Health

Birth

None of us, my brothers and sister was born in hospital, because in them days you didnt get born in hospital, you was born at home, you just had the midwife come in and usually the grandmother or somebody used to come in and do the donkey work, like the washing and the cleaning and the boiling the hot water. Never known why they boiled all that hot water for, but they always boiled the hot water. But you was always born indoors, thats why the Royal Lying-in Hospital was not a big hospital because it wasnt used by everybody. It wasnt until the National Health come out in 1948 that it started that people started going into hospitals for having childbirth.

Illness

when the National Health first started it was a godsend for everybody, prior to that you used to have to go to what they called the Panel doctor, and you used to pay a shilling whenever you could afford it, and if you was ill - your Nanwould know everything thats going on, Which doctor would prescribe so and so? well theres a certain doctor would prescribe one sort of cough mixture and somebody else would prescribe something for measles or diphtheria.

.Chemists used to do most of the prescribing, youd go up to the chemist and they would do the prescribing of something for this and something for that. It you had boils or witlows or styes in your eye or anything like that, they were the one whod tell you what to do and what not to do. You didnt go to doctors, unless you could afford it.

your mums or the dads, or your grandmothers would do most of your first aid for you if you fell over and cut your leg or done anything bad like that, they were the one that bandage you all up, with their prescribed little personal remedies.

St Thomass Hospital was not like the hospital is now[and] things was a little crude than what they was now, when it come to stitching you up or anything like that, there wasnt sort of much of this pain-killing stuff.

Funerals

[In] St Johns theres a vault down there of all the Peachs Family. The Peach family have got about eight little children all died of diphtheria in the 1800s.

[The] Necropolis was [a station] where they used to take the dead bodies to in Westminster Bridge Road, and then from there they used to take them up on to the railway lines, put them on the train, and this cemetery for the railway people used to be down the line somewhere.

Oh God, the horses! Black horses. Well, you get all sorts, dont you, I mean, it was always horses, and sometimes the horses had plumes, sometimes the wagons used to have plumes. It was all upon what you can afford, wasnt it And they used to walk in unison, the horses. They were wonderful.