The continuing story of the house Joe and Mary Ann Scott lived in for over 50 years and the families that have lived here since.
It is one of those odd things that in the 90 odd years that our house has stood on Beech Road ours are the only children to have been born here. And in a very real sense actually born in the house upstairs in the big bedroom just as it would have been in the past.
Joe and Mary Ann spent almost their entire married life here but had no children, John, Mike and Lois were single and before I bought the house there was only a young couple who were here for just for two years and for most of that were living abroad.
So that brings us to our children, one of whom was born upstairs on an August morning nineteen years ago.
Now in 1992 home births were still a little unusual and even today only account for 2% of all births herein the UK although in Torbay it was 20% in 2010. And there was some gentle medical opposition mostly around the “what if there were complications?” But Withington Hospital was only 5 minutes away and anyway as friends pointed out, who would want to have a baby in a hospital which was full of sick people?
When I tell older friends of the opposition they point to the fact that they and their siblings and parents were all born at home.
Historically hospitals were places where only the poor went. The rich were treated at home. My old friend Alan Brown remembers having his tonsils out in their back bedroom and in the memoirs of the “Mitford girls” there is a delightful story of one of them having their appendix out in the nursery.
Now this is in no way to rubbish the NHS or argue for a golden time before it was introduced. I was born just one year after its creation and have been able to rely on a first class free medical service which is in contrast to the stories from my parents of small dismal cottage hospitals, expensive doctors fees and underfunded general hospitals.
There will be those in Chorlton who will remember the local Rose Queen events of the 1930s which were essentially a vehicle to raise money for our hospitals. And for those of us who have studied and researched the 19th century there are the awful stories of the poor who had to rely on the workhouse hospital or dig deep into the family budget to contribute to their sick and burial societies.
The decision to have our child at home was a conscious one and there was expert advice on hand including Sister Williams who over the years assisted in the birth of all three of the elder boys. And our youngest was nearly not the only one to be born in the big bedroom. When our middle son was due I dutifully called for an ambulance, but just as it arrived there was an accident outside the house involving a man, a bike and the kerb. It was my call, and the ambulance left with the man, leaving me the difficult task of explains why we needed another ambulance to a sceptical switchboard operator, such are the pitfalls of the Good Samaritan.
So for over a quarter of the time our house has been here it has been a home to our children, which I reckon makes us a first in the story of the house.
Follow all the stories of the house at http://chorltonhistory.blogspot.co.uk/search/label/The%20story%20of%20a%20house
Picture; from the collection of Andrew Simpson
No comments:
Post a Comment