Pontypool Hospital Project

Pontypool and District Hospital soon after it opened in 1903
(photo courtesy Dr Jeremy Davies)

Sculptor Andrew Bolton (left) and author John Harrison
(photo courtesy Des Price)

Copies of Full Recovery may be obtained from artREGEN, Tircwm, Leigh Road, Pontypool, Torfaen NP4 8HY.

The Birth of the Hospital

A Mr Richard Coslett had left £1000 on his death in 1895, for a hernia clinic, which medical people judged unnecessary. His trustees agreed to let it be invested to provide £100 pa to help meet revenue funding. Collection boxes made their way round the streets, the churches and chapels, and from door to door, and subscription books tallied the slowly growing contributions.

Estimates for the building works came in. By November 1901 they had an estimate of £7000-8000, which was a little more than they had hoped. But fascinatingly, and crucially for the future enduring image of the hospital, a proposal to reduce costs by building in red house-bricks rather than stone, was rejected. So, with its commanding position, overlooking the valley and the town, and its central round turret with a conical roof, and rugged stone walls, the Penny Castle was born. The architect was Robert Williams of London, who also built Pontypool Market. He produced a symmetrical design using the natural slope of the hillside, so it was one and two storeys high to Leigh Road, and two and three storeys high on the opposite side, to the south west. The dark red stone of the walls was local, from Abergavenny, and the dressed stone came from the Forest of Dean. The slates came down from Bethesda and Blaenau Ffestiniog in Snowdonia. The plans were revised in other ways, to save money, and it was built, equipped, and provided with a horse-drawn ambulance for £8500. (At least £500,000 at modern prices.) The contractors were a local firm, Bailey Brothers of Pontnewynydd, run by Alfred Henry Bailey and Edwin James Bailey.

Although many people think of it as the miners; hospital, and they did contribute greatly to its building, they were only one of many contributors. The main sources of money were:

• workers' contribution from wages: £2191
• employers' contributions: £1763
• private donations over £10 each: £1177
• Mr Richard Coslett: £1000
• bazaar: £1000
• fêtes: £748

All the hard fundraising work came to fruition in 1903, when the 32,000 people of Pontypool, Panteg and Abersychan proudly surveyed their first hospital. At the opening ceremony they found they had collected all but £6 and a few shillings, of the cost, which Lord Tredegar pledged to give immediately, so it could open without debt. There were nineteen beds to serve 32,000 inhabitants, one per 1600 people. There was eight-bed male ward, an eight-bed female ward, two beds for hernias in Coslett Ward, one for Accident and Emergency. There was a larder, but no refrigerator, a laundry, where the washing was boiled, wrung and hung, and an ambulance house and stables. Their own generator made electricity for light, but there was also gas lighting as a back-up.

Characteristically, the first patient was Charles Williams, a Garndiffaith man whose foot had been crushed in Blaenserchan Colliery. He needed partial amputation of the foot. In the first year they had 148 admissions, of whom 9 died, and they conducted 64 operations. It was soon thought too small, and was extended by the addition of the Capel ward in 1910, named after John Capel Hanbury's teenage son, Capel, who died of appendicitis in 1908. Operating was so dangerous that his mother delayed approving the operation until it was too late. John Capel Hanbury donated £2000 of the £2600.

The Pontypool Carnival continued to be a major source of revenue funding and great fun, and workers and employers continued to contribute, but money was always tight. In 1948 it was taken over by the National Health Service.

Before the Great War

In the first year, there was nearly full occupancy, and the need for an extension was soon obvious, and there was no accommodation for staff in the original building. A separate nurses' home opened 14 October 1915, and a general extension opened in July 1920: it added 6 regular and 4 emergency beds and 6 staff bedrooms. Other improvements were less predictable. In 1913 John Capel Hanbury donated a record-playing organ, 15 feet tall. It cost £1300 (now £70,000), but its current whereabouts are unknown. Operating table was silver-plated.

By 1912 had nearly £10,000 of investments (£530,000). To appreciate what this meant, in 1912 daily pit wages were as follows:
Colliers, max 5s/4d
Surface labourers 3s/6 d
1d a week was 0.3% of a collier's wage, and 0.5% of surface man's wage. The nurses' salary were minute: it was a good job they could live in or live at the parents' home:
Year 1 £8-10 a year (yes, a year!)
Year 2 £10-12 a year
Year 3 £16-19 a year
Although the first ambulance was horse-drawn, a motorised one was soon provided, because of the delays in harnessing the horse. After World War 1, Garndiffaith's Workmen's Institute commemorated their dead with a very practical memorial: a motor ambulance.

The Auxiliaries' Tales, an extract from Full Recovery

'As a trained nurse, I was allowed to give injections. One of our burly Pontypool forwards would allow only me to give him an injection in the buttocks. He wasn't going to let a slip of a girl nurse see his bum! There were quite a number of male patients who disliked being treated by females, when it was their private parts that required attention!'

In WW2 Joe Rees was on front line near Brussels, and went into the city in procession with millions in streets, shouting the only English they knew: 'Go home Tommy!' His first work after cease-fire was vehicles and children blown up by mines. He worked as a nurse at a time when there was strong prejudice against male nurses. On leaving the forces, he began work at the County Hospital Panteg as an orderly, but still carrying out many of the duties of a qualified nurse, but without the pay. This is his story, The Orderly's Tale.

'It seems as though all my life, I have been pulled into nursing. When I was a boy there wasn't so much to do as there is now. I joined the St John's ambulance, we won the National Eisteddfod several times, then I got called up. At the interview they said what do you want to be? I said I'd like to go into the Navy, I'd always fancied that. But he said the officer who deals with that isn't here today, so I said the RAF, and they said no, and they said how about the Tank Corps I thought if I can't have the two I picked first, the Tank Corps is as good as anywhere so I said yes! When my papers came through, they'd put me in the Royal Army Medical Corps!

'I thought I may as well, at least I'll learn something useful. Even before the war I'd done some training with gas, learning to identify tear gas, mustard gas and so on. I was attached to the Welsh Guards. A guardsman could go in a darkened room and dismantle his Tommy gun and put it back together in ten seconds, I could do that with a Thomas splint!

'When I come back from the war I'd had but I could only get work as an orderly at Panteg. My army commanding officer wrote a letter saying what I'd done, all the training, and I was promoted to a State Enrolled Nurse almost at once. All the time I was working one level above what they were paying me. When I was an SEN I did the work of a State Registered Nurse. I did my exams for SRN at the Royal Gwent, I think we were pioneers in a sense, we were the first batch of male nurses they'd ever trained there. while I was there, the Queen Mother visited and made it the Royal. Pontypool Hospital was also training SRNs but I think possibly they weren't taking males.

I'd leave home at seven in the morning and not get home until ten o'clock at night, working split shifts from eight until two, and then six until nine. In between I'd take books to the park to study, but quite often I was so tired I'd fall asleep.

EMPRESS WINDRUSH The National Health Service and the Commonwealth

After World War 2, labour shortages were experienced in some professions which British people were reluctant or unable to fill in sufficient numbers; this included some poorly-paid jobs in the new National Health Service. In 1948, the ship Empress Windrush brought to Britain the first organised immigration from the Caribbean islands. In all some 500 people (492 passengers and eight stowaways) landed at Tilbury, many found work in the NHS. The following details are taken, with the kind permission of Wendy Robins, from the Southwark Diocesan magazine, The Bridge. Among the Windrush passengers interviewed by the BBC on the fiftieth anniversary, was Sam King, a former Mayor of Southwark and one of the people behind the Jubilee celebrations. At 18, Sam volunteered for the RAF and served as an engineer throughout the war. When hostilities ceased, Sam and his countrymen were returned (reluctantly) to the West Indies, but in 1948 Sam spotted an advertisement for passages on the Windrush. The ticket cost £28:10s - raised by the family selling 3 cows - and on 22 June 1948 Sam was back where he wanted to be "in the land of corn and wine", as he told The Bridge. He rejoined the RAF and later worked for the Post Office and, with others, founded a 'Pardner' saving scheme which helped many of Southwark's black community to buy their own homes. A Camberwell resident, he went on to become the Mayor of Southwark. Others found their way to Pontypool.

When the nursing school closed, casualty was reduced from being twenty-four hours to nine-till-five. From the 1960's coloured staff began to arrive, they were treated pretty shabbily by the top brass. I suppose all juniors were treated pretty harshly, some of the coloured people didn't accept it well, weren't very good at timekeeping. They had different ideas of being punctual where they came from. They'd come in late and make some excuse that they'd been doing something somewhere else.

Dorothy Ellis remembers 'During our training we were joined by girls from overseas. Some of the German students had come to Wales to be united with local boys who had been stationed in Germany whilst serving in the armed forces. These girls were from varied backgrounds as we were. Many had a good knowledge of the English language, others had little or no English, these soon learned, but not always the vocabulary it should have been, which sometimes led to a few harsh words from matron. There was never a problem with language difficulties since our aim was to learn, and take care of the patients and friendships. Included in these foreign students were girls from the West Indies who wanted British qualifications. When they first arrived, their very colourful clothes and straw hats brought a different scene to us at Pontypool Hospital. Once fitted out with a uniform, they became very much a part of our lives. Homesickness was something we all experienced, no matter how close our homes were. The foreign girls had a much greater problem to overcome. The girls were met at the railway station by Mr Lloyd, the hospital car driver. He would bring them to the Home Sister and they would be allocated accommodation in the nurses home. Next day, they would be on to the ward and join in hospital life. Other students were from Ireland and Luxembourg, bringing with them many stories of varied lives. (Jasmine Williams and Dorothy Ellis told me that some of the girls were brought in by agencies and did not know, when they left home, which country they were coming to. Some German girls were very surprised to end up in a country with which they had recently been at war. Occasionally, domestic staff might be recruited from overseas, living in, and joining us in out care for the hospital and its patients.

'Local people would entertain individuals whenever possible, taking them home to have Christmas with their own families if the visitors could not go to their own home. One lady's house was always open to us all: Mrs Vann. I remember one lady got very upset one day, and ran out of the hospital. I said to matron, don't worry, I know where to find her, and I knocked on Mrs Vann's front door, and there she was. When she calmed down, all was forgiven. I believe a few West Indian girls would send money home. How they were able to do this on our meagre wage remains a mystery to me.

'We were not aware of any prejudices; except for one occasion. when the Christmas concert given for the patients by the nurses took the form of a black and white minstrels concert. Our colleague from Barbados, Yvonne Wentworth, was not amused that we had blacked our faces, and was furious. The story of the following events need not be told at this time.'

Joe Rees continues
'We used to do everything ourselves, plastering was not sent out, Outpatients practically ran itself, and day clinics were run by visiting surgeons, with different specialisms on different days of the week. Casualty and the men's ward was my main job, I was always doing something, you never knew what was going to come in next. The men I treated were soon bringing their children in, and before I finished, the children were bringing their children in. I never seemed to think about money. I could have got a much better paid job in the new factories opening up down at Cwmbran: Lucas, Girling, ICI.

'Do you remember the film Doctor in the House with James Robertson Justice? Now Mr Elgood had been a champion at Bisley, (shooting) and was an excellent teacher but he taught by fear. There was a saying that you only ran for fire, haemorrhages, and pay. We soon changed that to fire, haemorrhages and Mr Elwood, though personally, I still ran for my pay.

Stories and poems by local children

Silent as She Sleeps

One of my children lies in bed as the other six play out in the filthy mud. I sit in this small, damp, cheap house trying my hardest to live, as my husband risks his life every day working in the mines. He is the only income we have coming into this house, as I gave up my work when marrying him, yet most of the money goes back to his employers for the rent, every day I see him leave this house not knowing if he will come back alive, injured or even dead. He brings home the little money he can, and we have to decide whether to starve or save my child. She barely knows I'm there when I walk into the room, maybe she is too sick to be saved, we decide to use our money and call a doctor, he does what he can and leaves. That night, me, my husband and children play together for her to be better and not die, and we sleep on empty stomachs.

At dawn, my husband leaves for another day's work in the mines, my children wake and go outside in the polluted air. I clean the house. It's too small for four, let alone nine people, but we manage. I then go and check on my daughter: she is silent as she sleeps. I look at her face; it is ghostly white, her eyes don't move, her chest is still. She has gone and there is nothing I can do. The day draws on and my husband comes home, I wait patiently wait for him outside the door, he is later than usual, I see a figure walking up towards me, he seems slower than usual. I see his face and he has aged so much working in the mine, when we met he was working but seemed full of life now he has no energy left. He takes a look at me, and knows instantly our child has gone, his heart aches for her just as much as mine.

Rich I'll Get Too

My name is James Cotter, I've been living in Pontypool since I was about seven and I've been here for twenty years. I have a wife and two children, Josh and Henry. I've been working at the ironworks from the age of eight. I've been a very hard worker, and I am the only workman I know of to be promoted to manager.

The other day, my youngest son Henry returned home after going to the Taylor's, drank five glasses of water, and quickly retired to his room, complaining of being sick. I wanted to get the doctor, but at five shillings for one visit, it seemed just too much money. I could afford it, but it would mean spending money we could ill afford. The next day my son had got through his thirtieth glass when I called for the doctor, and his thirty-second by the time he got here. I sat there in the corner of my son's room, dreading what the doctor might say. I remember it perfectly, the doctor slowly stood, raised his handkerchief to his mouth, and calmly said, 'Your son has cholera, and is so far progressed that I would be surprised if he lasted the night.'
I couldn't believe what I was hearing, I wouldn't. Only the poor caught things like that, didn't they? At least that's what I thought.

Today my son died. He died in what I hoped was his sleep, but he hadn't any the last few nights. I wrote this to let other people know: us rich can get ill too. I suppose diseases don't really care who they kill.

Death is What We Fear Most

I sit in the desolate trench
No light
No sound
Everyone is dead around me
They're gone away for ever
How can anyone ever feel better?

All our lives we fear pain and death
Never think we will experience it
Then death is just around the corner
It will come for me
It came for all those who fought
The corpses just led there
No light
No sound
They are all alone.

As I looked out on to the blood soaked field
I can see more red rising from the ground
Rising past the corpses
Rising over the torsos and limbs
They are poppies
A sign of life
A sign of a new beginning
Now there is light
Now there is sound
Now we are no longer alone.