History is all around us, living history. This article celebrates all those nurses who came to the UK from the Caribbean to help in the early years of the NHS. Without them would the NHS exist at all?
We can’t talk to all of them but we were happy to meet Edna Chavannes recently and talk to her about her experiences.
Edna came to England in 1951 and this is her in her nurses uniform on the day she was awarded her nursing badge:
But we are getting ahead of ourselves.
Edna Allen was born in Jamaica, St Andrew parish, on 20th January 1930. She was the eldest of five siblings. She went to the local school and passed all her exams.
When she finished school she stayed on as a teacher for three years. But she always wanted to be a nurse and her opportunity came when she saw an advert in the Gleaner newspaper recruiting nurses in the UK. Her father would have preferred her to stay in teaching but her heart was set on becoming a nurse, the public health nurses who came to the school to weigh and measure the children had made a big impression on her. Another inspiration was her grandparents who nursed the children if any of them was unwell: ‘in those days you didn’t have doctors, you couldn’t afford doctors.’ As soon as the paper work was completed Edna was on her way, she finished in the school on Friday and was on the ship to England the following Monday.
She still has the letter from the hospital telling her she has been accepted:
Edna travelled to England on the SS Cavina. The journey lasted 16 days, the crossing was rough and Edna confessed that she was ‘not a sailor … on one occasion the sea was so rough that I fell out of my bunk, it was a top bunk.’ Apart from the seasickness, the voyage ‘was a lot of fun. There were deck games to play and music in the evening.’ The passenger list can be viewed online and this shows Edna arriving at Avonmouth in England on 14th March 1951 (not quite the date she remembered). She travelled 1st Class and her age on arrival is shown as 21:
Her first impressions were that it was cold: ‘all the warm clothes I thought I had were cold!’ She got the train to Paddington where she was met by Mrs Dorothy Scott: ‘a white lady, very English but very nice, I believe my uncle had stayed with her when he was studying for his degree,’ and spent the first night in her house in Kensall Rise.
Edna trained at Ashford hospital in Middlesex, for three years and then served an extra year in accordance with her contract. The photo at the top of this article shows Edna on the day she was awarded her nursing badge after four years. Edna wasn’t the only black nurse at the hospital: ‘there was a group of us, in my set alone there were sixteen of us, we supported each other.’ Edna experienced very little hostility: ‘Matron was very good, she had invited us and she did us proud. I had one case of bullying, I reported it to her and the person responsible was put on night duty and I never saw her again.’ Some patients were worried about having a black nurse but Edna just told them: ‘this is how we are born,’ and she just got on with her job.
While Edna was at Ashford she got the chance to go and see the Coronation of Queen Elizabeth: ‘Matron said that whoever wanted to go could go. So we got blankets and food and a group of us went and slept overnight. It was fun, a once in a lifetime thing. We saw all the coaches and the pageantry, it was really quite nice.’
Of course rationing was still in force when Edna first came to England and she still has her ration cards. However, as a nurse, her board and lodging were provided for her (and taken out of her pay each month) and she felt they were all very well fed. She had no complaints about the food apart from it being ‘very bland.’ At breakfast the nurses could have kippers and toast or scrambled egg, bacon or beans and sausage: ‘I think we were well fed because we had a lot of sick people to deal with. Sunday roast was horse meat with Yorkshire pudding – it’s what they could get.’
For recreation: ‘you could play tennis or just walk in the grounds. We used to go to Hammersmith Palais a lot. Dancing and the cinema were our favourite pastimes.’
Edna also remembers the terrible fogs that enveloped London in those days: ‘you couldn’t see your hand if you stretch it out in front of you.’ From the nursing point of view the fogs were real killers and she remembered one night when four patients died one after the other. Wikipedia reports that 4,000 died as a direct result of ‘The Great Smog’ that afflicted London between the 5th and 9th of December 1952.
Edna clearly has many happy memories of her time at Ashford and, summing up, she said: ‘it was a very happy place.’
Edna left Ashford in 1956, moving to Marston Green hospital in Birmingham to train in midwifery. ‘The first few births I saw I was in tears because I didn’t realise what a hard job it is having a baby.’
There are stories of the prejudice people like Edna faced, even when trying to attend white churches (in Brixton, South London, the black community set up their own churches). Generally Edna has been made to feel welcome wherever she went. However, ‘There was one vicar in Birmingham who was very defensive about black people, but I never took any notice of him. I thought “this is supposed to be God’s house and I’m staying here”.’
But after a year at Marston Green she qualified as a midwife and moved to Bushey in Middlesex to continue training and from there to Hammersmith to work at the special care unit for under weight babies.
Edna added another string to her bow by qualifying to work as a Health Visitor. This led to one of the happiest and most fulfilling jobs of her career when she worked in Ely, Cambridgeshire, in the triple role of District Nurse, Health Visitor and Midwife – pay was £32 a month.
Perhaps for the first time, in Ely, Edna found herself to be the only black person in the community but it seems the people really took her into their hearts even though many of them had never met a black person before.
It was while working in Ely that Edna met her husband-to-be whilst visiting a friend in London. It was Christmas and he, George Chavannes, was asked to sing: ‘He sang “Ave Maria” – he had a beautiful voice. He was at the LSE (London School of Economics) at the time. Because he was from Kingston, Jamaica I was able to check with my family about him and it turned out that his dad was friends with my dad.’ They married less than a year later.
Edna was really sad to leave Ely but she had to move to where her husband could find work: ‘it was the happiest job I ever had … I think they really liked me and we got on well down there. Everyone was kind to me, I couldn’t wish for anything better.’
In those days, if you married, you had to resign but when Edna moved from Ely to Boreham Wood she had to convince the authorities that she was capable of combining her work with being a wife and, later, the parent of two young children: ‘I pointed out all the training I had had and that it would be wasted. I was sure I could manage it.’ Of course this is normal now but at the time it was very unusual and the fact the authorities agreed shows how highly Edna was regarded.
Later, Edna and her husband were able to buy their own house in Kent where she continued to work hard. Not content with doing a full time job and being a parent, Edna found time to represent her local community on the local CRE (Commission for Racial Equality) and be a founder member of the Pineapple Club: ‘The Club provides social support and stimulation to older vulnerable people from the African Caribbean communities.’ Even now, though in her eighties and long retired Edna continues to support her local community helping, among other things, at a ‘dementia cafe’ run by her church.
We could all learn so much from Edna. Hers has been a life of dedicated service to the NHS and the community and her positive outlook on life should be an inspiration to us all.
If one phrase stands out from the others during our talk I think it would be: ‘I enjoyed everything.’