Nurses, Nursing Associations and Mid-wives
Display label used in Stowupland’s 1970 Exhibition of Local History Bygones. The nature of the exhibit this card was attached tois unknown but the label tells an interesting story relating to local medical services prior to 1946 and the start of the National Health Service (ECA).
We are gradually piecing together medical services prior to 1928 e.g. Mid-wives. physicians, and other health care provision.
On October 21st, 1927 the first meeting of the Stowupland & Creeting St peter Nursing Association was held at the Rectory, at 3 o’clock.
In March 1928 the first nurse, Nurse Boyce started her duties. The accounts to 31st Ang 1928 showed that £102 17s 2p had been received and £95 9s 9d had been paid out.
Nurse Boyce – March 1928 to Sept 1931
Nurse Gelder – Feb 1932 to July 1933
Nurse Cox – Oct 1933 to Jan 1934
Nurse Keable / Plummer – 1934 to 1937
Nurse Alice M. Cobbold – 1937 -38
Nurse Knights – 1938
In 1938 Stowupland welcomed Nurse Minns, she stayed till 1962.
From Rev Brame’s unpublished ‘As I Remember It, (Book 1)’ he recalled the appointment of possibly Stowupland’s first district nurse. She was provided with a base in Church Walk, in ‘a portable hut…with a big sign outside proclaiming the presence of the district nurse’. At first she boarded in the village but before long found accommodation in one of the cottages near the hut (p.90)
She was provided with a bicycle so could reach any ‘part of the growing village’ but although the sign on her hut said her working hours were 8:00am to 5:30 pm the Rev Brame remembered her making herself available at any time day or night. He added many of her patients ‘gave her small gifts, because they knew her pay was precious little compared with the work she did”
In 1938 Nurse Cobbold was recorded as having made 2,688 visits had, of which 10 were midwifery and 16 maternity cases. Stowupland Head Mistress, Miss Ada Kinch was one of the officers on the committee overseeing the work and finances of the Association.
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In 1939 Nurse Knights had replaced Nurse Cobbold. She had made 2000 visits of which 17 were midwifery cases and 16 maternity.
There were 370 members and the subscriptions totaled £89 14s 3d.
{Press reports from Margaret Catchpole’s scrapbooks in Stowupland Archives.}
Nurse W.R. Minns served the local community for 34 years before retiring in 1962. She covered Stowupland, Creeting St Peter, Stonham and part of Stowmarket. Before moving to Stowupland in the early 1940’s she covered an area around Yoxford.
She had been born in 1901 in Briston, Norfolk, her parents were Stephen Edward and Annie Daws.
In 1938 she married Robert W. Minns a lorry driver .
In 1939 register living at 13 Station Rd. Stowmarket and by 1941 she was living at 19 Broomspath (taken from a newspaper report of Robert in road traffic accident).
She can be seem here in the 1950’s when the BBC came to Stowupland to interview Jack Carter about the building of the Village Hall
Nurse Minns arrived in the village with her new husband Bob in 1938, ‘a district nurse on a bicycle’. They lived in Oak Road, Stowupland (the change of address maybe due to renaming and numbering of roads in the Broomspath estate). In 1947 she was promoted from a bike to a car. In 1951 she was part of the team that formed Stowupland’s Over 60’s Club.
Elsie Maud Minns died on April 6th 1985, age 84. Prior to her death she had lived in Jubilee Court, Stowupland. Donations were requested to be sent for Multiple Sclerosis c/o the Co-operative Funeral Service
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