Midwifery: Midwife attended family of 22 in 1930s

Elsie Moore

Mum was one of Derby's first six paid midwives

MY mother, Elsie Moore, was a midwife in Derby during the 1920s to mid-1940s and was one of the first six, paid municipal midwives to operate in the town, writes Gordon Moore, of Derby.

Mother started her training at Ripley cottage hospital. Then the First World War started and she was sent to the military hospital at Leicester. She had to deal with all sorts there. She told me terrible stories of soldiers arriving infected with lice, with limbs missing or gangrenous.

It was a very demanding time for young women. After the war, she trained as a midwife at Leicester and took her exams at the Nightingale Home, opposite the DRI. At that time, she was an independent midwife with a metal plaque advertising her services on the door of her home.

There were a lot of poor people in those days. Only one in five ever paid for her services. In fact, some of them were so poor that my mother would give them money to buy bread and butter and milk for their children.

One or two were so desperate they would ask her to adopt their babies. For a while, she was a district nurse in the Ashby area, on duty seven days a week. Then, in 1922, she married my father and they moved to live in Abbey Street, Derby.

She started practising again in 1934 when my brother, Frank, was seven. “Some midwives found it hard to make ends meet. Nurse Blakemore, who lived on Gordon Road, had to take in Irish lodgers to keep her going, she was so poor.

Then, in 1937, the government brought in the Midwives Act, which introduced a salary for municipal midwives of £200 a year. Six municipal midwives were appointed in Derby. My mother was one of them.

She covered the Abbey Road area. As far as I know, Nurse Holmes covered the Cambridge Street area, Nurse Clarke covered Osmaston Park Road, Nurse Maskrey, the Haddon Street area, Nurse Jessop, Chaddesden, and Nurse Weston, the Kedleston area.

They were on duty seven days a week, 24-hours a day. Invariably, a knock would come at the door at one in the morning with a ‘Can you come to Mrs So-and-so?’

Mum knew all the other midwives. All of them used to call at our house for a bit of a natter. Nurse Holmes was a happy little person. She was married to a Derby County footballer. When he died, she moved in with her sister in Cambridge Street.

Mum told how, during the war, she would go to visit people on her bike, wearing an Army helmet. She continued nursing until she retired in 1948. I think the average number of births each midwife dealt with then was about 50 a year, one a week.

I recall 1941 was extraordinary as mother dealt with about 78. In those days, the midwife used to visit for 10 mornings after the birth and seven evenings. Mr Moore, of St Clare's Close, Derby, also recalled his mother telling him of a Derby family in the 1930s which had 22 children.

Nearly 70 years ago, when little was known about contraception, large families were the norm but that one must have been one of the largest in Derby.

My mother gave up nursing in the 1940s after she had pneumonia. She died in 1974, aged 78.

Did Mrs Moore deliver me and my two brothers?

I was born in Abbey Street in 1925 and my brothers in 1930 and 1935, writes Elsie Langford (nee Moore).

I remember the smell of baby powder when my youngest brother was born and my mother sending me round to a lady’s house in Spa Lane to fetch some home-brewed ginger wine for the midwife.

I was only a schoolgirl then but I recall she had a lovely smile and was very kind. I wonder if anyone else who lived in the Abbey Street area remembers her. I would love to know.

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This article is from the Derby Evening Telegraph and is reproduced online here.