51. The Hospital Library at Joyce Green.

Key words/phrases: Joyce Green library, Charlotte Berry (née Dobbs), Clarice & F.L Dodds, Bow Arrow & Darenth Park Hospitals, Garrison Keillor, Charles Medawar, “Toohey’s Medicine for Nurses”, Preliminary Training School (P.T.S.), Henoch-Schonlein’s purpura, Ward 9A, Norman Cousins, Jesse Boot, “Chalkie” White.

No.51

Do you remember the library at Joyce Green Hospital ? Situated north of the large courtyard behind the Nursing Administration block on one of the corridors that led away from the administrative hub of the hospital and leading towards the wards ?

Charlotte Berry (née Dobbs) - who now lives in Greymouth, New Zealand - and I trained together as student nurses in the late 60s and because Charlotte is the stepdaughter of Clarice, the librarian, I have been able to talk to her recently about Clarice and the Joyce Green library.

In passing - you might remember Charlotte’s father, Fred Lesley Dobbs, too? At one time he was Finance officer for the Dartford Group of Hospitals based at Bow Arrow Hospital and later on he became the Finance Officer for the Darenth Park Group of Hospitals. He married Clarice in 1968.

But if you worked at Joyce Green during the 60s and beyond you’ll almost certainly remember Clarice and her cross-bred spaniel Toby ?

Referring to librarians in his book ‘Lives of the Cowboys’, Garrison Keillor once said “that librarians possess a vast store of politeness. They regularly get asked the dumbest questions on God's green earth and they tolerate every kind of crank, eccentric and mouth-breather there is”, whereas Charles Medawar once said: “Whilst librarians are almost always very helpful and absurdly knowledgeable, their skills are very underestimated and largely under-employed”.

Did this cap fit in Clarice’s case ? Yes, I believe it does.

Student nurses who were about to enter the Preliminary Training School (P.T.S.) at Joyce Green each had to purchase their own copy of a medical and a surgical nursing text book for use during the course. “Toohey’s Medicine for Nurses” was the name of the medical nursing textbook although I can’t remember what the surgical nursing textbook was called.

However it was to the hospital library - so expertly run by Clarice - that most of us went to in order to read up on all the other material that we needed access to during our studies since web-searching and the internet hadn’t been heard of then, at least not in Dartford. I certainly have memories of wading through material on Henoch-Schonlein’s purpura in the library in order to bolster the content of a case study relating to a little boy that was being nursed on Ward 9A at the time and valuing the help of the library staff.

The library at Joyce Green was a mixed library containing medical and paramedical texts & journals plus fiction and non-fiction for both patients and staff . In addition a library trolley was pushed around the wards once a week for the benefit of bed-bound patients.

The library itself had one large room containing nursing textbooks and recreational reading material books and then there was a medical-orientated library off of the this main room with Clarice's office off of that.

In addition Charlotte Charlotte has reminded me that Clarice also used to go up to London occasionally to select and borrow paintings that would subsequently be hung in strategic positions around the hospital. Do ever remember, for instance, having an after-lunch cup of coffee in the nurses’ sitting room - above the main dining room - and glancing at one of the pictures that Clarice had selected or seeing pictures elsewhere in the hospital ?

The American writer, editor, citizen-diplomat and unflagging optimist Norman Cousins (1915-1990) once said “that a one of the roles of a library should be … as a delivery room for the birth of ideas …”.

Since he was also very passionate about promoting health and wholeness and was an advocate of holistic healing who would be better perhaps, were we to decide to select a cheer-leader for hospital libraries, than him ?

Later on during his life Cousins was diagnosed with a form of arthritis but he refused to become an invalid to his condition and in addition to the standard treatment regimes of the time he experimented with high doses of Vitamin C and the regular use of what he referred to as “laughter therapy”. Later on he suffered a myocardial infarction but subsequently he went on to chronicle his views in his best-seller : “Anatomy of an Illness as Perceived by the Patient: Reflections on Healing and Regeneration” (1979).

In conclusion - and following on from the piece I wrote a couple weeks ago about Jesse Boot and Chalkie White, the Joyce Green pharmacist - did you realise that Jessie’s wife, Florence was responsible for setting up the Boot’s Book-Lover’s Libraries in her husband’s chemist shops ?

She charged borrowers 2d per book which obviously helped to boost the trade of Boots, The Chemists, but her motives were far from simply financial and she became a staunch advocate of higher education for women ... particularly in Nottingham where she financed the building of a Hall of Residence for women at Nottingham University in 1928.

I’m sure that Florence Boot and Clarice Dobbs would have had a lot to talk about together ?