This blog has been researched and written by Hilary Love, one of the volunteers on our maternity care project. Project volunteers are researching maternity care in Northumberland with particular focus on Castle Hills Maternity Home, Berwick, and Mona Taylor Maternity Home, Stannington. We are also researching in less detail some of the other Maternity Homes in the county. This blog provides a brief history of maternity provision at Beulah House, Bondicar Terrace, Blyth, Northumberland.

Beulah House appears to have started life as a private residence. A newspaper account of 10 November 1924 records the death of Ralph Gregory Dobson, a grocer, at his home, Beulah House. By 1929 Beulah House was used as a Training Centre For Unemployed Women and Girls. The Centre trained women and girls for domestic service. By 1936 Beulah House was described as a Home Training Centre – still training women and girls for domestic service. A photograph in The Blyth News of 28 March 1940 is captioned ‘Mothers have their babies weighed and examined at Blyth’s new Health Centre which has been opened by the Town Council at Beulah House’. Later in 1940 it was described as a municipal clinic. A report in The Blyth News of 17 June 1946 records that the Town Council is proposing that Beulah House becomes a maternity home with six beds. Two Army huts were to be acquired and erected at the back of the house to be used as reception rooms – an office, kitchen and staff room. It was proposed that the maternity would be staffed by a matron-midwife and two day nurses and two might nurses. Beulah House Maternity Home closed in October 1973.

Records held at Northumberland Archives have revealed more about the history of Beulah House. The minutes of the Blyth Hospitals’ House Committee, 1962-1974, give details of various statistics such as admissions. The number of patients admitted during December 1961 was 64 and the daily average bed occupancy was 12.8. There were 41 admissions during January 1962 and, during the two months under review, 94 out-patients were examined. As a comparison, the admissions in December 1963 were 47 and 56 were admitted in January 1963. During the two months, 98 out-patients were examined. Nursing staff in October 1962 numbered six Midwives and four part-time Midwives, two State Enrolled Nurses and one part-time Nursing Auxiliary. In March 1963 there were seven Midwives and four part-time Midwives and two State Enrolled Nurses.

In the minutes for June 1964, the Nuffield Report on Food in Hospitals is mentioned. Beulah House is referred to as a small, busy hospital. Accommodation is extremely limited and very little could be done regarding the kitchen and storage lay-outs without a new building. Rearrangement of the kitchen accommodation was currently taking place.

In the Minutes for the meeting on Monday 14 December 1964, costing returns for the year ended March 1964 are outlined. There was a slight increase in the cost per patient per week but this was only 9/2d (46p) above the regional average, which was extremely satisfactory for a hospital with only 13 beds and a separate Nurses’ Home to maintain.

A letter from the Wansbeck Hospital Management Committee was received in July 1968 and a copy of a letter from the Blyth Division of the British Medical Association about the future of Beulah Maternity Hospital. The minutes of the meeting record widespread opposition and outline various objections:

1. All deplored any suggestion of a closure of Beulah House. The maternity hospital was not an economic proposition at present  but it was thought bed occupancy would rise as the population increased and the temporary fall in the birth rate due to the Pill and other reasons became modified.
2. Benefits to the patient: at present, approximately 500 patients per year are confined in Beulah House. The disadvantages of having to travel outside of Blyth to Ashington Maternity Hospital were discussed.
3. The disadvantages of patients’ husbands and other visitors having to travel further during ante and post- natal periods were discussed.
4. Benefits to the G.P.s in the town were mentioned but the general feeling was that the falling number of G.P.s and increased workload due to the increase in population, and a G.P. being out of town at another unit, would entail large numbers of patients being “at risk”.   In Blyth, G.P.s, broadly speaking, were grouped around Beulah Maternity Hospital and were able to give prompt attention to all confined in Beulah House.

The future of the hospital is discussed at almost every meeting in 1971 and 1972 and the minutes of the meeting on 14 February 1972 contain the following:

‘Although no decision had been taken as to the future of the hospital, this was under review due to the low occupancy rate and consequent high cost per patient, and the Consultant Obstetricians were of the opinion that this provided the Regional Hospital Board with adequate grounds for the hospital’s closure.

Further lengthy and detailed discussions took place about future policy and provision of services in Blyth, including a smaller general, community hospital. There was still strong opposition to Beulah House closing.

In June 1972, the Group Secretary discussed with members future hospital services in Blyth. ‘The township of Blyth, being the largest in the Wansbeck catchment area, had a need for hospital beds and would continue to do so for some considerable time.

With particular reference to possible closure of Beulah Maternity Hospital, the Regional Hospital Board would consider this in the light of services now being provided at Blyth and the availability of obstetric services at Ashington Hospital’.

At the meeting on 12 February 1973, the Chairman maintained the view that some publicity was desirable to acquaint the public that Beulah Maternity Hospital still offered obstetric facilities for G.P. cases, despite the tendency of some G.P.s to refer maternity cases direct to Ashington Hospital. As the Hospital Management Committee had recommended that Beulah Maternity Hospital be closed, the Group Secretary reported that he had instructed the Committee Secretary to withhold any publicity as it would conflict with the Management Committee’s policy.

The minutes of the meeting on 9 July 1973 states that three letters referring to the proposed closure of Beulah Maternity  Hospital had been received. The Committee Secretary stressed the fact that no official notification had been received regarding a definite date for the proposed closure.

That was reported at the meeting on 8 October 1973 when the date was given as 1 November 1973. 

All staff had been or would be offered alternative employment at other hospitals within the Group. The Principal Nursing Officer’s intention was to notify former staff of any future vacancies which may become available at Thomas Knight Memorial Hospital, Blyth.

On 10 December 1973, it was recommended that a function was held to which all personnel employed at Beulah House at the date of closure would be invited to a) express the Committee’s appreciation of the services rendered by the entire staff and b) to incorporate the disbandment of the Blyth Hospital House Committee on 11 February 1974.

The Secretary stated that there was still nothing further to report in relation to the possible provision of a Community Hospital in the Blyth district.

It was reported that Beulah Maternity Hospital had closed on 31 October 1973. All staff had either accepted alternative employment or resigned voluntarily.

This guest blog has been written by Phil Carstairs

Twenty of the households on the soup list cannot be matched with the Hexham residents listed in the censuses of 1871, 1881 or 1891.  Given the mobility of the late nineteenth century working class population, the figure does not seem unduly high for a sizeable industrial town.  In contrast in Swanbourne, a village in rural Buckinghamshire, all of the 58 households receiving soup in the late 1870s appeared in the censuses.

The 338 heads of household (ignoring the ‘second’ Charles Lowe) represented 1,258 individuals if we assume that the 1 pint serving represents one person.  The census records these households as containing 1,268 people over one-year old and 38 infants which confirms the one pint plus bread serving was for one person (many other soup kitchens provided a quart (two pints) as their standard serving.  The serving sizes show occasional variation as some households with several people of working age got less than one pint per person and one or two households got more pints than the census records people.  The variations may be because some household members had some income and some may have been particularly poor or been ill.  The number getting soup represents 21.3% of the local population.

This proportion of the population being in receipt of charitable food is at the higher end of the range for the northeast of England in the late-nineteenth century.  There were complaints in the Hexham Courant (6/12/1879) that some of the applicants were not all that needy, so its policy may have been more generous than elsewhere.  The most common categories of work that soup applicants were engaged in were general labourers (28), specialist labourers (27) and building trades (26).  However, market gardening (24) and hawkers, pedlars and costermongers (24) were also well represented.  These were outdoor occupations that were vulnerable to winter weather and shorter daylight hours; market gardening was particularly seasonal.  Agricultural workers only accounted for five soup recipients reflecting the continuing practice in Northumberland of hiring most farm workers on annual contracts.  Those with no or only limited skills made up a large proportion of those on the soup list, so it is surprising to see a journalist, two barbers, two butchers and 12 tanners.  There were those with skills that were becoming increasingly superseded by industrialisation or changes in fashion:  the average age of the glove makers was 69 and the straw hat maker and lace maker were both over 60; in contrast the tanners and market gardeners were on average 44 and 45 years old.

The age profile of soup recipients (Figure 1) shows that the heads of household in receipt of charity were mostly of working age and most had family members to support.  There were the sorts of people who were not eligible for poor law relief; the able-bodied were expected to support themselves even if there was no work to be found.  The age range of the workhouse population in 1881 (Figure 2), a time when the workhouse was becoming a facility reserved for the elderly, orphans, single mothers and sick, is in marked contrast, showing that most inmates were above working age with men significantly outnumbering women (the heads of household data will record men in preference to women both in the soup list and the census).  Unfortunately no records survive of those who received outdoor relief (poor law relief given to those living outside the workhouse) who made up the majority of parish welfare recipients; only one person on the soup recipients list is recorded in the census as being a pauper (someone in receipt of parish relief). 

The lists provide a unique insight into the lives of the working poor who rarely appear in official Poor Law records.  The Soup Kitchen and other similar charities were the only assistance available for those who were deemed ineligible for assistance under the Poor Law.