Scribbles
Ephemeral Spectre
- Joined
- Apr 5, 2011
- Messages
- 450
Over the last twenty years I've been struck by various random health issues and recently ended up back in hospital with what turned out to be a kidney infection and sepsis. I landed up on a ward in City Hospital, Birmingham (previously called Dudley Road Hospital) a massive Victorian place, which was to be demolished when the new hospital opened, but as all work on the new hospital has stopped due to the bankruptcy of Carillion who knows when that will happen.
At some point in an attempt at "infection control" they put me in a large side room on my own, which whilst I appreciated the peace, was a bit creepy. It was dead quiet in there. I could hear nothing of the happenings of the busy ward and felt isolated. It was also quite cold and when the temperature dropped with the bout of snow, I had to ask a nurse for extra blankets.
It was this nurse that helped spark an old memory of mine. As she tucked me up in cozy blankets, she said that because of the age of the building it was almost impossible to regulate the temperatures properly, and throughout the whole hospital it was either too hot or freezing cold. She mentioned that it had first been built as an infirmary attached to the workhouse, which I hadn't known. After she had gone, I picked up my phone and started Googling the history of the hospital and found out that the site had indeed also included Birmingham's workhouse. Only last year the building where families were admitted into the workhouse, which I had been very familiar with on my many trips to that hospital over the decades, was demolished. It had been called the Archway of Tears.
It got me thinking about the hospital in a new way. I have never liked the place, and had always put it down to the fact that I was in there being ill and so it held bad memories, but actually it is more than that. Modern medicine has been inserted into and disfigured a lot of the Victorian nature of the building, but something from the past constantly insists you remember it. And not in a pleasant way. Not in a way you might sense walking around an old country house or an ancient woodland. But in a way that tells you it was a place where misery dwelt.
And then I remembered "the oddly dressed Nurse". I figure it was thirteen or more years ago when I was in after an operation for a medical condition that changed the whole course of my life. I was in a small side ward off a main ward with five other patients. It was the custom then, though it doesn't seem to be now, that when there was a shift change the old nurses would come around and stand at the end of patients bed telling the new nurses about each patient. I found it quite rude actually, as you were talked about and not interacted with, as they stood there at the foot of your bed.
Anyway, invariably when the night shift took over this exchange happened when I was sleeping, and it usually woke me up. On this particular occasion I remember feeling really dozy and having to try hard to prize an eye open to take a peak at the nurses talking about me at the end of my bed. What I saw baffled me. My memory of the whole thing is vague and hazy, I have to admit, but the one thing that I cannot ever forget was the hat of the nurse who was talking. It was the most ridiculous headgear I had ever seen, with the starched white cotton sprouting up and over the nurses head like seagull wings. I remember feeling that I was owed an explanation as to why she was dressed so ridiculously, but of course I was being talked about not talked to. I don't recall what was being said about me, and I don't remember anything of the people around her. I do have an idea that the rest of her was just as formally dressed, and that I wanted her to go away.
Remembering this bizarre uniform, whilst still in hospital this year I looked it up and searched through pictures of nurses' uniforms for ages, before finally finding the image below. It turned out my Nurse was wearing a Cornette, described in wikipedia as thus:
"A cornette is a piece of female headwear. It is essentially a type of wimple consisting of a large, starched piece of white cloth that is folded upwards in such a way as to create the resemblance of horns (French: cornes) on the wearer's head. It was reported in The Times to have been "in fashion among the Ladies of Paris" in 1801,[1] made of muslin or gauze and richly ornamented with lace.
Use by the Daughters of Charity[edit]
The cornette was retained as a distinctive piece of clothing into modern times by the Daughters of Charity, a Roman Catholic society of apostolic life founded by St. Vincent de Paul in the mid-17th century.[2] The founder wanted to have the sisters of this new type of religious congregation of women, that tended to the sick and poor, and were not required to remain in their cloister, resemble ordinary middle-class women as much as possible in their clothing, including the wearing of the cornette.
After the cornette generally fell into disuse, it became a distinctive feature of the Daughters of Charity, making theirs one of the most widely recognised religious habits. Because of the cornette, they were known in Ireland as the "butterfly nuns". They abandoned the cornette on 20 September 1964. The modern nurses' cap or bonnet was created following the cornette's appearance and it depicts the humanitarianism of Daughters of Charity in nursing."
A painting of cornette-wearing Sisters of Charity by Armand Gautier (1825–1894)
You can see why I was surprised! That hat is really quite something. I did a lot more googling and couldn't find any reason that a Nurse's wimple that had long since been discontinued would turn up in modern Birmingham. I did ask one of the nurses about it too, and she just shrugged and said she'd never heard of it.
I don't know, maybe there is a small Daughter's of Charity group in Birmingham who still like to dress up to alarm the patients, but I would really like to think that I actually saw a ghost!
At some point in an attempt at "infection control" they put me in a large side room on my own, which whilst I appreciated the peace, was a bit creepy. It was dead quiet in there. I could hear nothing of the happenings of the busy ward and felt isolated. It was also quite cold and when the temperature dropped with the bout of snow, I had to ask a nurse for extra blankets.
It was this nurse that helped spark an old memory of mine. As she tucked me up in cozy blankets, she said that because of the age of the building it was almost impossible to regulate the temperatures properly, and throughout the whole hospital it was either too hot or freezing cold. She mentioned that it had first been built as an infirmary attached to the workhouse, which I hadn't known. After she had gone, I picked up my phone and started Googling the history of the hospital and found out that the site had indeed also included Birmingham's workhouse. Only last year the building where families were admitted into the workhouse, which I had been very familiar with on my many trips to that hospital over the decades, was demolished. It had been called the Archway of Tears.
It got me thinking about the hospital in a new way. I have never liked the place, and had always put it down to the fact that I was in there being ill and so it held bad memories, but actually it is more than that. Modern medicine has been inserted into and disfigured a lot of the Victorian nature of the building, but something from the past constantly insists you remember it. And not in a pleasant way. Not in a way you might sense walking around an old country house or an ancient woodland. But in a way that tells you it was a place where misery dwelt.
And then I remembered "the oddly dressed Nurse". I figure it was thirteen or more years ago when I was in after an operation for a medical condition that changed the whole course of my life. I was in a small side ward off a main ward with five other patients. It was the custom then, though it doesn't seem to be now, that when there was a shift change the old nurses would come around and stand at the end of patients bed telling the new nurses about each patient. I found it quite rude actually, as you were talked about and not interacted with, as they stood there at the foot of your bed.
Anyway, invariably when the night shift took over this exchange happened when I was sleeping, and it usually woke me up. On this particular occasion I remember feeling really dozy and having to try hard to prize an eye open to take a peak at the nurses talking about me at the end of my bed. What I saw baffled me. My memory of the whole thing is vague and hazy, I have to admit, but the one thing that I cannot ever forget was the hat of the nurse who was talking. It was the most ridiculous headgear I had ever seen, with the starched white cotton sprouting up and over the nurses head like seagull wings. I remember feeling that I was owed an explanation as to why she was dressed so ridiculously, but of course I was being talked about not talked to. I don't recall what was being said about me, and I don't remember anything of the people around her. I do have an idea that the rest of her was just as formally dressed, and that I wanted her to go away.
Remembering this bizarre uniform, whilst still in hospital this year I looked it up and searched through pictures of nurses' uniforms for ages, before finally finding the image below. It turned out my Nurse was wearing a Cornette, described in wikipedia as thus:
"A cornette is a piece of female headwear. It is essentially a type of wimple consisting of a large, starched piece of white cloth that is folded upwards in such a way as to create the resemblance of horns (French: cornes) on the wearer's head. It was reported in The Times to have been "in fashion among the Ladies of Paris" in 1801,[1] made of muslin or gauze and richly ornamented with lace.
Use by the Daughters of Charity[edit]
The cornette was retained as a distinctive piece of clothing into modern times by the Daughters of Charity, a Roman Catholic society of apostolic life founded by St. Vincent de Paul in the mid-17th century.[2] The founder wanted to have the sisters of this new type of religious congregation of women, that tended to the sick and poor, and were not required to remain in their cloister, resemble ordinary middle-class women as much as possible in their clothing, including the wearing of the cornette.
After the cornette generally fell into disuse, it became a distinctive feature of the Daughters of Charity, making theirs one of the most widely recognised religious habits. Because of the cornette, they were known in Ireland as the "butterfly nuns". They abandoned the cornette on 20 September 1964. The modern nurses' cap or bonnet was created following the cornette's appearance and it depicts the humanitarianism of Daughters of Charity in nursing."
A painting of cornette-wearing Sisters of Charity by Armand Gautier (1825–1894)
You can see why I was surprised! That hat is really quite something. I did a lot more googling and couldn't find any reason that a Nurse's wimple that had long since been discontinued would turn up in modern Birmingham. I did ask one of the nurses about it too, and she just shrugged and said she'd never heard of it.
I don't know, maybe there is a small Daughter's of Charity group in Birmingham who still like to dress up to alarm the patients, but I would really like to think that I actually saw a ghost!