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 Bridge End Maternity Hospital, Corbridge, Northumberland.
The project is supported by the Northumbria Healthcare NHS Foundation Trust Bright Charity and the Northumberland Archives Charitable Trust. We will be posting more blog content from the project over the coming months.
NRO 4144/28
Bridge End Maternity Hospital started life as a large end terrace late 19th century house. It was extended prior to 1938 to serve as a maternity hospital. Two late 19th century terraced houses on an adjacent site are thought to have been used as staff accommodation. Upon closure the building became a public house and has since been split into private apartments.
The fifty-first Annual Report of the Executive Committee of the Northumberland County Nursing Association, for the twelve months ended 31st March 1948, was written on the eve of the transfer of the domiciliary midwifery and general nursing services to the County Council and the dissolution of the County Nursing Association. Care Committees were formed to function from July 1948. The report sets out information about the Hospital just before it was became part of the new National Health Service. We learn that in March 1948, 18 patients were admitted, including one for ante-natal treatment. The Maternity Hospital had 13 beds. The hospital fees make interesting reading:
Public Ward – members £2 12s 6d per week; non- members £3 10s 0d per week.
Semi-Private Wards – members £5 5s 5d per week; non- members £6 10s 0d per week.
Private Wards – “Blue” Room £12 12s 0d per week; Others – £8 8s 0d per week.
We also learn about the future management of the Bridge End Maternity Hospital – “When the Regional Hospital Board takes over the hospital on July 5th, it will come under it will come under the Management Committee of the Hexham Group of Hospitals and we hope that the local interest which has served it so generously and well since it was started in 1931 will continue to support it in whatever ways may be opened in the future.
Grateful thanks are recorded to Miss Harrison, the Matron for 13 years, and to the staff.”
Digital copy of black and white engraved portrait of Sir John Dick, Baronet of Braid (1721-1804), NRO 07148/1.
Last October, I began a Northern Bridge funded placement as part of my PhD at Newcastle University cataloguing and researching the second American letter book documenting the trade of Ralph Carr (1711-1806), an eighteenth-century Newcastle merchant. After completing the catalogue, I came across a collection of letters within the broader Carr-Ellison papers containing the letters of Sir John Dick, a life-long friend of Carr’s who benefitted from the latter’s generous patronage during his early years and went on to pursue a mercantile and diplomatic career. I spent the remainder of my placement cataloguing Dick’s letters and was fascinated by its contents.
Sir John Dick was born in Newcastle upon Tyne in 1721, baptised on 2nd February at the parish of All Saints, the son of Andrew Dick and Janet Durham who had married at the parish on the same date in 1716. Andrew Dick (1676-c.1744) was a hostman in Newcastle, being apprenticed to John Blackett on the 18th November 1700 and admitted as a member to the Company of Hostmen of Newcastle upon Tyne in 1708. The Newcastle Hostmen were a powerful group who controlled the monopoly of the coal trade from the Tyne through a charter granted to the Company in 1600 by Elizabeth I and their dominance continued until the mid-eighteenth century. Although Dick’s younger brother, Durham Dick, was also admitted a member of the Company in 1737, John followed a mercantile path through the patronage of Ralph Carr (1711-1806).
The Dicks and the Carrs potentially met through the involvement of both Andrew Dick and Ralph Carr in the coal trade and their mutual connections through powerful North-East families. Carr was also admitted as a member to the Company of Hostmen in 1739, but had been a member of the Merchant Adventurers – another powerful guild in Newcastle controlling the shipping trade from its port – since his indenture to Matthew Bowes in 1728, being admitted a full member a decade later. Carr provided young John with an education and was involved in sending him abroad sometime around 1740, where Dick did some business for Carr at Dunkirk and then entered into trade from Holland.
View of the city and port of Livorno, or “Vedutta della città e porto de Livorno,” 1790-1800. Held by the British Library.
At Rotterdam, Dick was tasked by the English Board of Trade with the transportation of Protestant settlers to Nova Scotia to counter the French Catholic population and establish the new colony under General Edward Cornwallis (1713-1776), the newly appointed Governor of Nova Scotia. Shortly afterwards in 1754, Dick was appointed to the position of Consul at Leghorn (Livorno) in Italy, which was reported in the English national press. Livorno was a free port and Dick was tasked with huge responsibilities overseeing trade and navigating conflict between different nations. Beyond his diplomatic duties, he traded in art and antiquities, acting as agent for Thomas Anson of Shugborough, champion of the Greek revival movement and collector of sculptures. Amongst the various items Dick sent to Anson were a pair of Corsican goats, which Dick stated were called “Miufri” and thought they would be considered “somewhat curious in England”. The goats were possibly obtained through Dick’s correspondent, Pasquale Paoli (1725-1807), the Corsican patriot and leader. James Boswell (biographer of Samuel Johnson) described the animals in his Account of Corsica: The Journal of a Tour to that Island (1768) which is dedicated to Paoli; Boswell was a friend of Dick’s and acknowledges the contributions of his friend in the preface to the work. Dick’s prestige in the art-world is highlighted by his inclusion in Johan Zoffany’s The Tribuna of Uffuzi, commissioned by Queen Charlotte.
Johan Joseph Zoffany, “The Tribuna of Uffizi”. 1772-1777. Held by the Royal Collection Trust. Sir John Dick is depicted second from the left with his Order of St Anne pinned to his right-hand side, with George Nassau Clavering-Cowper next to him (far left).
As well as dealing in art, antiquities and other curiosities, Dick was trusted by his network of aristocratic friends and correspondents to carry out their business and supply them with information from his many contacts. George Nassau Clavering-Cowper and Sir Horace Mann each wrote to Dick on several occasions for assistance regarding a missing package of diamond earrings worth £1000 (roughly £150,000 in today’s money) purchased for Cowper’s wife. Several of Dick’s correspondents asked to loan money, sometimes large sums, including Paoli who requested Dick loan him £1500 in 1783. Dick even supplied his friend Prince William Henry (younger brother of George III) with news of the French Revolution as it was rapidly unfolding in the 1790s. Dick was rewarded for his diplomatic efforts by other royalty, receiving the Russian Order of St Anne from Catherine the Great some time around 1770 for his conduct in assisting her fleet during the Russo-Turkish War (1768-1774). Catherine expressed her approval of Dick in a letter addressed to George III (written in French), a copy of which is contained in the collection of Dick’s letters.
Catherine’s gratitude to Dick may have expanded beyond just diplomatic duties, however, when he was accused of participating in a conspiracy to kidnap and arrest Princess Tarakanova, a pretender to the Russian empire. Tarakanova (known by many other names) emerged in Paris in 1770s under the name of Princess Vladimir, claiming to be the illegitimate daughter of Empress Elizabeth, upon whose death Catherine’s husband, Peter III, took the reign (Peter was ousted by Catherine just six months later). Catherine appointed one of her military officers, Count Alexei Orlov – who had assisted her in overthrowing Peter – to capture and arrest the pretender from Livorno. Orlov seduced the pretender princess to board his ship on the pretence of a marriage proposal, and once aboard Tarakanova was swiftly arrested and sent back to St. Petersburg where she died imprisoned in 1775. That Orlov played a key role in assisting Catherine is undoubted, but accusations arose by contemporaries that Dick – who at this time was stationed in Livorno and was a friend of Orlov’s – assisted in the capture of the Princess.
Two publications in the 1790’s – Giuseppe Gorani’s Mémoires Secrets et Critiques des Cours […] d’Italie (1793) and Jean-Henri Castéra’s La Vie de Catherine II (1797) – accused Dick and his wife, Ann Bragg of Somerset, of entertaining Tarakanova whilst she was with Orlov and helping with the arrest. Dick denounced any active participation in the scheme, as recalled in the Historical and Posthumous Memoirs of Sir Nathaniel William Wraxall by Henry B. Wheatley (1884). Wraxall (1751-1831) recounts a dinner party of 1799 in which he asked Dick about the accusations put forth by Castèra, and produces a long speech by Dick in which he explained the circumstances and denied any knowledge of the situation. Although Wraxall accepts Dick’s explanation, he highlights how unusual it was for Dick to not put forth any of his own accounts disproving the charges against him at the time.
In all events, Dick’s consulship ended shortly after in 1776 when he resigned his post and returned to England. He did not rest up, however, and took up the post of Comptroller of Army Accounts in 1781 just months after the death of his wife. In 1768 Dick enhanced his own status by claiming a dormant baronetcy from his great-great-grandfather, Sir William Dick of Braid, upon the supposition he was the sole male heir of this lineage. Dick’s grandfather Andrew, of West Newton in Cumberland, came from a long Scottish lineage being the son of Louis Dick (also of West Newton) who was the fifth son of Sir William Dick, the personal banker to James VI and said to be the richest man in Scotland. William received his knighthood from Charles I after loaning him £20,000 but met his decline during the Civil War when he was arrested by Oliver Cromwell and died imprisoned and penniless. Dick was granted the baronetcy by Thomas Brodie of Edinburgh with a seal of his heraldry which survives in the collection.
Document signed by Thomas Brodie, deputy to the Lyon King of Arms of Scotland outlining the entitlement of Sir John Dick to the baronetcy of Braid, ZCE/F/1/11/2.
Dick died at his London home on the 2nd December 1804. His large legacy and value was widely known. As well as owning 350-acre estate in Surrey at Mount Clare House in Roehampton, now a Grade I listed building, he left behind large sums of cash, with one newspaper reporting his worth as £160,000 upon his death. Dick had no close relatives left after his death – with his wife and siblings predeceasing him and being childless – and so divided his estate amongst four executors: Ralph Carr, the son of his early benefactor and friend; John Cleathing, the son of his secretary; his physician Dr. Vaughan, and his apothecary, William Simons. Carr junior wrote to his father on the 3rd December to inform him that Dick had died after being confined to his bed for thirteen months, and to outline Dick’s legacy. Carr’s letter stated he alone had been appointed the sole beneficiary of the will until just a few months before Dick’s death, when Dick decided (perhaps under the influence of some other friends) to add extra people as executors. Despite dividing his assets four ways, Carr advised his father that many would be left unhappy at Dick’s decision, writing “I fear this will may be considered as capricious & will give very little satisfaction in the world; perhaps there never was an instance where more persons will be disappointed & irritated” [ZCE/F/1/1/2/120]. Dick’s recognition of his old Newcastle friend Ralph Carr and his lifelong friendship of the whole family has found his collection of letters deposited in the family’s archive, and now being catalogued and available will surely lead to some interesting investigations of his life and influence as a prominent diplomat and aristocrat.
RETIRAL OF MR GEORGE YOUNG AND PRESENTATION BY FELLOW WORKMEN
After fifty-seven years spent in the service of the North British Railway Company, Mr George Young, 8 Infirmary Square, a well-known figure at the Loco. Sheds at Berwick, retired at the beginning of the month, and on Thursday evening, in the Oddleffows’ Hall, a company of some forty fellow workmen under the presidency of Mr Joe Gray assembled to make a parting gift in token of the respect and esteem in which Mr Young was held.
An early 20th Century postcard of the front of the Berwick Railway Station
Mr Gray briefly explained the object of the gathering, saying they were there to do a little honour to the oldest servant of the Railway Coy. at Berwick station, a man who they all held in the highest respect and esteem. Personal, said Mr Gray, I have always been closely associated with Mr Young. He was my driver at one time, and the friendship we formed on the footplate was not one to be readily broken.
A letter read from Mr J. P. Grassick, the Loco Running Superintendent of the L. and N.E.R. Coy. at Cowlairs, Glasgow, showed how much the long and honourable service of Mr Young was appreciated. “I cannot allow the occasion of your retiral from active service to pass unnoticed,” wrote Mr Grasswick. “Your work has been appreciated, and you enter upon your period of rest after a strenuous career with the best wishes of your employers. Personally, I have to thank you for services well rendered, and I hope you will belong spared to enjoy the remainder of your days in peace and comfort, freed from stress and turmoil of modern railway life.” The reading of the letter was received with applause.
Mr William Ewing, the foreman at Loco. Department, Berwick, then made on behalf of the employees at the sheds the presentation of a handsome silver lever watch, albert and medallion to Mr Young, along with a small sum of money remaining in the presentation fund. In a speech where the good qualities of the recipient were eulogised, Mr Ewing told of the ready way the employees had subscribed to give some little token to Mr Young as a memento of the many years he had been amongst them. He hoped Mr Young would accept the gift in the spirit in which it was made, and there was no need to assure him that he had left the Company’s service with the good wishes of all who had esteemed and appreciated his companionship and service in the past. (Applause).
Berwick Railway Station during World War One
Mr Young replied in a speech full of happy reminiscences of his past life on the railway, some of which we reprinted below, and he also told of one or two instances which were not of such a pleasing nature, when accidents had nearly brought about his end and the end of others. I started life as a boy under Mr Cargill in 1866, said Mr Young, and well I remember asking him for a start. I was just a little fellow then – fifteen years of age – and it was like looking up toa giant, for Mr Cargill was not a small man by any means. However, I was fortunate, for he started me at the handsome salary of 10d per day – ( laughter) – which was 2d a day more than was usually given to boys starting. Their wage worked out at ¾ per hour or 4s per week. Well, I was fortunate because I got 5s per week, but I wonder what some of you young chaps would say if you were asked to work for that now-a-days. (Applause). Mr Young also mentioned that there were only other two men alive today who had started life with him at Berwick Station. One was Mr Thos. Aird, coal merchant, who was then a fitter, and the other was Mr David Lawson, a native of Berwick, who had risen to be stationmaster at Shettleston, Glasgow, and who was now retired. During the time he had been on the railway he had worked under five different general managers, five loco. Superintendents, and fourteen loco. Foremen. He also mentioned that the father of Mr Ewing, their present foreman, had worked on the same footplate with him. Mr Young concluded a very interesting speech by thanking his fellow workmen for the honour they had done him.
A FEW REMINISCENCES
A DASH FOR SAFETY
A thrilling experience I have had, said Mr Young, was when I was running the 10 o’clock express between Edinburgh and Glasgow. Just at Winechburgh tunnel a goods train broke an axel and the damaged axel flew in front of my train. There was no time to draw up, and the only safety lay in putting on speed in the open of shifting the obstruction. We put on full steam. There was no Westenhouse brakes to apply and stop in time then, and when we hit the wreckage, we happily shifted it from the line. I was handsomely rewarded by the passengers, who subscribed for myself and the fireman the sum of £2 15s – quite a lot in those days.
PULLED A MAN OUT OF WAY OF EXPRESS
Another thing I remember, said Mr Young, happened shortly after that at Berwick station near the turntable. A St, Margaret’s driver named George Fortune – he is dead now, poor fellow – got right in the way of the express which was coming along. I saw his danger and clutching him succeeded in pulling him off the line. He did not escape injury, for he got a glancing blow from the buffer of the engine, which broke seven of his ribs, but he soon recovered and lived to a good age. Had I not reached him he would certainly have been knocked down and cut to pieces.
A PERSONAL ACCIDENT
I was nearly killed many years ago, said Mr Young, but it must not have been to be. I was starting a pumping engine which was used to be at the Sheds when my coat got into the belt. I did not pull it clear quick enough and I was carried round the shafting until I was stripped of clothing, and then I was flung senseless against the wall. Had I been thrown the other way I would have assuredly been killed outright, for I would have fallen into the well. As it was, I was very seriously injured about the head, legs and arms, and to this day I carry the marks on my legs. All the inspectors who examined the machinery in motion where I was caught could not credit that I could be carried round the shaft as I was and escaped alive.
BERWICK PETTY SESSIONS
MONDAY
Before C. L. Fraser and Chas. Forsyth, Esqs
A MORALISING TRAMP
John Kelly, vagrant, no fixed abode, was charged with being drunk and disorderly in Marygate at 9.5 p.m. on the 15th June. He pleaded guilty.
P. C Jefferson said the man was drunk, getting in front of motor cars and behaving in a foolish and disorderly manner.
Kelly was asked if he would promise to leave the town if he was discharged and he said, “I can promise nothing. I might just get drunk again and get into mischief. I do not think a day or two at Newcastle would do me any harm. It is the only way for you gentlemen to protect yourselves. I don’t believe in making promises if there is a possibility of breaking them. A man who habitually takes drink should not make promises.
Dr Fraser – Then there is no other option than to send you to prison for seven days.
Mr Forsyth – With hard labour.
Prisoner – With all due deference to you, sir. I don’t think they can give me hard labour. I am 62 years of age.
Dr Fraser – I don’t think he is sober yet.
Prisoner – Oh yes, but I will be better at Newcastle. It is twenty-one years since I was in Berwick last, and I hope it will be as long again before I am in it.
Dr Fraser – I hope so, too.
With a “Thank you, gentlemen,” prisoner went below to the cells prior to his trip to Newcastle.
SPORT
FOOTBALL
INFIRMARY CUP
Owing to the majority of the Spittal Hearts’ team being unable to be present at the Pierrots’ stand on Friday night the presentation of medals has been postponed.
Spittal Rovers, Infirmary Cup Winners, 1925. Ref; BRO 1887/41/3
It is hoped to send out circulars to all teams within a 25 miles’ radius of Berwick, and if a satisfactory entry is obtained to play one match per week throughout this season for the Cup. The rules, which are comparatively few, bar players who have played for Berwick Rangers or Coldstream during the season. The competition is strictly amateur, and teams will be paid minimum travelling fares for 12 players. Layers must play for one team only in the competition.
CYCLING
TEN MILE CYCLING RACE ON NORTH ROAD
The Tweedside Cycling Club held their 10 miles road trial over the North Road on Thursday evening last under handicap conditions, when a large assembly lined the footpath out by meadow House to see the finish of the race. The feature of the handicap was the wonderful riding of J. H. Kirkup, a Millfield lad aged nineteen, who had the fastest time of the evening, 25 mins, 44 secs. actual. The prize winners and times were as follows: – 1, P. Gleig, 29 mins. 46 secs., less 6 mins., 23 mins. 46 secs.; 2, J. Tennant, 29 mins, 16 secs., less 5 mins., 24 mins. 16 secs.; 3, J. H. Kirkup, 25 min. 44 secs, less 1 min., 24 mins. 44 secs. E. Young, who was scratch, covered the distance in 25 mins. 59 secs., or 15 secs, longer than Kirkup. Other young riders’ times were :- T. Clazie, 28 mins. 30 secs., less 4 mins., 24 mins, 30 secs.; L. B. Dickinson, 31 mins. 17 secs., less 5 mins., 26 mins. 17 secs.; and A. Aird, 31 mins. 45 secs., less 4 mins., 27 mins, 45 secs. Kirkup, it will be remembered, was the rider who won the double event in the half mile and mile last years at the Tweedside Cycling Club Sports. He is riding wonderfully well this year, and those in the know look upon him as a coming champion.
AUSTRALIA’S CALL
BAMBURGH MAN’S SUCCESS IN FARMING
“This country appears to be over-crowded, and to find so many young men unemployed and hanging about the city streets is a sad and depressing reflection on present-day life when one knows that in Australia there are thousands of acres ready for settlers to enjoy a new and glorious life. The kind of men wanted are only those who are determined to work hard, and to make a home for themselves in that fertile country. Fired by that ambition, emigrants are almost bound to succeed.”
These sentiments were voiced to a “Newcastle Daily Journal” representative by Mr George Waddell, a Western Australian farmer, who, with his wife, is at present on a visit to Tyneside, renewing old friendships. Mr Waddell, who was born in the parish of Bamburgh, fifty-eight years ago, at one time followed the plough, and later was a servant on the railway company in Newcastle as a rolleyman.
SUCCESS IN TWELVE YEARS
It should be noted that Mr Waddell was forty-six years of age when he decided to seek his fortune in Western Australia, and within the space of twelve years, by reason or hard, unremitting labour, he has built up one of the most successful farming businesses in that fertile area, 200 miles from Perth, Quarendin Vale, Belka. What was once a stretch of 1,000 acres of rough forest land, obtained from the Australian Government, has now been converted into a wheat-growing farm, yielding satisfactory returns.
Having visited the recent Royal Show, Mr Waddell said the bulk of the farm machinery there displayed was not applicable to western Australia wheat farming conditions. Out there, farm appliances are manufactured on a larger scale, teams of five to six horses being employed as a rule on one implement. The harvesting machines, for instance, are built on altogether different lines, as only the heads of the grain are cut and harvested, the “straw” being left standing in the field to be used as fodder or burned.
HORSES PREFFERED
The farm tractors are not yet much in vogue on the large fields of this Western Australian State. Most farmers, chiefly on grounds of economy, pin their faith to horsepower. Personally, Mr Waddell prefers the Clydesdale horses, of which he owns 25, because of their power and activity.
While the disposal of the wheat is now free and independent, Australian farmers in Mr Waddell’s area have formed a voluntary co-operative wheat pool by which about 80 per cent, of the wheat produced is dealt with.
With regard to the labour question, Mr Waddell stated that no women are employed in field work. With so many labour-saving appliances now in use six men can work quite well a wheat farm of about 1,000 acres. One experienced man is required to handle a team of five or six horses engaged in field operations. Seldom does a farm hand require to work more than eight hours a day.
