A Life of Caring: 16 Newfoundland Nurses Tell Their Stories

Introduction

For a young woman in Newfoundland in the 1920s or ’30s there were few options when she considered her future. Outside of marrying and settling down to domestic life in the community, she could pursue secretarial work, teaching, or nursing. Of course most chose marriage and motherhood instead of following a career. For those who had a desire to care for the sick or who had an adventuresome spirit or who wished to travel, nursing offered the greatest opportunities. For some who lived in outport Newfoundland and Labrador, the adventure began when they left their small communities, often for the first time in their lives, and moved to St. John’s to enter nursing school. Others used their nursing career as a springboard to new and sometimes exciting experiences after nursing school. As well, there were those who chose nursing after trying out a career in teaching or secretarial work.

In the mid 1980s, Marilyn Marsh interviewed 21 women who graduated from nursing between 1918 and 1949. Marilyn, also a nurse, had met these women in her career and felt they had a story to tell. These interviews, along with one completed by Joyce Nevitt in 1974 and given to Marilyn, provide a picture of what life was like for these women in those times. Due to health reasons, Marilyn was unable to complete the project and the interviews were stored away. In 2005, using grant money from the Association of Registered Nurses of Newfoundland and Labrador, the process of transcribing the interviews began, and with additional funding from the J. R. Smallwood Foundation, the transcriptions were completed in 2006. This project was considered research and subsequently the appropriate ethical approvals from the Human Investigation Committee at Memorial University were received. The tapes and transcribed interviews are to be stored at the Centre for Newfoundland Studies at Memorial University as a record of nursing in Newfoundland and Labrador and may be used as a source of data for future research purposes.

For our first book, From the Voices of Nurses: An Oral History of Nursing in Newfoundland and Labrador, we interviewed a group of 33 nurses. The majority of these women worked in nursing until the mid 1980s and gave us a 60-year picture of nursing in Newfoundland and Labrador. Through their recollections, the history of nursing education and practice in Newfoundland and Labrador, along with societal and historical influences impacting both, was captured for that era. This book, A Life of Caring: 16 Newfoundland Nurses Tell Their Stories, shares an earlier history of nursing through the personal stories of 16 women who practiced nursing primarily in the 1920s and ’30s. At the time, the world was going through the Depression and the Second World War. The recollections of these women may not always be historically accurate, however, they are a reflection of their lived experiences and provide insight into who they were as women and nurses. Unlike the first book, these stories follow nurses outside the borders of the country of Newfoundland, and we get a glimpse at how they functioned and coped with their challenges.

The participants were interviewed in their homes. At the time of the interviews, the women ranged in age from 67 to 92 with an average age of 83. The length of each interview varied, with some requiring two visits to complete. The interview included information on each woman’s family background, her nursing education and career in nursing. The questions elicited information on issues facing these nurses: the treatment of illnesses, available resources, the role of the nurse in the health care system of their day and the inevitable challenges they encountered in their practice. Not surprising, in the telling of their stories, the nurses also revealed information about socioeconomic conditions and historical events that impacted their work and lives. While initially shy talking about themselves, the participants became relaxed and enjoyed sharing their stories as the interview progressed. Talking about their nursing careers gave them an opportunity to appreciate their contributions to nursing and health care and to pass on valuable information about the evolution of the nursing profession to future generations of nurses.

Five interviews were excluded from this book because the participants’ recollections of their nursing careers were limited. A sixth individual was excluded when a review of her records revealed she had left the school of nursing before completing her probationary period, although she had held herself out as a nurse all her life. She worked a number of years in health care settings but it is unknown in what capacity. This occurred at a time when there was no official nursing registry in Newfoundland and individuals could call themselves nurses without repercussion.

In Newfoundland, students were not admitted to nursing school as a class until the mid 1930s. Prior to then, they were admitted when a place became available at the hospital, and it was not unusual for one or two students to be admitted at varying times throughout the year. Subsequently, very few entered nursing directly from high school, and indeed most applicants to nursing were older. All but three were 21 or older. In this group, several of the participants opted for other careers before entering nursing. Three taught school for several years, one in Cartwright, Labrador. Two completed a business course, one of whom worked as assistant to two Newfoundland prime ministers, before choosing nursing. It became evident as the stories evolved that the majority came from families of means in that their fathers were local merchants or gainfully employed. This was not always the case for Newfoundland families in the 1920s and ’30s.

All but one interviewee were from Newfoundland. Gwen Thomas graduated from nursing in South Wales and came to work as a district nurse in rural Newfoundland after the Second World War. Of those who studied in Newfoundland, all except Helen Penny graduated prior to 1939. This was at a time when the only schools of nursing that existed in Newfoundland were the St. John’s General Hospital School of Nursing and the Grace General Hospital School of Nursing. Grace Hospital graduates completed the eighteen-month Maternity Program before returning to complete the RN Program. Five of the Newfoundland women interviewed traveled outside the province to study nursing.

In addition to recalling their nursing careers, the participants related stories of the social circumstances of the times and told of Newfoundland health agencies and health conditions long forgotten. Mary Galway told of her efforts to improve conditions for male patients at the Mental Hospital in the 1930s when their food was brought in buckets and served on tin plates. Cluda Grandy talked of her work with the travelling x-ray clinic on the Avalon Peninsula in an effort to eradicate tuberculosis. Marion Stone, one of the first industrial nurses in Newfoundland, shared stories of her work at the Imperial Tobacco Factory and her efforts to eradicate tuberculosis among the workers. From the interviews, we learn of Miss Whiteside, the Director for Public Health Nursing in Newfoundland in the 1930s, and her program to prepare nurses to work in rural Newfoundland. We learn of Cook Street, a home for unmarried mothers operated by the Salvation Army, and about Jensen Camp Hospital, the forerunner to the Sanatorium on Topsail Road. Within their stories, we hear of the poverty that existed in Newfoundland and the difficult conditions nurses experienced as they responded to the needs of their patients.

It is interesting to note these nurses’ commitment to continuing education in areas like public health, midwifery, tuberculosis nursing, and x-ray therapy. Ethel Wells shares her experience doing an x-ray course following which she was expected to return to the Grace General Hospital to open the first x-ray department. Alma Moores and Eileen Shanahan tell about having to learn dentistry in preparation for their role as district nurses. From those nurses who worked in rural Newfoundland, we learn the magnitude of their workload, the conditions under which they worked, and their loneliness, but we also sense their independence, ingenuity, and commitment to their patients.

Some participants lived through two world wars. Three were directly involved in World War II. Gwen Thomas worked as a midwife in North London during the German bombings. Helen Penny served as an aerial photographer in the Royal Canadian Air Force while Jennie Wareham was a Nursing Sister in the South African Army and served in the North African desert from 1941 to 1945. Ethel Wells shares stories of working at the Sanatorium during that war. Surprisingly, the participants’ stories reveal that many of the current issues facing nursing (e.g. quality of care, nursing shortages, and workload) are not new. On the one hand, Mary Galway moved to New York to work because they were screaming for nurses, while in Newfoundland, Marcella French tells us that When we graduated, we didn’t have a lot of expectations because there…weren’t a lot of positions for graduates… This was an era when nurses were invited to join the staff of a hospital, and positions for graduate nurses were limited because hospitals were primarily staffed by student nurses. Mary Feehan (whose interview is not included) related how she got employment: We came on staff in 1939. You could scarcely buy a position on staff, but that year there was a flu epidemic and quite a few of the graduates at the General were off sick. Miss Mabel Smith applied to government to get a couple of nurses to fill in while the others were sick and that is how Miss Tobin and I got on staff at the General Hospital. A big issue in health care today is wait times. Ethel Wells reveals that wait times for patients with tuberculosis were often detrimental to their illness: They might be picked up early but by the time they got a bed they were much more advanced.

The nurses interviewed for this book were required to resign from their nursing position when they married. However, several of them provided nursing services within the community long after they were no longer employed in nursing. As one participant said, The nurse was the only one there. Only those who never married continued in nursing. Their stories reveal the wide range of nursing experiences within the group, from private duty to nursing in general hospitals, public health, and cottage hospitals both in rural Newfoundland and South Africa, from working with tuberculosis patients in the sanatoriums of St. John’s and Corner Brook, to working in nursing administration and education in Newfoundland and New York. As we compared the stories of participants educated in and outside of Newfoundland, it became clear that nursing education and practice in Newfoundland were not always as sophisticated as in other parts of the world, but their stories demonstrate the lengths that local agencies and nurses went to improve the care they provided to Newfoundlanders.

During the course of their careers, these nurses observed the impact of antibiotics on many illnesses and the introduction of therapies to treat tuberculosis, a disease once considered by many to be a death sentence. The participants practiced in an era when patients’ recovery relied primarily on the nursing care they received. There was limited access to a broad range of medications, therapies and technology. Nurses working in rural Newfoundland were also faced with limited access to other professionals and relied on their own abilities and instincts. Within the hospital setting, all work related to patients passed through the hands of the nurse except that which fell within the physician’s realm. The reality was that patients got better because of the nurse’s ability to observe, make judgments, and intervene appropriately. For many, this reality provided them the most satisfaction, knowing it was their skills that helped the patient recover. Jennie Wareham: I remember going off duty and worrying about a patient [with pneumonia]…then the next morning, the patient would be sitting up and his temperature normal. It was something to know it was only nursing care that kept them alive. It was very satisfying… These women lived through a significant period of evolution in the practice of nursing.

The participants loved what they did and rarely expected any thanks in return. Helen Penny: You didn’t expect pats on the back as a nurse but sometimes you did get them from unexpected sources… Many of them said they never thought of questioning the system or its expectations of them, they just did what had to be done. They took tremendous pride in what they did and set particularly high standards for themselves. Eileen Shanahan: We knew that if we had any errors or mistakes or if there was any problem, it was mismanagement. I always had that in the back of my mind when I was in the district... As they told their stories, these unassuming women had little appreciation for their vital contribution to improving the health of Newfoundlanders. In their view, they only did what was expected of them, and yet, it is amazing the lengths they went to care for their patients. While many of these nurses were not well known, each of them made a tremendous difference! They reflect the silent majority of nurses who care for their patients, try to make a difference in their practice, and expect little in return. As our predecessors, these nurses established the practice of nursing in Newfoundland and set out the expectations for the generations of nurses that followed them. As you read their stories you cannot but be proud of what they accomplished given the circumstances many of them faced and be motivated to continue their example.

CHAPTER 1:

Emma Parsons

The big flu epidemic of 1920 was in the last year of my training. Students were the only ones on the ward to do anything. All the other nurses were home with the flu.

Emma Parsons was born in 1895 in Bay Roberts where her family was in business. She wanted to be a nurse from a very young age and while waiting for admission to nursing school taught in Cartwright, Labrador. Emma graduated from the Montreal General School of Nursing in 1920, where she received an award from the hospital board for her service during the 1920 flu epidemic.

"I had it in my mind to go nursing, but I took a teacher’s training course and taught in two or three small schools while I was waiting for word to go to a hospital. Mr. Blackall, the General Superintendent of Education in St. John’s, called and asked me to consider going to Labrador for the winter to teach. Mother wasn’t pleased but I decided to go. That was 1914, the first year of the war.

"I had two days to get ready. We sailed on the last trip of the ‘old’ Kyle and it was very stormy. Cartwright was a small place with only about fifteen or twenty families. I taught there for a year and boarded with the clergyman, Reverend Kirby, and his family. The man in charge of the Hudson Bay was a Mr. Swaffly from England. He had three or four children who came to the school. The manager of the Hudson Bay Company was a man from Harbour Grace whom I knew. Cartwright was very good, but only the Hudson Bay Company employees had houses there. We had a nice little school near the church with twelve or fifteen students. We didn’t have grades. We just taught reading, writing and arithmetic from primer up to the early teens. That was about all they did in school!

"In those days in Labrador, we had a boat connection in the summer and a dog team in the winter. We got mail a couple times during the winter, which they called overland mail. We didn’t have fancy things, but we had everything we needed because the Hudson Bay Company was there. It was like a big store with everything in it, a trading post really and very busy. People came from all around. The Indians came to Cartwright by dog team from communities around Labrador to trade furs and get supplies. I never saw Indians in their communities because we weren’t connected with them, so I didn’t know anything about their living conditions.

"When I came back home, I didn’t teach anywhere else until I went to the hospital. I don’t know why I decided on Montreal. All I remember is putting in an application and waiting to get word. My parents didn’t care because whatever we decided to do was all right with them as long as we got something to do. They saw that we got a good education and were ready to take a job.

"I went to Montreal by train. I didn’t come home when I was in training because we never had money to travel and we didn’t get holidays. We got very few days off while in training. After I graduated, I came home for Christmas every year. I always traveled by rail except one time when the boat came to pick up Earl Hague from Quebec. It took on some passengers and I came down to Newfoundland. That was the only time I came by boat.

"I don’t know why I went into nursing. I had no special reason. There were quite a few Newfoundlanders in training in Montreal when I was there but I was the only one from Bay Roberts. My classmates were from all over Canada, with quite a few girls from the Maritimes and there were two or three Newfoundlanders in my class but they didn’t finish. Several Newfoundlanders graduated the same time as I did.

"They gave us a list of stuff we needed when we went in training. Our probie uniform was ordinary blue, and after three or four months as a probie, our uniforms were made from a special material with MGH printed on it. We wore linen aprons with bibs that crossed over and fastened at the back and ordinary black shoes with rubber heels, which were quiet because you had to be quiet walking back and forth the wards. We made no noise on the ward!

"I remember the discipline. Nothing passed Miss Livingston! If we got word that we had to ‘walk the red carpet’ as we called it, we went with fear and trembling, I can tell you! She was likely to tell you to pack up and go! Her sister, Miss Gracie, was in the diet kitchen where we got our training for diabetes. She was VERY stern! Once I was blamed for something somebody else did. I was ready to pack and go home except the person who blamed me found out that she had blamed the wrong one.

"The Montreal General was a big hospital with mostly adult patients and we affiliated to other hospitals for maternity and pediatrics. We studied hard but we were never sure if we’d get through. We had no responsibility as far as the ward was concerned except if we did anything wrong. As probies we were taught to do things, and there were nurses on the ward who watched to see what we were doing. These were senior students in training and they told us the regular ward duties like bed making, washing bedpans, cleaning beds, cleaning bathrooms and everything. As probies we did a whole load of work! Some Head Nurses were strict and others weren’t. Some were very helpful, but with others, you had to be on your p’s and q’s before you’d get any help. We went on duty every morning at seven o’clock, helped make the beds, and at nine o’clock we were in the classroom. Then we went back to the wards and worked from five to seven. Then we had our studies and other things to do.

"It was different from what it is today. We didn’t have people on the wards like they do now. We did have doctors but nurses made all the beds and gave baths. Students didn’t give any medication until the last year. We helped feed patients and got them out of bed if needed. We didn’t do that very much though, because when patients were out of bed and could walk, they went home because there was always a waiting list for beds. If patients died, they were taken to a private room where we bathed them and the undertaker took them.

"Everything was so different. There was no insulin or anything like that. Most diseases were managed by diet. We had lots of patients with pneumonia who were treated with tepid sponge baths. The thing I remember most was the treatment for typhoid patients. We had a special ward for typhoid patients, but we only got a short training there. The patients had very high temperatures, and we’d put them in