousands of unhappy girls you need not doubt. Women are admitted "by letter" or . . . 'Whilst I was taking tea with the medical officer in charge, the telephone bell rang, and lie answered it. "... Yes, I think we have a bed." He put down the telephone and rang the house 'phone, and had a short conversation with Sister. There was a bed to be had at a pinch, but "... If you think she would be all right till the morning," it would be better. . . . All right, send her in to-night." He hung up the telephone. "We take in abnormal cases at any hour of the day or night," he said. "And by 'abnormal' I mean cases that a doctor cannot safely treat in the. patient's, own home. Ordinarily, we see the women first as out-patients, and if they express a desire to come into the'hospital we give them a list of subscribers, any one of whom could give them a letter. If there is a letter available, it is never refused. Pay? If they can, of course, we tako fees, which vary. If they can't, we take them in for nothing. Ten days after the child is born, the mother is ready to go home." That seems a very short time, doesn't it? I wonder if you realise what happens in a poor patient's home? Women have been known to do housework the day after the baby has been born. And worse things happen than that. A Universal Appeal. Just now Queen Charlotte's suffers, as all hospitals are suffering, from the financial depression. It costs a lot of money to add some three or four thousand new young citizens to the population of London every year. You may legitimately prey upon the fear of a possible _ contributor to a general hospital by reminding him that he may be in need of the benefits that hospital confers upon suffering humanity—but Queen Charlotte's hasn't the same appeal.

Queen Charlotte's appeal. however, is universal. It reaches, or should reach, to the heart of every man and woman, and, although subscribers, since they receive a number of letters each of which entitles some poor soul to admission, may perhaps be importuned for their good offices, nobody really objects to the bother of doing a suffering woman a good turn. The outdoor work isn't nice. I have heard from Queen Charlotte nurses stories that made my blood run cold. And you get an idea of some of"the difficulties when you learn that nurses and doctors who go out on this kind of work usually carry spare pennies. Why? For the penny-in-the-slot gas meter, which sometimes fails at a critical moment. Into some queer places these nurses and doctors go. Four lloors up narrow stairs. All the water has to be brought by hand from the back yard. Sometimes practically no preparation has been made for the coining of the little stranger, and clothing has to be extemporised. Happy indeed is the woman with a letter of admission. She is carefully watched for months, and her hour is made as smooth as science can devise. "Oh, yes, they come in in tears sometimes," said a nurse, "but they go out happily enough with their babies. And they're terribly grateful for all that can be done for them." I asked the medical officer if any distinction is made between the married and the unmarried mother. He shook his head. "Practically none. There is a mark on the chart by which I can tell, but the average person wouldn't notice it. Unless a girl tells the others in the ward that she is unmarried nobody knows. In the old days the married and the unmarried were separated, but now we make no difference at all." Beside each mother's cot was a smaller one containing her tiny baby. Sometimes, if the baby is noisy, the cot is bodily transferred elsewhere, but the Queen Charlotte's babies are wonderfully well-behaved, and spend most of the early days of their lives sleeping off the effects of a full little tummy. An Absurd Prejudice. The value of such an institution for congested districts of London is too apparent to need any emphasis. Tho pity is that there is not a Queen Charlotte's in every crowded working-class area. As it is. I believe that this hospital has one-tenth of all the beds available for maternity cases in London. Roughly, there is only one hospital bed for maternity cases to 10,000 of the population of London. "Tho working woman, and the wife of the working man, iias very naturally a horror of Poor Law institutions," said the medical officer; "and though this prejudice is, of course, absurd—for they are very well treated, and have the best medical service—it is quite understandable that a woman, however poor she may be. shrinks from indicting upon her unborn child the stigma of having been born in something which in their minds is barely distinguishable from tho workhouse." The obstetric branch of medicine has made enormous strides even in the past decade. The old school which believed that pain was "natural" havo taken a lot of convincing that certain legitimate help may be given to a woman in her hour. The living" still remember the ghastly tenet that all must be sacrificed for the child; to-day tho unwritten law is "the mother first." This does not mean that any less care is taken of the newcomer: he (or she) was never so well looked after. "Our nurses love babies—it would be an impossible life for them if they didn't! You would imagine, to see thein handling the newest that has "some to town, that it was all a delightful novelty to them." The baby takes the mother's name immediately. Mrs". Wallace's child (I use "Wallace" because some of the Joneses are getting rather tired of the liberty I take with" their name) becomes automatically "Baby Wallace," and is so ticketed. The percentage of quick recoveries is very liigb—tho eases "that start and end badly aro usually those remitted from outside—women who have never been near the clinic, and are only sent in by their doctors when they have come perilously near to being casualties. As I passed down the stairs after a visit to one of the wards there came, through a door out of which a nurse was passing, a loud and lusty little voice raised in passionate protest at the thing called Life. "Just born," said the medical officer with a smile. Five or six times a day that little squawk of annoyance conies faintly through the closed door of a "ward; day in, day'out, the total mounts up. Five or six mothers come apprehensively every day; five or six others go away with a small fluffy bundle and pride in their eyes. Year after year" the total rises—think, you military men; 'two divisions of babies born in Queen Charlotte's since the war! And in the past twenty years as many as would till the Wembley Stadium, occupying every scat, have been given to the world iif the bauds of Queen Charlotte's nurses.