I was brought up in the country with a cat and a dog for playmates, so
when I went among other young people, I was very shy, and never made
girl friends. That may account for my ignorance in the things that
mattered at the time of my marriage, at the age of twenty-one and a
half. My husband was just as ignorant, and we had to pay very dearly
for our ignorance. I was married about eight weeks when I became ill;
I went to the doctor and took a lot of physic, but was no better, then
I would not have any more from the doctor, and tried to doctor myself,
but I was very ill the whole of the seven and a half months that I
was pregnant. The birth was a forced one. I was taken very ill, and
knowing baby should not come for six weeks longer, I was bearing the
pain as well as I could, just cheering myself that it would be less
to go through when the time came, when my husband came in and would
insist on getting a doctor. We tried a new one this time, who lived
quite near. He had just left the infirmary, and we had heard he was
very clever in maternity. When he saw me and questioned me, he sent for
the nurse. The rest of that night is too terrible to go through even
now after twenty-eight years. Suffice it to say that next morning there
was a poor little baby boy with a very large swollen head dreadfully
cut, and a young mother dreadfully cut also. One would have thought
the trouble was over now--anyhow, we thought so, but we found it had
only begun. A week or two after the pains began. I thought it was all
right, that I had not got quite well. At last I had to go to the doctor
again. He told me I was going on all right. At the end of six weeks
the nurse called. I told her just how I felt, and that the doctor said
it was through the bad confinement I had gone through. She told me to
tell him to come and examine me thoroughly, that there was something
growing there. He came, and when my husband saw him afterwards, he
said, “Oh, there is really nothing. There is a little hardness there,
that is all. Your wife is very nervous.” My husband told him that I
was anything except nervous. However, I went on for eighteen months,
never knowing what moment those terrible pains were going to take me.
Many times it was in the street. I was in bed about eight months out
of the eighteen. Then came a very terrible time, and my husband called
another doctor in, and I was ordered into the B. Infirmary at once. I
got better. I was home three months, when I was carried in again. They
said it was ovarian trouble. They wanted to operate. My husband asked
them how long I might live as I was. They said I might live for years,
but I would always be subject to these attacks. He told them he would
rather keep me as I was than risk an operation. On inquiring the cause
of the trouble, I was told by the nurse it was confinement. I went on
in much the same way until my boy was ten years old. Then I had to be
operated on. It was a case of life or death then. But if I went into
the Infirmary I could not choose my doctor, so Dr. ---- offered to do
the operation free, but I would have to go into a private hospital,
which meant a good deal to us, who hardly knew which way to turn for an
extra shilling then. However, my husband insisted that Dr. ---- was to
do the operation, and by letting everything else go he managed to get
the money together by the time I came out, which was three weeks at
£3 3s. per week and £1 7s. 6d. for the second nurse. The trouble was a
multiple tumour; it had grown round about the intestines. They had to
tear the one from the other. After leaving the hospital I was in bed
for three months, but it was a complete cure, though no one except my
husband expected me to get over it. Dr. ---- told me I could not have
gone through a more serious operation unless I had had my head taken
off, and then there was no hope at all.
Now I maintain that if we had understood things relating to married
life, all this could have been saved. I would not have starved myself
and child before birth for one thing, and I would have been more
careful on washing days not to lift tubs or jump to reach lines,
neither would I have cleaned windows and a hundred and one other things
that a pregnant woman should not do, and, above all, we would not have
had an inexperienced doctor.
I must just tell you that my husband has always been husband, nurse,
and mother. The pain was never quite so bad when he was near, and no
one ever made my bed like him.
Our income, until baby was six months old, was £1 6s. per week. Then
my husband got out of employment--was out four months. He took up an
agency, and did a very little with it, but with that little and about
£2 12s. 6d. we had managed to save, and pawning, we got through without
going into debt until he got another job. This lasted about eighteen
months, averaging about 30s. per week. Then for about twenty months he
averaged about 10s. per week. Our home went then a thing at a time,
but we got through at the expense of our insides and outsides, without
help or debt, except doctor’s bills. Then we came to this town on £1
7s.; after a few years £1 9s. The rise came just two years before I
underwent the operation. We had our home to get out of that, and had to
get it on the hire system (or borrow from friends, and we both objected
to borrowing). Some people say drink is the cause of poverty, but I
think you will agree with me when I say we had not enough to drink.
Our rent would work out at about 6s. per week. I think this is what
you want. Of course, things are very much better with us now, and have
been for the last twelve years, both in health and finance. I just want
to add that although the first half of my married life was so hard and
painful, I would not have missed one bit of it, because it has all
helped to make me understand things that matter from a practical point
of view. If there is anything more I can help in I shall be pleased to
do so.
_Wages 26s. to 30s.; one child._