Nibblethwaite Hospital
Today the We're Here group members are looking at old photographs preferably with a medical theme as they join the Museum of Found Photographs group today, an easy one for me as I have lots of 'found' photographs.
In the dark days of the nineteen thirties, before the country was plunged into war and long before it would emerge into the socialist utopia which gave rise to the welfare state, the hospitals of Britain were in a sad and sorry way indeed. Without proper funding patients were forced to live with any number of disfiguring, unpleasant, and frankly unsightly diseases. If they hadn't the money to pay the doctor they were forced to visit illicit back street medicine men and women prepared to carry out rudimentary surgery often in exchange for whatever goods or services the patient could provide.
My own Grandfather, in a desperate attempt to rid himself of the buboes and balderkins which afflicted his gerominous veins and made his life a misery (he had to ascend the stairs backwards in a sitting position and living in a bungalow this was never an easy task for a healthy man never mind a poor crippled wretch like him) visited a woman known as the Nempnett Thrubwell Hag. She boiled him in a copper vat of horse urine then wrapped his head in cabbage leaves instructing him never to remove them. The poor man wandered, blistered and suffocating from the alley where the Hag practiced her dubious craft, and walked directly into the path of the northbound express heading from Gurney Slade to Little Chibbling On The Stoat. At his funeral the smell of urine soaked cabbage caused several mourners to pass out and my Grandmother was forced to alter her recipe for cabbage soup from that day onwards. Just another tragic example of the fall out from these back street quacks.
The government tried introducing all sorts of inducements and schemes to encourage people and hospitals to raise the necessary funding themselves – in much the same way that first David Cameron and now Theresa May have attempted to replace all publicly funded services with a fortnightly bring and buy sale at Little Trentwick village church.
One of the less successful of these initiatives was the Nibblethwaite Hospital For The Hideous and Deranged annual custard pie fight. Doctors and nurses were encouraged to take part in this frankly unseemly activity each St Swithin's day. Patients were encouraged to sponsor the medical staff 2 1/2d per successful pie hit (£32.55 in today's money) and the profits from the event once the custard and dry cleaning bills had been paid were to go directly to patient care.
Jack Backcrack seen in the background of this picture with one eye covered as protection against a potential custard related injury was quoted in the Nibblethwaite Evening Echo as describing the fight as “A bloody ridiculous idea”. This is thought to be the only photograph ever taken of the event but actually there are loads of them.
S.Black
Nibblethwaite Hospital
Today the We're Here group members are looking at old photographs preferably with a medical theme as they join the Museum of Found Photographs group today, an easy one for me as I have lots of 'found' photographs.
In the dark days of the nineteen thirties, before the country was plunged into war and long before it would emerge into the socialist utopia which gave rise to the welfare state, the hospitals of Britain were in a sad and sorry way indeed. Without proper funding patients were forced to live with any number of disfiguring, unpleasant, and frankly unsightly diseases. If they hadn't the money to pay the doctor they were forced to visit illicit back street medicine men and women prepared to carry out rudimentary surgery often in exchange for whatever goods or services the patient could provide.
My own Grandfather, in a desperate attempt to rid himself of the buboes and balderkins which afflicted his gerominous veins and made his life a misery (he had to ascend the stairs backwards in a sitting position and living in a bungalow this was never an easy task for a healthy man never mind a poor crippled wretch like him) visited a woman known as the Nempnett Thrubwell Hag. She boiled him in a copper vat of horse urine then wrapped his head in cabbage leaves instructing him never to remove them. The poor man wandered, blistered and suffocating from the alley where the Hag practiced her dubious craft, and walked directly into the path of the northbound express heading from Gurney Slade to Little Chibbling On The Stoat. At his funeral the smell of urine soaked cabbage caused several mourners to pass out and my Grandmother was forced to alter her recipe for cabbage soup from that day onwards. Just another tragic example of the fall out from these back street quacks.
The government tried introducing all sorts of inducements and schemes to encourage people and hospitals to raise the necessary funding themselves – in much the same way that first David Cameron and now Theresa May have attempted to replace all publicly funded services with a fortnightly bring and buy sale at Little Trentwick village church.
One of the less successful of these initiatives was the Nibblethwaite Hospital For The Hideous and Deranged annual custard pie fight. Doctors and nurses were encouraged to take part in this frankly unseemly activity each St Swithin's day. Patients were encouraged to sponsor the medical staff 2 1/2d per successful pie hit (£32.55 in today's money) and the profits from the event once the custard and dry cleaning bills had been paid were to go directly to patient care.
Jack Backcrack seen in the background of this picture with one eye covered as protection against a potential custard related injury was quoted in the Nibblethwaite Evening Echo as describing the fight as “A bloody ridiculous idea”. This is thought to be the only photograph ever taken of the event but actually there are loads of them.
S.Black