Geoff talks about his father Philip who was a pharmacist and optician in North Walsham, Norfolk,  from the 1920s. His mother worked in the business alongside his father. The family was very well-known in the town. During the Second World War they hosted young servicemen and it seems their house was also used for secret […]

Sylvia left school in 1944, and worked with children for a while before training at the age of 18, as a nurse, and later on as a midwife, and finally as a health visitor. She had a long career, working until she retired at the age of 60. I went to a grammar school in […]

These days we hear a lot about health-care, how it's changed, for the better or for worse. The hit TV programme "Call the Midwife" brought the drama and pathos of post-war midwifery to life. Our contributor tells us about  her career in nursing, midwifery and as a health visitor during the 40s, 50s and 60s […]

John Mallett talks about his working life in banking, nursing and as a care home manager, and the fulfilment of his long-term ambition to be ordained. Early life and harvest time I was brought up on a farm, the youngest of five children. Both sets of grandparents were in farming and, unusually for the 1900s, […]

After beginning in office work, our contributor went into nursing, first in Bury St Edmunds where she became an S.R.N.  She trained as a midwife in Leicester and then came back to East Anglia visiting mothers and babies in their homes. The next step was as a staff nurse at the Jenny Lind children's hospital […]

I was born in Hebburn in the North of England but in 1938 we moved to London where my father got a job in the aircraft industry. During the war we experienced quite a lot of bombing because we lived near Wembley, quite near to aerodromes, and it was really quite frightening. When I was […]

I left school when I was 15 which was 1952. I got a job with the Co-op Insurance in their office. How I got the job was because my Father was very friendly with the insurance man, who used to come to collect the insurance every week. He had a chat with him just before […]

  Nursing children at a time when catching diptheria from your patients  was regarded as an acceptable occupational hazard!

Can I take you back to your home in Tarlac City in the Philippines, and you leaving school and deciding to be a nurse? Yes, I left school around the age of 18 years old. It was after High School. And then of course I work in a small clinic which this doctor is a […]

Brenda talks about her varied career in nursing, from the early days in Queen Alexandra’s Royal Army Nursing Corps in Singapore, the Ex-Services Mental Welfare Society, Heathrow Airport and her experiences as a district nurse in Norfolk. Early days and training I was born in Lincoln on May 1st 1945, eight days before the official […]