Transcript Detail
| Transcript Title | Wingate, Mary (O2004.1) |
| Interviewee | Mary Wingate (MW) – also present John Kemp (JK) |
| Interviewer | Jean Riddell (Purkis) (JR) |
| Date | 16/01/2004 |
| Transcriber by | Jean Riddell (Purkis) |
Transcript
Hertford Oral History Group
Recording no: O2004.1
Interviewee: Mary Wingate (MW) – also present John Kemp (JK)
Date: 16th January 2004
Venue: Butlers Cottage, Harmer Green Lane, Digswell
Interviewer: Jean Riddell (JR)
Transcriber: Jean Riddell (Purkis)
Typed by: Corin Jones
************** unclear recording
[discussion] untranscribed material
italics editor’s notes
NB. Also present John Kemp, Mary’s brother, and photos of the Isolation Hospital are shown
JR: It’s the 16th January 2004, JR here with John Kemp at his sister’s house, Mary Wingate and she lives at the Butler’s Cottage, Harmer Green Lane, Welwyn, or Digswell. And we’ve come here to talk about, principally, her time in the Isolation Hospital on Gallows Hill, Hertford.
I’m doing a project for the Museum, I’m doing a book and an exhibition for next January 2005, at their request, on Gallows Hill. So I’m interviewing as many people as I can to give me information about some aspects of Gallows Hill. And, of course, the Isolation Hospital is important. Now these pictures were taken in the fifties but I guess it hadn’t altered that much.
MW: They were black beds, black iron beds, high and we had red blankets over them. Well, I had scarlet Fever in May 1937 and I was, I gather, very ill. I was six. I can remember being taken ill the day before and coming home and presumably the doctor was called and the ambulance came for me the next day – do we think it was Mr Barker?
JK: Not sure, I’ve been trying to think, but I’ve got a picture in my mind of a smaller one than Mr Barker’s and on reflection I don’t think they would have used Mr Barker’s ambulance for infectious cases, would they – [if they were] carrying scarlet fever cases and then somebody with an appendix – they would be spreading the disease, so I think they had their own ambulance.
MW: Well, whoever it was, the ambulance man came and I remember being carried out in his arms and my mother standing there crying, my father with his arm round her, so eventually I ended up in the Isolation Hospital. An although only six, I remember it vividly, mainly because of its harsh regime. I was in bed quite a while, although only six, and I suppose one didn’t tell children in those days. I remember being terribly worried because I didn’t quite know what was the matter and how long I was going to be there and nobody would say, but the regime was extremely harsh and I was quite a timid little girl.
JK: I didn’t think you were timid at all, quite precocious!
MW: I don’t think children asked questions in the same way as they do now. But my main memory was these red blankets, very strict nursing regime and I had to have my throat bandaged – don’t ask me why. And there was one nurse and she used to tie the bandage terribly tightly. And then while I was in there we always seemed to me to be terrified of everything and when we got better, sitting, and looking at those dining tables, we then got up for our meals but while I was in there, it was the Coronation, John, was it?
JK: Yes, May 1937.
MW: All the children were issued with some sort of medal and some officious person came round and handed these medals out, with some dignity, and mine fell off the bed and the maid, who was sweeping up, wouldn’t give it back to me and I remember it so vividly and how I cried. But nurses were not kind, they were very, very, strict, with matron doing the rounds and I was in for six weeks.
And another thing I remember – there were three or four of us eventually and we must have got better, there was no visiting, except on a Sunday and we stood outside and our parents and John stood what seemed to me miles away, shouting away at one another and I don’t know if food or goodies were brought and then we were allowed to play in the garden and looking back on that, that was a funny sort of set-up. A nurse would usher us out and we were all quite small children and there was a rather dilapidated swing and I can remember swinging on this swing and going quite high and it broke and I fell – do you remember this, John (yes) and I fell quite a long way. There was no supervision. I remember hurting myself quite badly and didn’t dare say anything because we were all frightened of the nursing regime. Now, whether that was common, I don’t know. The nurses all wore stiff white aprons and rustled about. But nobody ever said what was the matter with me in those four walls, and to me, it haunts me for ever as being rather ghastly.
JR: You had other patients in there, children, or?
MW: Well, yes, we were just in an isolation [ward].
JR: But together, not individually.
MW: Together in an isolation ward.
JR: All the same complaint.
MW: Yes, I imagine so. Scarlet fever was quite prevalent in those days, it isn’t now.
JK: Certainly in the late Victorian times scarlet fever was a killer. I read a book about Victorian death and whole families of children – five children in one family – would get scarlet fever, one after the other and die. There was nothing they could do.
MW: I don’t remember much about going in. I remember my mother collecting me from Port Vale School. I remember not feeling very well, but not saying anything. Opposite the hospital in those days was a bus shelter, quite a substantial bus shelter with seats. My mother was talking to a friend who lived in Fordwich Rise so they would have gone up Sele Rd and I can remember sitting on this seat swinging my legs and looking at the hospital and suddenly it seemed to swing round upside-down and I thought that was funny. I suppose I had a high temperature. I don’t remember much, but to me the isolation hospital spelt terror.
JK: I can remember you being carted off and they took all the bedding away as well.
MW: I was in funny old clothes.
JK: Oh goodness, I can see all those little girls lined up, and boys I suppose, old clothes and Mary wore a coat which went right down to her ankles and the sleeves were so long you couldn’t see her hands at all and she had some scruffy old beret on her head, looked like some poor little waif.
JR: But these were the clothes they had there because they didn’t let you have your own clothes?
MW: Well, I went off in a nightdress.
JK: They wrapped you in blankets and carried you out.
MW: Yes, I can remember that. But we sat up in our beds, terror struck, really, in case we did something wrong!
JR: So what was the treatment?
MW: Nothing!
JK: Just being in bed?
JK: Certainly in Victorian times there was no treatment at all, whether by 1937 they’d got a bit better, but I doubt it.
MW: I don’t think so because antibiotics – M&B was the first thing that came in.
JK: Would scarlet fever respond to antibiotics?
MW: No because it was a viral thing.
JK: They can inoculate against it, can’t they?
MW: I’m not sure.
JR: They used to, yes.
MW: People get scarlatina now which is a very, very mild form, you hardly notice it.
JR: Was scarlet fever accompanied by a rash?
MW: Yes. High temperature and delirium.
JK: I think this business of your leg…
MW: And swollen glands, seemed to always affect your throat. Did you have it, or were you investigated.
JK: I was investigated, I had my temperature taken, mother had to go our and buy a thermometer. So this was stuck in my mouth morning and night, and I was fine.
MW: I can remember lying in that high bed, worrying away as to what was the matter with me, how long was I going to be in this awful place - why couldn’t people come to see me, but never dare asking anything.
JK: Some when you were allowed up you didn’t know when you were going to come home?
MW: It was very harsh, all very institutional and I sort of remember thinking we’re nothing but a nuisance. I don’t remember a kind word and it stays in my mind quite vividly. Matron swept in every day with all her entourage and we all sat up in our beds.
JR: Were there any doctors around?
MW: Don’t remember that at all, but there must have bee. There were just these nurses and this horrible maid – I can see her now and she swept it up with her broom and she said you dropped it, you’re not getting it. I dared to say I didn’t it fell off, but she wouldn’t give it to me. It’s daft, isn’t it, all you could remember.
JR: Did you see some progression, in that other people were starting to go home and you weren’t?
MW: Yes, I think I do remember that. One little child went home. I don’t remember there being a lot of us. Do you remember John?
JK: There was this line, eight or ten maybe. You wouldn’t have known if there were any deaths, they’d have kept that from you anyway.
JR: Well, you were at Port Vale School. Did anyone else come up from that school with it because you obviously caught it from there.
MW: I don’t think so, I don’t ever remember hearing about anybody else.
JR: None of your classmates?
MW: No. I seemed to be with a little girl, but whether they separated the boys and girls I don’t know.
JK: I think the red blankets were a feature of hospitals I can remember Mr Barker, the ambulance man, collecting somebody from North Rd Ave and we all looked out of the front room window. I can remember mother standing there with a look of dread and horror on her face and he was covered in a red blanket.
MW: So to me it was like something out of Dickens. I remember the food being awful. We were sat down at these tables for food and we were in bed and lights out by about 7 o’clock, which is fair enough. Wouldn’t have dared get up or called anyone in the night. Just allowed out to play. Taken out at certain times by a nurse and left.
I remember the weather got better and better and thinking would I ever, ever, go home. At six you can’t understand what’s going on and I’ve always said, like with my own children, my husband was ill quite a long time, what was going on. So I didn’t like the Isolation Hospital. I don’t think I ever went back. Fortunately, I didn’t have reason to, except my son was a mortuary attendant during the school holidays! And I had to go up there and give him his A-level results.
JK: It became a chest hospital in the end, I think.
MW: I don’t think it had TB cases.
JK: They’d have gone to Ware Park.
MW: And there was a sea-bathing hospital at Margate.
JR: Well, I’ve got the bit about how the hospital started at Stapleford about four years before they built this purpose-built building.
MW: Where in Stapleford then?
JR: Oh, I can’t remember now.
MW: Was it a house?
JR: Yes, I think it was, or perhaps it was a barn attached to a house [Little Gobians] and then they got the money to build this one in 1897 but I haven’t yet gone through its history. I know a bit about its beginnings and I’ve had one or two oral history reports back but haven’t yet followed the official history of it which I will be doing pretty soon. I suppose I need for isolation hospitals was greater because of all these infectious diseases going around, similar I suppose later, with polio.
[John asks about the scope of the study]
JR: Well, I don’t really know yet. I know it sounds a bit feeble, but what I intended to do was to, as I did with Sele Farm, concentrate on the pioneering aspect – people went to live in virgin territory where nobody had lived before and talk about the history of how the houses came to be there and what was there already. Now I thought I’ll have to go on until at least about 1950 to cover all the building of the houses but then whether I quickly mention things like Pinehurst, Foxholes, a very quick resume of what’s happened since. I think it’s important to get a record down somewhere of what happened between say 1900-1950, to give people a background. Anyone can work on the new Foxholes or Pinehurst if they’ve lived there.
JK: Are there any records left of that time?
JR: Oh yes, there’s definitely an archive.
JK: And the BMD [Births, deaths, and marriages] records of Hertford, could you look down and see if anybody had died.
JR: Yes. And also there are quarterly reports in the Mercury about how many fatalities. It doesn’t say who, but it says how many.
MW: How much further back, if it started in 1897 how old have you got anybody to speak about it.
JR: Well, I’ve got one or two people not interviewed specifically, their memories have been of Gallows Hill, but of the tapes we have done memories of somebody going into the Isolation Hospital have actually been included, I’ve actually got to go and get the tapes out and either pursue that person for details if they are still with us or use what they said in the tape.
I’ve also got to bear in mind Kingsmead School. I need to interview about that and we have got from someone who recently did die, who talked about the workhouse, was taken into the workhouse before 1919 because that’s when Kingsmead School was made out of the workhouse. So before that we’re relying on archival material for the workhouse, which started up in 1836.
MW: I didn’t know it was the workhouse.
JR: It was an amalgamation of the different parish workhouses, called the Union Workhouse. That’s no problem, I’ve got enough information or I can get more but it’s the memories.
MW: How ever long does it take you, Jean, to do all this?
JR: I did a book on Sele Farm and from the beginning of research to the end, I only had six months for the exhibition, which was expected at Sele Farm, managed to do it in that time and then towards the time of the exhibition, oh we really need a book as well, something for people to have in their hands and I managed to do that, using the exhibition material mostly and other bits and pieces by the end of October. So it can be done within a year.
But I did at least know a little bit about what I was doing – North Rd – and that’s where Sele Farm started – but this one, not being my end of town is actually rather new territory for me. Considering that, there’s not much info on Gallows Hill, apart from the Gallows, the workhouse, and the Isolation Hospital.
MW: Were there Gallows at Gallows Hill? (Yes). Where were they?
JR: Well there is a map which was drawn up in 1766 which actually shows them about half-way up the hill on the opposite side from the Isolation Hospital.
MW: Is there any commemorative …
JR: No, but the funny thing was, yesterday I was in the Record Office just searching to see if there were any more leads for the Gallows Hill area on their computer, one of the archivists said to me Gallows Hill? Just had somebody in a couple of days ago who lives on Gallows Hill on the new housing estate, Foxholes, and she said they’re definitely haunted, one of the houses up there is definitely haunted, they’re selling it because they can’t stand these ghosts anymore, and when we looked at this map we found they were exactly on the path to the Gallows, the path taken by the criminals. So I said oh, right, I don’t think I want to be involved in this! So I didn’t ask her who they were. [John asks if this will go in the book]
JR: Well, I suppose it would have popular appeal if I put something about ghosts in it but it’s all so sceptical, isn’t it? I know peculiar things have happened but there’s often a good reason for them. But the other thing is, I know that bones have been found up there by schoolboys on a Sunday, an expedition would have gone up there to find bones. Anyway.
MW: The other thing I remember about the Isolation Hospital they had beautiful gardens, lovely gardens which were very well-kept and lots of gardeners. I suppose in the 1930s people did have lots of help. The gardens were quite a showpiece considering that nobody was about in them!
JR: Was it part of the therapy to go out and wander in the grounds when you were better?
JK: I’m sure they’d never heard of the word therapy.
JR: Well, I’m using the word.
MW: Presumably to go out and have some fresh air – there were no lessons, what could they do with us all day?
JR: I suppose that’s true, fresh air was a big consideration, all the archival photographs of the town in the early part of the century show every window wide open in summer.
JK: Another thing too, iron beds, they don’t hold any bed bugs or lice or beetles and they’re easily wiped down, in a wooden bed they can get into the cracks.
MW: They were terribly high; I know I was only small but it seemed we needed a stepladder to get into them.
JK: Well that was for the benefit of the nurses, didn’t want to bend down.
JR: It seems to me looking at these photographs, it may well have been spruced up for George Blake [photographer] but it looks very clean and sanitary.
MW: Well, I think it was, it was a harsh and fierce regime. And this maid, we had wooden floors and she was forever sweeping them.
JK: In the 1960s when Hertford [County] was a training hospital the nurses under training used to spend a certain amount of time up at Gallows Hill, there was a bus used to take them up.
MW: I seem to remember we were on the ground floor – there were these big windows. I don’t remember a theatre here.
JR: Well maybe there wasn’t one then, but 20 years later? Did you remember, apart from the girls you were with, do you remember seeing anybody else about? Boys, or…?
MW: No, I don’t. There must have been, obviously it was a big place. I don’t remember boys, just three or four of us little girls, what was the matter with them I don’t remember whether we’d all got…
JK: There used to be a man at the lodge, had a notebook with all the details – ask how Mary Kemp was and he’d say well she’s comfortable.
JR: Oh, he would give information, that’s good.
MW: Did I have any post; I must have had post.
JK: I’ve no idea.
MW: We were isolated with scarlet fever, what other things were people isolated for…
JK: Diphtheria. After you went into hospital a man came and fumigated your bedroom and he stuck sticky tape all-round the cracks of the door to seal it off and burned some sort of smoke candle in the room. He got the candle going, came out, shut the door, and put the tape round.
JR: So he knew when it had burned down.
JK: Well he actually left it for 24 hours. The only thing I remember about him, he had a club foot.
MW: Do you think I was in a separate building like this?
JR: What about the age of that building? Is it post-war?
MW: Post-war probably. I don’t think I was a difficult child; I was just utterly terrified and if you’ve got nurses or staff that sense if you’re frightened of it all…
JR: When you went up to see Mary were you allowed in the gate.
JK: No, the gate went across and you looked through the railings.
MW: You had to shout and I didn’t always hear what people had said.
JR: People were all shouting to their various…
MW: Were you all together with other people, and it was only once a week, Sunday afternoon.
JK: 3 o’clock.
JR: But the thing is, you got better, so did everybody else, so that in their time they were only doing what they thought was the best.
MW: Yes, I absolutely understand that. The only difference I would say now is that you would perhaps quietly tell a child – we’re doing this and you have to have your neck bandaged and this is very infectious and you don’t want your brothers and sisters to get it. You would have explained things, even to a six-year-old. It always seemed to be cold even though it was May, lying in the dark, worrying.
JK: It scarred you for life!
JR: I suppose you have to think of the time as well – did warmth breed more germs?
MW: Well, the windows were wide [open].
JR: Did you play at all inside – did you have toys?
MW: No. I think I must have been sick; I don’t know anything about that at all. I remember being in bed for a long time, two or three weeks. They wouldn’t do that now; they’d get you up and about.
JR: If we’re finished on Gallows Hill which I suspect we might have. If you don’t mind I’ll just go on and ask you a little bit about North Rd. I’m also doing something on that as well as this.
MW: Our life in the 1930s revolved very much around where we lived.
JR: I did a very good tape with John about a year ago because when I was doing the Sele Farm book I realised I needed to know a little bit more about North Rd and I was interested in North Rd for one or two specific reasons, particularly the little bit between Beane Rd and the Mill where we had the Mayflower Hotel and the Old Rectory.
MW: The Mayflower and the Wall House.
JK: Where the Redmayne’s lived. Natty Gardner used to live there before them. The Rectory of St Andrews was there before it moved to the current rectory. [43 North Rd].
MW: My husband’s mother was a Garratt, of Garratts Mill and Geoffrey Garratt lived in Sele House, it was a lovely house in fact we nearly rented it once and it had the most beautiful garden onto the river.
JR: When it was a complete house, did it have a back extension with a flat roof or was that put on when it was flats?
JK: I can’t remember.
JR: It’s almost a whole flat with French windows – I went in there once.
MW: It doesn’t really fit in with the age of the house, does it.
JR: Well no, but it’s not a new extension.
MW: Although I seem to remember that Geoffrey did have French windows out to the garden.
JK: Who lived there before Geoffrey, because Matron lived there at one time, didn’t she?
MW: Yes [overtalking].
JK: The first one I can remember living there before the war was Judge Beasley, His Honour Judge Beasley, great big bushy eyebrows.
MW: Well, we all went to lunch with Geoffrey and he had television for the Coronation, 1953 and he was a very generous man, gave lots of lunch parties and things and gave this very nice lunch party. So he would have been living there in ’53. I don’t remember when the hospital took it over. Well certainly didn’t some of the Garratt’s live there, John, before Geoffrey? I know when Raymond [husband] was a partner he wondered whether we should live there, but I don’t think I wanted to live right on top of work. You had that lovely garden with the river and of course the Mayflower, that had nice gardens. Used to go to dance lessons at the Mayflower, the Marjorie School of Dancing, Marjorie Crooke – there was a room with a …
JK: Jean’s got some photographs of it, how it used to be.
MW: I remember there was some sort of house at the top of the road…
JK: Yes, a lodge house and a barn, and some rough people used to live in that cottage.
MW: Was it called the Wall House? It was a lovely house; it seems wicked that these places were pulled down.
JK: The Wall House was lathe and plaster, that’s why the rectory came out of there and moved to the new house. They had to move out because it was lathe and plaster and must have been in a pretty fragile sort of state, and damp.
MW: The thing I remember about North Rd was not so much that part of it as going past the hospital and thinking how grand the houses were in North Crescent, because they were nice houses. I remember thinking gosh, you’d have to have a lot of money to live there.
JR: You do nowadays!
MW: I expect a lot probably are flats now.
JR: Not that many. I think some were certainly used by the hospital.
JK: Doctors used to live along there, didn’t they?
MW: What was the name, John, of the people who lived on the corner, opposite the rectory?
JR: Wigginton – was it Wigginton?
MW: Yes, the Wigginton’s – he was a funny little man, and Miss Wigginton.
JK: Yes, Mr Wigginton, wasn’t he deformed? I remember short arms and legs.
MW: It was really quite grand, of course we didn’t have problems with motor cars.
JK: Maisie Ditton used to live along there.
JR: Yes, 37.
MW: Were they all privately owned?
JK: They rented; I know.
JR: They were built and the ground they were built on was owned by the Dimsdales’ and they were all built by different builders but there was an agreement that they had to keep the fronts similar but they were allowed to build the sides and the backs how they wanted, that’s how it seemed to be. Then when the Dimsdale family got into problems with probate in the early 1840s there was a big court case and one of the Dimsdales that owned them she left them to friends of hers who were Quakers in Bristol but the option was given to her nephew to buy them back from the Quakers.
But the nephew thought he was going to be left these outright. Then he sold them again as soon as he bought them – a very complicated will, it was in chancery for ever. She died in 1837 and it was still going on in 1842. However, a lot of Dimsdale estates were sold at that time and they were bought by individuals after that, some sitting tenants bought their houses.
But a lot were bought by a man named Rovlatt – not sure if he was the agent or if he bought them for himself and after that, although they were still leasehold, the Dimsdales didn’t relinquish the land until the 1920s, they were all owned privately and they would often rent them out.
MW: In the thirties people didn’t own their houses – you didn’t put your money in bricks and mortar in the thirties – it’s absolutely crazy now.
JK: To change the subject slightly, unless you want to go on with North Rd what’s the story and background behind Cowbridge School?
JR: Oh, I think I will turn this off [didn’t want to answer on tape].
Recording ends