The Barts League of Nurses was saddened to hear of the recent death of Kath Sims nee Fowler at the grand age of 107. Kath qualified as a nurse in 1940 and remembers swotting for exams with the Battle of Britain raging overhead. However, Kath wrote about her long life in an autobiography. Her family has given the Barts League of Nurses permission to reproduce the chapter during her time at St Bartholomew’s Hospital so that others can enjoy her story.
Nursing by Kath Sims
On deciding to be a nurse
I used to have arguments with Hugh Briggs (the clerk at the factory) about what I was going to do – I didn’t know. One day, he had had his appendix out and he remarked that the nurses worked awfully hard, he said it must be an awful job. So I queried this, I asked “why is it an awful job?”. I then went home to my mother and said I wanted to be a nurse. This was the latest in a long list of things I thought I would like to do. My mother told all my cousins and so on – so after that, I couldn’t change my mind. I was the youngest and my cousins would all say, “Oh she’ll never stick it, it’s such hard work” and this just made me more determined. It was hard work. At the end of each day, we were too tired to stand up, but I wasn’t going to give up, but I always enjoyed it from the start.
I was 20 by this time—you weren’t taken for nursing until you were 20. My mother decided I was not going to train at the local hospital, so we decided to get some brochures from London. We visited some of the London hospitals, and I noticed that the nurses’ lounge at Barts had nice, comfortable armchairs, so I decided to go there!
Nurse Training
I went for the interview, was accepted, and started on 1st September 1937. For 6 weeks, we went to the Preliminary Training School (PTS), which was in 3 terraced houses in Islington (near the Angel) joined together. We slept there and had classes every day, for example, anatomy and physiology. There was one teacher who was particularly good because I never forgot anything she taught me.
We would have a dummy patient who we would wash and we were shown how to do blanket baths, we learned how to lay up trolleys, how to make beds including how to overlap the corners. There were mundane tasks such as dusting every day, and we had to wash out the duster and show Sister that it was clean.
This is where I met Dilys who was in the same set as me. After the 6 weeks we went into different wards in the hospital where we were told, “Right you can forget everything you learned at PTS because we don’t do it that way here”.
Nursing at Barts
The first ward I went to was the children’s ward. Now, I knew nothing about children, having been the youngest in our family. There was a cupboard containing clothes that we would use to dress the children and take them into the square. I had no idea what to put on these children! We weren’t allowed to have anything to do with the babies who were looked after by the senior staff. Celiac children had great big tummies and spindly arms and legs, and they weren’t allowed fatty foods, so they were fed a pink jelly (nowadays known as a gluten-free diet). One celiac child complained, “I don’t like pink jelly”.
I was there for three months and was interviewed by the Sister, who said, “You don’t have much initiative, do you, Nurse Fowler?” Oh, thanks, I thought.
Every 3 months, we were moved around, and my next ward was a men’s medical ward. There was a funny old Sister there called Sister Garrett (the Sisters lived on the ward and slept in their sitting room so that they were always there), and I remember she said to me, “Fowler, I asked Matron for a nurse, and she sends me a fool”. This was a general reference to all the nurses. She was a character; she told me, “When you give the patients their medicine, let your hand slip so you give them a bit more”. I got on well with her.
After that 3 months, I went on night duty in the same ward. After we had the patients settled down we had to clean the bed pans in the sluice and other junior tasks. We would then have our meal. Milk was sent up in large churns. The patients would have a lot of fruit. My senior nurse was called Poynton and when we weren’t busy we would help ourselves to the fruit and the milk. We had a lot of fun together.
I used to enjoy night duty; it was great fun. We went on at 8 o’clock and worked through to 7 or 8 in the morning, although you could have a little rest in the night if you weren’t busy. Day duty was 7am to 8pm, but you had 2 hours off 3 days a week, 3 hours off for 2 days, a half day, and a whole day off each week. However, you had to go to lectures when you were off duty.
Whenever we had to change wards we were concerned about where we would be posted next. Some of the Sisters were very hard, and some were very pleasant. My next posting was to Bowlby Ward, where the Sister was lovely. One of my jobs was to clean out the cupboards, and she came up to me on one occasion and whispered, “Nurse Fowler, I have just finished cleaning out that cupboard for you”. On this ward, they carried out head operations, and one day, the student nurses had got a patient out of bed and were walking him up and down the wards, following which they were having difficulty getting him back into bed.
Sister watched this and asked me, “Shall we show them how to do it, nurse?” So we picked him up and lifted him into bed, and the students felt very humbled.
Holidays in Wales
At the end of the first year, we took an exam, after which I went on holiday with my parents. This was unusual because my father worked every summer, which was a busy time at the jam factory. We went touring in the Wye Valley and Wales. My friend Dilys lived in Dolgellau (pronounced Dolgethly), and she was on holiday as well, so I mentioned this to my father, who agreed we should visit Dolgellau. On arrival, he went into the Golden Lion pub and said, “I’m looking for Mr Hughes”. Not surprisingly, this comment was met with the following: “Well………….which Mr Hughes do you want?”
“Mr O P”
“Oh, Mr O P Hughes, well, he works next door”. He was the Customs and Excise officer for mid-Wales. His office was next to the pub, and he had a line to the pub for his beer. We were duly introduced to Mr Hughes and visited his family at his home and toured around with them. After that, I always used to go and stay with Dilys for my holidays. Her father would take us to visit farms where no one spoke any English, which was very strange and exciting. He would let me drive his car.
I learned to drive when I was 17. One day I was out with my father when I was 16 and we were on a quiet lane and he asked me if I wanted to have a drive. He taught me to drive. We had a little car, which I drove around the factory yard. Driving tests were introduced when I was 17, in 1934. You were given a licence and had to pass the test before you were given a second licence. I passed the test in the first year.
The driving test was introduced on 16th March 1935 by the Road Traffic Act 1934. Initially testing was voluntary to avoid a rush of candidates when the test became compulsory on 1st June 1935 for all drivers and riders who started driving on or after 1st April 1934. Around 246,000 candidates applied, the test took half an hour and cost 7/6 (37.5p), and initially the pass rate was 63%.
I used to enjoy my holidays with Dilys and her family. Dilys was mad as a coot, but we used to have great fun together. Her sister married a farmer, and his farm had a toilet down the lane with three seats side by side—a plank of wood with three holes in it (enclosed in a hut) over a stream!
Barts, Hill End, and World War Two
After 2 years at Barts, I got my stripes.
Initially, we wore grey uniforms, 9 inches from the floor, with a cap, stiff collars and cuffs and you’d put on a clean apron after you’d washed all the patients in the morning. You got your striped uniform after a year, having passed a preliminary exam so you’re not “pro” (probationer). We were still nurses in training. It took 3 years to qualify, but we did 4 years – one year as a Staff Nurse. I think I earned £75 a year when I was trained but only 7/- (35p) a week (£18.20 per annum) in the first year of training and then a little more each year. This just about kept you in stockings! However, accommodation and food were provided, but you had to buy the dresses, aprons and caps, collars and cuffs (at a cost of around £20) before you started, but then replacements were subsequently provided. I managed to save £100 by the time I got married.
The war started, and we were all carted off to Hill End Hospital in St Albans. That had been a mental hospital, so they turfed out all the mental patients – I don’t know where they went (and they probably didn’t either!). All the patients who had had appendectomies were sent home after a week so they had to recover very quickly. All the cooking had to be done on Primus stoves because there was no gas laid onto the wards. We would cook bacon and egg on the Primus stove for breakfast – I don’t remember how we did the toast. The Primus stoves were always blowing up!
There was a room in the hospital where we used to do dressings. It had a great big fish kettle, and I think gas may have been laid on there, but that was where the instruments were sterilised. I remember somebody opening a bottle of ether, and the flame from the gas stove shot across the room to the ether—it was quite primitive.
Eventually, we got gas on the wards and the equipment we needed, such as autoclave ovens to sterilise the bandages. Everything went according to plan, but it did take time. We had a lot of evacuees from Dunkirk, and their hands were covered in bandages, and all they wanted was a cigarette!
We continued our training there with lectures and so on. I became a staff nurse, and I was in charge of the women’s orthopaedic ward. We had wards full of people who had broken their hip. When the hip breaks, the muscles contract, so the leg shortens. In those days, there was a large frame laid over the bed, and weights were fitted to the end of the leg to expand the muscles for a month before the operation. It was important to ensure the patients did not get bedsores. There was a lot of nursing in those days. The operation involved putting a pin through the femur into the ball joint. The operation is much the same today, except the leg is pulled down in the operating theatre.
On one occasion, I went to London to work for a while, and we were bombed while I was there. All the gas went, and we had no cookers, and the water was cut off, I think. We were cooking breakfast on an electric fire turned on its side. Talk about Health and Safety!
I remember we used to take a hot water bottle to bed and use the water from the bottle to wash in the morning because it was still warm.
We formed a choral society. One of the girls conducted, and we did “A Merrie England” by Edward Jermyn. I was supposed to be the May Queen. I was supposed to be on duty, so the Sister came along and said to me,”As soon as the May Queen comes, you’d better go.” We did carol services. It was later on that I bought the wind-up record player.
The food at Hill End was pretty awful, and Dilys, who was such a character, had a cup of Cocoa that had bits floating on the top, so she promptly went to the Assistant Matron’s office to complain.
I completed my training at Hill End. We were swotting while the Battle of Britain was going on overhead. I could leave at that time but you couldn’t be a sister until you had done midwifery. This was done over a period of 6 months at Barnet Maternity Hospital with lectures being held elsewhere.
Reproduced with permission from the family of the late Kath Sims. All enquiries to info@bartsleagueofnurses.org
