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The Health of Barking
although this was once a disease to be handled with infinite hygiene, other circumstances
have changed the disease.
District Nursing.
Curiously enough there was one question which was never raised either by
John or Mary, and that was with regard to District Nursing.
There is a reason for this, because the service has been carried out very quietly,
but none the less efficiently, and apart from a very few people who are interested
in its administration there are few people who know anything about the District
Nursing Service or that there is a District Nursing Service, save only those who
unfortunately find it nccessary to call upon the services of a district nurse.
During the year 1948, the Plaistow Maternity Hospital and District Nurses'
Home closed down their branch in Barking and so brought to an end an association
which had long been established even before I came to Barking well over twenty
years ago. During the time the Plaistow Nurses were in Barking they won an
enviable reputation. The former Matron of the Barking Hospital remembers
the time when there was one of these nurses who used to go out to confinements
and the only charge made was a fee of five shillings !
The East Barking District Nursing Association also was wound up for all
practical purposes when the responsibility for home nursing in the eastern part
of the town was taken over by the County Council. So far as the public are
concerned, however, in this part of the Town things go on as they have hitherto.
During the latter half of the year the arrangements for District Nursing in what
we call the older part of the town have been subject to fluctuations. I can only hope
that in this way or in that we shall be able to maintain the same close association
with the nurses of the new order of things which obtained in the days when the
nurses of Plaistow carried out this work.
Day Nurseries.
It was when John had unfortunately met with an accident and was in hospital
situated on the other side of London. The weather was fine and Mary was torn
between conflicting emotions. She wanted to go over to see John, but she didn't
want to take the baby with her, and the home circumstances were such that she
didn't like asking her mother's help in minding the baby.
Anyhow, she wanted to place the child into a Nursery for the day, so that
she could go over to see her husband, and I am bound to confess that whatever
good opinion she had of our services up to this stage went absolutely west—I'm
afraid women are apt to be a bit unreasonable at times. Just because Mary couldn't
get her child into a Nursery at a time when she so badly wanted to do so, everything
in the world was wrong.
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