MOXLEY ISOLATION HOSPITAL

NORA DANBURY

After I left school I started work at Joseph Sankey's but one of my older sisters became a nurse at the Moxley Isolation Hospital.  She told me all about it and she seemed to enjoy working there so much that I decided I would like to work there.  In 1949 I applied for a job as an Auxiliary but when I went to for the interview the Matron told me that I did not want to be an Auxiliary, but that I should train to be a nurse!  So I did.  We worked on the wards until 10 am and then we went to the school room in the hospital.  There were only about five of us on the course, which lasted three years.

	I still have some of my nursing text books.  Here is one of them - open at a page on bacteriology.		The front cover of my admission certificate as a State Registered Fever Nurse - with my badge lying on it.
	The official letter form the General Nursing Council telling me that I had qualified as a fever nurse.  My nurse's badge was enclosed with it.  The letter says that I should keep the badge and the letter safely - and I have!		I passed all my exams first time and I qualified as a State Registered Nurse, specialising in fever nursing.

At the time I lived in Daisy Bank, Coseley, and walked into work and out again every day.  There was no nurses home on the hospital site at that time but many nurses lived at Coseley Hall and an ambulance would be sent out to collect them each morning.  If I was in luck I would get a lift in the ambulance as it came by me.

When I joined the hospital had four isolation wards and one ward for geriatrics.  In the isolation wards we had people suffering from just about every known infectious disease, such as measles, polio, typhoid, whooping cough and tuberculosis.  I always worked on the children's ward. 

This photo was taken in the grounds of the hospital.  On the far left is one of the young domestics, then Nurse Jacaran, then Mrs. Mount, an auxiliary, and then me on the right.

This picture also shows the domestic, Mrs. Jacaran and me; and it gives you some idea of what the grounds were like and how extensive they were.

Because it was an isolation hospital their parents were not allowed to visit them but they bought carrier bags of goodies for their children to the gate when one of the male members of staff would meet them, take the bags and bring them onto the ward.  The hospital was set in its own grounds with woods around and the canal alongside.  Sometimes parents would try to get into the grounds through these grounds so that they could wave at their children.  But as soon as they were spotted they were put off.

In 1952 I got married, so I gave up working at the hospital.  When we were working in the hospital we were inoculated against everything possible but that did not stop me getting diphtheria only two weeks after I got married!  When my two girls were about 10 or 12 I started working there again, for two nights a week.  And then in the 1970s I went back full time. 

When I got married one of the telegrams I received was from my colleagues on Ward 3, the children's ward.

The work was hard and sometimes very saddening. Sometimes I was reduced to tears when we lost a patient.  We worked 5 days a week for about three months and then five nights a week for the same length of time.  We not only did the usual nursing duties but we also had to do some of the cleaning, we did the 'wet dusting' of all the beds and cabinets and we also had to sluice the bed linen before it went down to the laundry.  But I loved it there.  It was just like one big, happy family. 

This photo was taken one Christmas, when we always decorated the hospital.  This is me on the left and Sister Smith on the right.

And this is me again, on a similar occasion.

The Matron was Miss Kurtin and her Assistant Matron was Miss Curtin.  They had both come at the same time from the Brook Hospital in London, and they also brought with them Nurse Liz O'Boyle.  Just after the New Year there was always the Matron's Ball. 

Highly infectious diseases became fewer and fewer and gradually the wards at Moxley were all given over to geriatric care.  The children's ward was moved to Sandwell but I was never happy there and I finally left the nursing profession in 1978. 

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