Please re-email me.

If you e-mailed me this week offering to contribute to the blog, would you kindly e-mail me again because I accidently managed to wipe your original email off of my pc and so cannot reply to you ! Apologies etc. David. 3 June 08

68. Resurrecting old Joyce Green Hospital names.

Key words/phrases: Jill Jedman - Property Information Officer of Dartford Borough Council, Dr John Burne, Dr Cameron, Sister Shaw, Norman Beater, Dr William Budd, Stan Burroughs, Mr Tuffil, Hazel Radley/Mrs Noakes, Mr Alec Walker, Miss Bingham.

No.68

I have been talking to Mrs Jill Jedman,Dartford Borough Council’s Property Information Officer this week about the naming process of the streets, buildings and open spaces on the new ‘mixed purpose’ development on the old Joyce Green Hospital site.

Apparently Mrs Jedman does her her research into the historical background of sites, people and events, draws up lists of possible names and then submits these to the Council ‘cabinet members’ who make the final decisions.

Words that could lead to confusion, names of people who are still living and other factors can lead to certain names being left off these lists but on the whole it seems that almost any name can be considered for inclusion.

One especially encouraging fact is that Mrs Jedman seems to welcome advice and suggestions from people who are familiar with the history of a particular area, previous establishments or characters and past occurences. For this reason it has proved really interesting discussing further ideas with her for possible names; in our case those associated with the Joyce Green and the so-called “River” Hospitals.

Some years ago Dr John Burne, a Consultant Pathologist at JGH, wrote an article for the “Bygone Kent” magazine (Vol 12, No.5) focussing upon the work of Harry Hopkins, the head gardener who - along with Dr Cameron, the Medical Superintendant at the time - designed, created and maintained the famous Joyce Green collection of trees, shrubs and flowers between 1919-1935.

The story of these men’s horticultural interests and work is in itself fascinating but the article also covers a lot of other ground from which I have been able to extract a collection of possible names for Jill’s lists for Phases 2-5 of “The Bridge” Project.

Just to remind you of aspects of some of JG’s rich past here are some of the words and names that I have passed on to Jill for her consideration. It actually falls to Jill to add the second part of the name or title, if she has decided to add a name to one of her lists.

Tramcar - because of the trams that used to bring patients into the hospital from the riverside in the past. So for instance she might chose to add an ending such as Tramcar Road or Tramcar Passage.

Nurseryman’s (Square ?)– another possibility relating to Harry Hopkin’s skills.

Child’s Fever (Place ?) - highlighting the use of 900 beds for children with Scarlet Fever during the period 1919-1922.

Alastrim (Rise ?) the name for a mild form of smallpox, an outbreak of which kept JGH busy in 1929.

In addition, I have also submitted the names of a number of individuals who contributed very substantially to the hospital’s work in the past.

Jill Jedman is already aware of the names of many of JGH’s “old hands” but I have also tried during the past week to draw to her attention to some other names that I thought that she might not know of ?

Some of these are : Sister Shaw, the Children’s Ward Sister, Norman Beater, a previous Superintendent Radiographer in the X-Ray Department, Dr William Budd, a Consultant Geriatrician, Stan Burroughs (or was his name spelled Burrows ?) - Departmental Charge Nurse for Geriatrics who was later promoted to “Assistant Matron” grade, Mr Tuffil, a Consultant Urological Surgeon, Hazel Radley - who became Mrs Noakes , the Principal Nurse Tutor (whose title changed with the introduction of the Salmon Report on the “Senior Nursing Staff Structure” to Senior Nursing Officer (Education), Mr Alec Walker, Nurse Tutor, Miss Bingham, Nurse Tutor.

Do you remember the names of other people whose names could be put forward for consideration ? If so now is the time to mention them : Jill’s e-mail address is : Jill.Dedman@dartford.gov.uk and her telephone number is : 01322 343206

67. Old JGH site & the naming of the new roads.

Key words/phrases: The Bridge Project, Bob Dunn Way, Rennie Drive, Halcrow Avenue, Binnie Road, Brunel Way. Doctors and nurses of yesteryear : Couzins, Birdwood, Hyde, Mitman, Waylen, Marsden,Wacher, Cameron, Morris, Chapman and Thorpe.

No.67

In view of the ‘near completion' of Phase 1 of the new Bridge Project - next to the old Joyce Green Hospital site - consideration has obviously had to be given to naming of the now completed arterial roads and the ‘secondary’ roads and streets within the residential section of this new development.

New houses for sale have already have come onto the market along what is now now known as "Bob Dunn Way" but in addition we are now getting some indication of the names that have already been selected, or are being considered for, some of the roads on this new housing estate.

The perimeter roads it seems will be named after the following bridge designers : Rennie Drive (the northerly road between Littlebrook Manor Way and Marsh Street), Halcrow Avenue (the southerly road between Littlebrook Manor Way and Marsh Street), Binnie Road (the northern road from Marsh Street through the main residential area) and Brunel Way (the south road extending from Marsh Street and through the Science Park.

However the roads and streets in the residential housing area - now nearing completion - are to be given the names of doctors and nurses associated with Joyce Green Hospital. The suffixes have not yet been decided upon but nine names are apparently going to be selected from the following eleven: Couzins, Birdwood, Hyde, Mitman, Waylen, Marsden, Wacher, Cameron, Morris, Chapman and Thorpe.

Miss Wacher, Miss Thorpe and Miss Couzins were all ex-Matrons of Joyce Green Hospital; Drs Mitman, Marsden and Cameron were medical men of previous eras but who were Birdwood, Hyde, Waylen, Morris and Chapman ?

How is your history ? Can anyone remind us who these 'stars' of Joyce Green's past were ?

66. Poultices at Joyce Green Hospital

Key words/phrases: The Nursing Record, probationer nurses, Queen Victoria, preliminary training, kaolin poultices.

No. 66

An extract that I was reading recently in an on-line copy of The Nursing Record, (Jan 10, 1889 Vol 2) declared that :

“Where possible, all probationer nurses will be given the opportunity to attend weekly lectures on nursing topics given by Matron, a sister or one of the medical staff. These will include subjects such as … (and here I have omitted the full list) … and the application of poultices.

Then, ( ... it continued ...) should she pass her “first year" examination - which is not normally difficult to do - she will be promoted to the rank of Junior Nurse and will be allowed to take temperatures, to do some of the dressings and to assist Sister with the bad cases.”

So my question here is : Do you remember being taught how to make and apply poultices ?

It certainly seems difficult to grasp that nearly 80 years further on from then - at a time when Queen Victoria was still on the throne - that student nurses were still being taught to apply kaolin poultices during their preliminary training.

However, perhaps what is even more amazing is that kaolin poultices are still available for use today in pre-prepared foil-wrapped form or in tubs.

Of course many of you reading this will recall poultices being used on the medical wards of Joyce Green Hospital, in the management of chest problems. Do you remember cutting off lengths of lint from a roll, the corners of which would then be mitred and cutting off an almost-matching sized piece of gauze (or unfolding some gauze swabs for the same purpose) ? Simultaneously you would be heating your tin of kaolin in a saucepan of boiling water or in the ward instrument-steriliser. Then with all the deftness you could muster, spreading the kaolin evenly on to the surface of the lint before putting the gauze piece on top of the kaolin to prevent it from sticking to your patient’s skin ... and finally, folding the inch-wide edges of the lint over to finish off the procedure ?

Then the poultice had to be taken as quickly as possible to the patient’s bedside and subsequently applied to his/her chest, their side or wherever the warmth was required. Perhaps you were taught to take it to their bedside between two warm dinner plates or in a pre-warmed stainless steel kidney dish or container ?

If you had half a dozen or even more of these to make and apply during your day shift or night shift no doubt you developed your own routine for getting these ready and into place ? If you were lucky you sometimes had an nursing auxiliary with you who was experienced in preparing these in the ward kitchen or clinical room ?

But setting aside your recollections of how you used to manage to fit ‘creating’ these poultices into your otherwise busy schedule, I doubt that you will have forgotten the benefit of these to some of your patients of long ago and the sheer symptomatic and psychological relief that they got from these ‘labours of love’ that were created in the wards of Joyce Green Hospital ?

65. A friend in need is a friend indeed.

Key words/phrases: Ex-nurse and novelist Monica Dickens, Charles Dickens, St Paul's Girl's School London, U.S. Naval Officer Roy Stratton of Massachusetts, Rev.Chad Varah of The Samaritans organisation, Church of St Stephen Walbrook London, Mr Catchpole, S.R.N, Joyce Green Hospital, “Emma Chisit.”

No. 65

"She fed on gossip and scandal and if you had some to impart you could always be sure of an audience from Nurse Horrocks, and when there was none, she would readily concoct some intrigue to keep herself going."

So wrote Monica Dickens, the ex-nurse and novelist, in “One Pair of Feet” (1942). Monica, a great-granddaughter of Charles Dickens, rejected her upper middle class background when she expelled from St Paul's Girl's School in London and decided to go into “service” as a cook and servant.

Soon afterwards she became a student nurse in one of the London teaching hospitals and later wrote her account of life as a trainee nurse. She left nursing soon afterwards and did various other jobs, many of which provided inspiration for her future novels.

In 1951 she married a U.S. naval officer and they moved to New England where they adopted two girls. Roy Stratton died in 1985, at which time Monica returned to the U.K. where she continued to write, until her death on Christmas Day 1992.

Many people are familiar with her down-to-earth style of writing and perhaps you are one of the many nurses who have particularly enjoyed her nursing reminiscences however, something that fewer people will perhaps be aware of is that she helped to found the first American branch of the Samaritans in Massachusetts in 1974.

I am hazarding a guess here that she was inspired by the Anglican vicar, the Rev Chad Varah, who died in England last week and who single-handedly founded the phone-line help service for people contemplating suicide.

Later on the organisation became known as The Samaritans and after a period of rapid growth in Britain it provided a model for similar organisations in many other parts of the world.

In 1935 Varah conducted his first funeral whilst a young curate in Lincoln. The deceased person was a 14-year-old girl who had committed suicide because she thought that she suffering from a venereal disease whereas in fact she had simply started menstruating. The turning point for Varah however came in 1953 when he read in a newspaper that there were three suicides a day occurring in the Greater London area.

This coincided with an invitation to become the rector of St Stephen Walbrook, a Church of England benefice in the City of London. This beautiful Wren-designed church, sensitively rebuilt after wartime bombing, had no regular congregation and he accepted the appointment on the understanding that he would be free to use the crypt as the base for a new kind of outreach ministry - to desperate people.

He made it known that anyone contemplating suicide could phone him at any time of the day or night and soon calls began pouring in. Thus, what would later become a worldwide ministry was started by him and a small number of unqualified volunteers.

Chad Varah seems unlikely to be forgotten as the result of creating this lifeline organisation that has been responsible for saving millions of lives. However, it was whilst I was thinking about Monica Dickens’s account of her nursing experiences and the fact that she had formed the first branch of The Samaritans in the USA that I found myself once again thinking about the death of Mr Catchpole, SRN at Joyce Green Hospital.

He was - as some readers will know - the Theatre Superintendent in Joyce Green Hospital during the late 60s who for some reason (or reasons) took his own life in the operating theatre complex late one night.

One of the tragedies was that left a wife and several children behind but another was that he was a much-respected nurse who obviously desperately needed help but who didn’t cry out or who wasn’t heard.

In November 1964 Monica Dickens was autographing books for customers in a book shop in Sydney. She was approached by an Australian woman who handed her an open copy of a book and simply said: “Emma Chisit?” Monica misunderstood what the woman meant and inscribed the words “To Emma Chisit” inside the front cover, whereas in fact the customer was actually asking “How much is it ?”

A humorous mistake of course … but perhaps “Emma Chisit?” is still an extremely pertinent question this week as we remember the value that Chad Varah and his co-workers placed upon human life and also reflect perhaps upon the tragic loss of Mr. Catchpole at Joyce Green Hospital.

64. Poetry in motion at Joyce Green Hospital.

Poetry in motion at Joyce Green Hospital.

Key words/phrases: Head Gardener: “Mac” MacIntyre, Etienne de Grellet du Mabillier (a.k.a. Stephen Grellet), Lyon Military College, body-guard of Louis XVI, Queens District of New York City, Quakers, William Penn, George Fox, Illinois, New Orleans, Canada, Pope Pius VII, Czar Alexander 1st and the Kings of Spain and Prussia.

No. 64

I once shared an office with a health visitor who had a poster behind her desk of a sunset bearing the caption: “We don’t remember hours, we remember moments.”

Does that ring true in your experience ? Can you still remember brief experiences, thoughts or feelings that occurred long ago with an unexpected degree of clarity ? If so I suppose that this says something important about the profound impact that certain things have upon us at the time that they occur ?

One of the many things that I can remember happening to me whilst I was working at Joyce Green Hospital was being given a lift by “Mac” MacIntyre, the head gardener, in the Gardens Dept van down the main drive and out of the hospital. I was on my way to Dartford and he stopped just before the Porter’s Lodge by the main gate and offered me a lift.

It was a cold morning and I had just missed the bus that would have dropped me off at Dartford railway station. As we set off in the van, I thanked him for taking the trouble to stop and offer me a lift, to which his response was: “I shall pass this way but once.”

I asked him what he meant and in his rolling Scottish accent he said, “Do ye nae know tha ?” I shook my head to show that I didn’t, which prompted him into reciting part of a poem as he drove further down the drive. A verse of which - very strangely - has stayed in the back of my mind for the last 40 years:

“I shall pass through this world but once. Any good therefore that I can do or any kindness that I can show to any human being let me do it now. Let me not defer nor neglect it, for I shall not pass this way again.”

But why did this verse have such an impact on me, so much so that it became burnt into my memory ? I suppose that it was one another of those occasions in early adulthood when the brevity of life dawned on me and “Mac”, who was also aware of how short life can sometimes be had “walked the talk” that day in offering me a lift.

The poem, by the way, is attributed to a certain Etienne de Grellet du Mabillier who later on in life became known as Stephen Grellet.

He was the son of a well-to-do counsellor to King Louis XVI, was raised as a Roman Catholic & was educated at the Military College in Lyon. At the age of 17yrs he joined the body-guard of Louis XVI but when he was sentenced to be executed in 1795 (during the French Revolution) he escaped & fled to Newtown, now part of Queens, New York City.

In 1796, impressed by the writings of William Penn, George Fox and the Quaker faith he joined the Society of Friends. He traded in New York and used his profits to finance a series of missionary tours extending through all the settled parts of the USA, west to Illinois, north into Canada and south to New Orleans.

Driven by his faith he developed an interest in education, in prison and hospital conditions, in provision for the poor and in various other social problems and he made it his business to inquire into prevailing conditions in every country that he visited. Somewhat surprisingly he was granted meetings with various rulers and dignitaries around the globe including Pope Pius VII, Czar Alexander I and the Kings of Spain and Prussia to whom he made recommendations for improvements in conditions wherever he could.

I suppose that it dawned upon him that he was only likely to be able to influence certain situations once in his life - as he passed by - and it seems to have made him determined to take action wherever it was possible, as “Mac” did that day when he had the chance on the main drive of Joyce Green Hospital and made that small gesture.

63.Land girls sighted at Joyce Green Hospital ?

Key words/phrases: The Women’s Land Army, “The Land Girls” (1998) Director: David Leland, Angela Huth: Novelist, Voluntary Aid Detachment nurses, Joyce’s Farm, Gardens Department of Joyce Green Hospital.

No.63

Have you noticed the coverage in the U.K. press recently about the feelings of a number of elderly ex-“land girls” who are feeling that their efforts during World War II should be formally recognised by the British Government ?

As a uniformed organisation that served the nation during several wars “with as much distinction as any other group of women”, it seems that they feel that they should be allowed to march in forthcoming Armistice parades at the Cenotaph in London and elsewhere in the U.K. along with all the other uniformed organisations.

Also, have you ever watched the 1998 film “The Land Girls”, directed by David Leland and based on Angela Huth's novel: “The Land Girls” ? It's set in Dorset during 1941 and follows the life and work of three young women: a vivacious and sexy girl called Pru, a hair-stylist from Manchester; Ag, who is a quiet and unworldly Cambridge graduate and the dreamy and beautiful Stella who is engaged to Philip, a dashing naval officer.

As part of the Women’s Land Army, the three girls are replacing a number of male farm workers who have gone off to fight in the war. They are sent to work for Farmer Lawrence and billeted on his farm where they each get to know Joe, the farmer's young son. In fact it depicts far more the girl’s sexual curiosity and Joe’s willing cooperation and it provides a fascinating insight into their hard and sometimes difficult lives as the seek to define new roles for themselves in a country in which families are being torn apart by war.

Neither the demands of these elderly ex-land girls for recognition of their generous service to the nation or the film have anything directly to do with Dartford or with Joyce Green Hospital and so what’s the connection that I am attempting to make ?

Well in the same way that scores of other women served as VAD (Voluntary Aid Detachment) nurses at Joyce Green in the past, I have wondered whether any land-girls were attached to Joyce’s Farm or even to the Gardens Department of Joyce Green Hospital ?

Presumably the gardeners - many of whom we can assume were women because of the able-bodied men having left gone off to fight - were hard at work growing as much produce as possible for consumption within the hospital during these very difficult times and that they would have needed all the help that they could get ?

If you think about it it seems logical that with much of the land around the hospital needing to be used for food production and all the orchards too that existed at the time, together the existence of suitable accommodation for any land-girls that recruited - perhaps within the female staff accommodation blocks - that land-girls WERE once seen working on the Joyce Green and other hospital sites ?

But in any case, does this really matter ? Well only insofar perhaps as this MAY be part of Joyce Green Hospital's history. Do you have any thoughts or ideas about this or is this simply another part of Joyce Green’s history that may be lost forever ?