Back in 1973 I worked in the laundry at Cane Hill mental hospital for about tweleve weeks. I had just finished my A levels, so decided to while away the summer months working in the hospital which was only 1 mile or so from my parents house. Cane Hill often employed students like me but usually as porters. In my case, my grandfather, who was at that time a tinsmith at the hospital, got me the job. At the beginning of my work there, I felt like cursing him. I didn't mind the fact that the work was hard, it was the very unpleasant conditions that I found so awful. That's not all, in the hierachy of hospital workers, the laundry staff were at the bottom. Perhaps this was my grandfather's idea of a bit of fun - he was known for his practical jokes. Strange as it may seem though, I actually quite enjoyed the job as the weeks went on. There was a great sense of camaraderie and good humour among the laundry staff.

I now realise that this was a unique experience in all sorts of ways. This era predated much of the health and safety legislation we have grown up with over recent years. It predated the waiving of hospital Crown Immunity for Public Health Inspector visits. The laundry itself had equipment in service dating back to the early 20th century. And of course it predated "care in the community". When I saw the photgraphs on the internet recently taken of the laundry, particularly the ones that show what I am sure are the very same tumble dryers I operated, I just had to write about it.

I hope readers will find this account of interest, whether from an historical, social or simple curiosity perspective. I feel in a strange way that I owe it to the memory of those who worked at or were patients in the once great and terrible institution that, as the photos show, is now the sad, useless and lifeless hollow shell of Cane Hill hospital.

The photos brought back so many memories - the "foul laundry" area (that's what it was called and that's what it dealt with!), the incinerator where unwanted or misplaced items ended up, the scales for weighing a hundred weight (about 50kg) of dry sheets at a time prior to washing, the pressing room where several ladies, many of whom were Spanish and Portuguese, ironed and pressed all day long in the sweltering, steamy heat of those summer weeks.

Something that staggered me when I first set eyes on the laundry was the power transmission system used for some of the older laundry equipment. Large electric motors drove overhead shafts, from which belts looped down to the machines' drive systems. These were pre-war, as were the machines they drove. Most, if not all, of the equipment so driven were simple wash-only machines comprising perforated horizontal cylinders made of thick brass within massive cast iron outer cylinders measuring 2 or 3 metres in length. The laundry was a living museum with machines of many different types spanning many decades. It was a noisy and busy place. Motors whirred, steam hissed, belts clacked, water shooshed and people sweated.

All of work time, including tea breaks, was spent in the laundry building. It was almost an institution within an institution. Lunchtime was the only time we would venture out into the corridors to make our way to the canteen. It took a while to get used to these thoroughfares and was somewhat disturbing at first. They were always busy with hospital staff and patients alike going about their business and were well lit, bright and cheery, not the gloomy passages you might imagine in a Victorian hospital (they had just been repainted pleasant pastel colours). Some patients spent a lot of their time in these corridors and some would behave in strange ways. You soon got to predict encounters with such patients as you made your way along. One particular patient would spin as he walked, how he didn't fall over dizzy I do not know. He would stop passers-by to make a point about something or other that was on his mind. However, his speech was so rapid no-one could understand him. A smile, a nod, a polite "yes" by way of response and, satisfied, he would giddily set off again down the corridor to the next person. Other patients were not so extrovert. I remember one old fellow who paced up and down the same stretch of corridor, day after day. His gaze never moved from the floor and he would mumble the same disturbed memories to himself, over and over. He was always there when we went to lunch and still there when we returned. I guess he was there for hours at a time. I wonder what happened to him after hospital closure.

Another patient I clearly remember was a very lucid old lady. She told me that she had been sent to Cane Hill many years before because she had had an illegitimate child. She said she was quite happy there and recognised that she had bcome institutionalised, this was where her friends were. Clearly, I cannot vouch for the accuracy of the reason for her being there, but this sort of terrible treatment did happen to young women in the early part of the twentieth century.

I remember it said that many years before, the mother of someone famous had been commited to Cane Hill. The problem is, though, I now have doubts about the story's validity - I had thought it was Charles Dickens mother but, now I know the date the hospital opened, I cannot imagine that she was still alive at that time. I may have misremembered names: it may instead have been Charlie Chaplin's mother. Perhaps someone out there can put the record straight, even if it is to confim that the story I heard was simply part of Cane Hill folklore.

During my work there I never heard of anyone else either famous or connected with fame having been committed to Cane Hill, apart from one that is. A rumour went round that one of the patients who worked in the laundry was Michael Cane's brother. As you can imagine, the place was full of all sorts of rumours and gossip. I didn't take this one seriously, but I never forgot it. I was absolutely stunned when Sir Michael revealed during a recent interview with Michael Parkinson that he did once have a half-brother who had been a patient at the hospital. However, I cannot verify whether or not he was this person.

The laundry employed a few patients who were able to carry out some of the less demanding tasks. A particular incident I remember involved a man who operated one of the industry scale spin dryers (not, incidentally, Michael Cane's supposed brother). This man kept himself to himself and got on quietly with his work. However, one morning on arrival at the laundry, I was alarmed to see a lot of blood and broken glass on the ground outside. Several laundry windows had been smashed. We soon learnt what had happened. The spin-dryer man had apparently been barred from the laundry because he had turned up drunk (incredible as it may seem, cider was available to patients from the hospital shop - this is my recollection, perhaps someone out there can corroborate this). He literally flipped, and the next morning, before the laundry was open for work, he took out his retribution on the windows, punching them through with his bare hands. He had cut himself badly and had lost a lot of blood, but he was beyond reason to stop. It was only the restraining action of the fireman, who heard and investigated the commotion, that prevented further serious harm to himself. We did not see the spin-dryer man for a few weeks after this. The rumours were rife, but the "word on the street" was that he had been put into a padded cell. I have no evidence that this was so, but it seemed to be common knowledge that padded cells were still in use. Can anyone else add anything? I'd also like to know if straight jackets were still in use at that time.

The laundry had more than its fair share of pests. The usual suspects were fleas and cockroaches. On one occasion the ladies who operated the sheet press were being bitten on their legs so the pest controllers came in to spray their work area. Cockroaches were common and were to be found, naturally, where there was plentiful food. Deliveries of new kitchen provisions were evidenced by displacd cockroaches scuttling along the surrounding corridors. I even saw one run over the food servery in the canteen while queueing for lunch. It did not put me off my lunch (the canteen food was actually rather good). These horrid insects were something you had to get used to when working in the laundry. We adopted measures to curb their population growth. Socks were separated from other items and put into a large wicker-work basket. This took about three days to fill. Cockroaches seemed to congregate inside. It would take two of us to get the socks ready for washing, one to lift the basket and to drop it onto the floor and the other to swill the evicted cockroaches down the drain with lashings of disinfectant. Lovely!

I operated the tumble driers that can be seen in one of the pictures of the laundry on this website. In 1973 there were five machines altogether in a row, three of them being rather ancient. Their exhausts, which were virtually at ground level, had been recently modified to reduce the amount of clothes fibres being put into the atmosphere. A construction made out of angle iron and asbestos sheet(!) had been built to enclose all five drier outlet ducts in the yard outside. The enclosure was about a metre high, a metre deep and six metres long. The front face had a wire mesh screen running along its length to catch the fibres. An access hatch was fitted to the side. This was not a good design. The screen would completely block within half an hour which meant that when I was emptying a machine, the hot air, and it could be very hot, from the other working machines would find the path of least resistance which was, very unpleasantly, through the open machine and into my face. However, not to be outdone, I found a neat way to deal with this problem. A nearby fire hose (in fact the one to be seen in the photo of the tumble driers, the washing machine in front wasn't there then). I would use this to wash the fibres off the screen every half hour. Worked a treat. When the fireman saw what I was doing, he thought differently. He forbad me from what he described as abusing fire emergency equipment, suggesting that I crawl through the hatch with a broom and brush the fibres off the screen from the inside (I had already established that a broom would not work from the outside). This was reminiscent of sending children up chimneys! I informed him that it was physically impossible to do as he suggested since the stone floor in the enclosure was hot enough to fry eggs on. I continued as before and, to his credit, he turned a blind eye.

Soon after this encounter, the fireman gave instruction to the laundry workers on fire drill and use of equipment. He told us that the hose, which was the only one in the laundry, covered the whole building. I questioned this, having become very familiar with its workings. I was certain it was not long enough. We debated this point. Being a somewhat smug and arrogant eighteen year old, I insisted I was right and that something should be done about it. Exasperated, the fireman asked me to reel out the hose to the far end of the laundry. I happily obliged and, sure enough, it stopped way short and then someone opened the valve for a bit of a laugh. Well, that proved once and for all that the hose gave inadequate coverage! The next morning, a brand new pair of fire bukets turned up at the far end of the building.

A most bizzare incident happened one day. The man who worked in the foul laundry section (only one person worked there) emerged from the filth with a false lower-leg in his hand. He asked the foreman what he should do with it. "Where did you find it?" the foreman asked. "It fell out of a pair of jeans when I was sorting out the washing". "Hmm", thought the foreman, "chuck it in the incinerator, the owner's probably dead!". So, up in smoke it went. We never heard anything more; no-one came looking for the leg, so the foremans asessment was probably correct!

Death was never far away from the laundry, literally. I passed the mortuary every day on my way to and from work. Usually the doors were shut, but on occasion they were open, allowing the odd glimpse of the rows of refridgerated storage cabinets. Thankfully, I did not see any of the those "passing through". What I did see though were the mortuary sheets. The laundry received these as special consignments. It was all a bit weird really - name tags were often to be found with them. You could always tell the mortuary sheets from the others. They were the only ones that were both brilliant white and starched.

At one point, the pressure to get washing processed became too great. The place was over-stretched, there were not enough machines to cope with the backlog. The problem was that an increasingly large pile of nylon bags containing sometimes considerably soiled washing was mounting. Porters would bring them from the wards and throw them onto the exising pile in the laundry drop-of room. They they would then be collected by laundry workers on a "last in, first out" basis. This went on for weeks, the backlog building up further and further. The foreman announced that he wanted staff to work a couple of Saturdays to deal with the situation. This was not a nice task. In order to handle such festering washing, we filled trolleys with water liberally laced with disinfectant and bleach. The bags were thrown into these to soak for several hours before being opened.

One of the washing machines was particular fun. It was situated opposite the tumble driers (out of view on the website photos). This machine was probably mid-60s vintage, stood over two metres tall and had a large horizontal drum, perhaps 1.2 metres in diameter, split into 3 compartments. A similar arrangement can be seen in in the tumble-drier photo which shows a more modern washing machine with its open door. Incidentally, there was also one of this type in the laundry at the time I was there. It had a clever hydraulic self-balancing system that kept it vibration free during the spin-dry phase. These were big machines with large drums and heavy wash loads, many times greater than those of the domestic versions.

The 60s model in question, however, was not as sophisticated as the later type. It did not have a self-balancing system, but did sit on rubber mounts to absorb vibration. It was also fitted with a motor cut-out device to prevent excessive motion, the spin dry stage being the most likely time for such a thing to happen. Now, most people have experienced their domestic machine at some time "walking" across the floor during spin cycle. That can happen with something like ten pounds (about 5kg) of dry washing which of course weighs several times more when wet. Imagine what can happen with three hunderweight of dry washing, this being about 150kg, and with a disconnected cut-out! The machine often used to bounce several centimetres on its mountings and made a fearful racket as it wound itself up to full speed. Everyone would retire to a safe distance and watch the unfolding drama. There would be a communal sigh of relief once the spin finished. Luckily no serious failure occurred while I was there, although once the water supply hose flew off under the violent shaking, spraying water everywhere. It made a welcome break fom the usual routine!

I think I am able to correct Simon with his guess at to what the scales were for in one of the photos. They were used for weighing a hundreweight at a time of sheets into tall trolleys for loading into each compartment this particular machine. The vibration problems mentioned above were due to something other than sheets ending up in the washing. All it took to create havoc was a single, rogue jersey which could absorb much more water than the sheets. As I think back, it seems incredible that a full wash load was three hundredweights. I am sure that these were the weights used, but I would be very grateful if someone could confirm my memory on this one.

That is about it as far as my laundry memories go. I hope that it might spark other memories and I shall keep track of the website for further news and stories. Maybe one day someone will write a book on Cane Hill, its history and people. There is a lot to go at.

Chris Tombs
January 2004

Memories Of Cane Hill

The First Day
It was December 1964 and I had been accepted as an Assistant Nurse at Cane Hill. My friend K and I planned to travel the world and thought that we might be able to save a bit if we ‘lived in’ at the hospital. The good news was that the salary had just been increased by 10 shillings (50p) per week … the bad news was that the cost of board and lodging had been increased by the same amount.

Not that there was going to be a lot of financial slack in the first place. The salary, after board and lodgings, tax etc. came to the princely sum of £16 per month. The 6 day shifts alternated weekly between ‘earlies’ and ‘lates’. Earlies involved 5 days from 7.00am to 2.30pm, plus one ‘long day’ of 7.00am to 5.30pm. Lates meant 5 days from 1.30pm to 9.00pm, plus a long day. The one day off in the 48 hour working week was staggered throughout a 7 week cycle. So on the first week you had Sunday off, the next week Monday off, the following week Tuesday and so on. This meant that you had the luxury of a weekend off once every 7 weeks. Depending on which shift you were on, weekends were either ‘short’ – 9.00pm Friday to 7.00am Monday or ‘long’ – 2.30pm Friday to 1.30pm Monday. As the mathematically astute amongst you will see, this meant the luxury of a long weekend once every 14 weeks.

So here I was, settled into my room in the Garden House (a temporary measure until the new Male Nurses’ Hostel was completed) and now making my way through the dark towards Rossetti Ward ready for my first early shift. I was pleased at this first placement. Rossetti was the medical ward … a mini 27 bed hospital within the 1600 bed main hospital. This was going to be more like ‘real’ nursing.

Arriving at the ward I was swiftly issued with a ‘white’ coat (new Assistants and 1st year Students frequently had to make do with cast offs from the more senior staff). Fortunately this coat only had a few stains on it and so there I was, full of the ‘Florence Nightingales’ and ready to help my fellow man. Fellow ‘man’ being apposite as, in the 1960s, the hospital was still firmly divided into Male and Female sides … and ne’er the twain would meet (except at the weekly dance).

The Staff Nurse pointed to a bed occupied by an elderly man and told me to help him wash and dress ready for breakfast. No problem, I gently woke him and asked whether he was ready to rise. He smiled pleasantly and started to ease his way up to a sitting position … he was fairly mobile, this was going to be easier than I thought. Then it hit me. I lifted a corner of the sheet and discovered that he was doubly incontinent. Worse still, he had smeared faeces almost everywhere with his hands. Where did one start when confronted with such a disaster area? Some time (and a soggy experience in the shower) later I had managed to get him clean, dressed and ready for his breakfast. I was certainly learning my new profession from the bottom up!

Once the patients had eaten, all the beds were made and the whole ward had been dusted and polished it was time for staff breakfasts. After the experience with my first patient it seemed appropriate that breakfast was sausages.

Later the Staff Nurse took me to one side and gave me the fundamental advice that has served me well ever since … “Never tell someone that you care if you leave them sitting in shitty trousers”.

Management, Uniforms and Discipline
In the mid-1960s National Service (in the armed forces) had only ended a few years earlier and many people over the age of 40 had been actively involved in World War 2. Therefore many at management level were ex-service personnel and, all too often, expected to be able to control their staff with the iron fist of military discipline.

This was very much the case at Cane Hill as there had bee a long tradition of recruiting ex-Guardsmen when they were demobbed at the nearby Caterham Guards Depot. They left the army, marched out of the gates and were promptly employed (mainly) at Cane Hill but also at the nearby Netherne or St Lawrence’s hospitals.

At the time I started at Cane Hill the Deputy Chief Male Nurse, several of the Assistant Chief Male Nurses, many of the Charge Nurses, Staff Nurses and Nursing Assistants were ex-Guardsmen. Discipline was a major pre-occupation for many of these men and the length of one’s hair or the colour of one’s shirt was of far greater importance than one’s ability to relate to the patients.

All male staff were issued with and had to wear a uniform consisting of a gray three piece suit. The suits were made by the hospital tailors who, after measuring virtually every part of one’s body, produced the suits. From the same set of measurements, they occasionally managed to create a suit where the jacket was too tight whilst the waistcoat was too large. Nearly everyone had to have alterations made and some of the more style conscious (and affluent) took their suit to outside tailors to ensure a decent fit. With the suit we had to wear (and supply at our own cost) white shirts, a black tie, black socks and shoes. Hair had to be cut so that it cleared the collar of the shirt.

Once on the ward we removed the jacket and donned a white coat. In theory two coats were supplied to all staff each week, but there were rarely enough to go around. We always tried to keep a clean one for Sunday when patient’s visitors were allowed. White coats had to be fully buttoned up (an undone white coat was the privilege of the doctors) and we each had our own supply of buttons. These were separate from the coat and fastened through eye-holes with a small split-ring. Buttons always seemed to be as rare as hen’s teeth and were fiercely guarded.

One of my colleagues was a fanatical Liverpool FC supporter and was frequently in trouble for his habit of wearing a red and white striped shirt or red socks when there was a particularly important Liverpool football match. My main transgressions were about the length of my hair … what they would have made of the 18 inch long ponytail that I had in later years beggars belief.

Discipline was strict especially concerning time-keeping. Of course this only applied to when you started a shift … never when you finished. In my second year I was living outside the hospital and used to travel in on my motorbike. One winter’s day I had struggled through a blizzard and heavy snow drifts to be on time for my early (7.00am) shift. I arrived at Zachary ward at 5 minutes past 7.00am and was promptly told by the Charge Nurse to report to the Deputy Chief Male Nurse after breakfast. He kept me waiting for the best part of an hour before dressing me down for my lateness. So my colleagues had been one nurse short for an hour during the busy morning … all because of 5 minutes!

On another occasion I was up in front of the Chief Male Nurse for damaging Hospital property. Well, perhaps I should put that in context …

All the nurses received training in fire precautions and the male nurses were trained in basic fire fighting. This was due to the fact that we could get to a fire long before the nearest Fire Engine, which had to come from Purley. Whenever the alarm went any male nurses who could be spared ran to the fire station. There, shown on an indicator board, we discovered the location of the fire and the first group to arrive would take the two wheeled hand cart loaded with extinguishers and rescue equipment (it was like an old Boy Scout’s cart – two grabbed the cross bar handles and the rest pushed). The last to arrive would follow on with an identical cart which held the hoses. Mostly they were false alarms and we would arrive at a ward, out of breath but with the adrenaline pumping, only to discover that a patient had hit the fire alarm in anger or confusion.

However, one day we arrived to discover that the alarm had been set off in the Male Nurses Hostel. Along with the others who had arrived first I set out with the first cart. When we arrived we learned that the fire had been caused by a lighted cigarette end which had gone down the garbage chute from the first floor and set light to the rubber dustbins which were accessed, from the outside, through pine louvered doors on the ground floor. By now the fire was starting to spread to the slats of the door … which we discovered was locked … and only the maintenance staff had a key. As the flames were now quite strong it seemed that there was no time to lose and two of us grabbed axes from the cart and smashed in the blazing door. Others followed and soon managed to put the fire out with extinguishers. We were pretty upbeat about the way we had handled a fire that threatened to burn down the fairly new hostel.

We didn’t expect praise or reward. After all we were only doing what we were trained to do. What we certainly didn’t expect was for my fellow axe wielding colleague and I to be hauled up in front of the Chief Male Nurse and charged with ‘damaging hospital property’ – the louvered doors which were nearly burnt through when we attacked them! It took a threat, from our union, that nursing staff would no longer attend fire alarms before the Chief backed down.

Discipline at Cane Hill was a strange thing … arbitrary and, all too often, based on whether your face fitted. I think, on balance, that I am fairly proud that mine never really fitted in. I took delight in the Chief having to announce my name, through somewhat gritted teeth, when I was presented with a book prize for coming top in the Intermediate exams at the end of the first year. By the end of my third year I resigned. As a copy of the resignation form went to the Royal College of Nursing I was put under a bit of pressure to amend my resignation form so that it gave a reason such as ‘Health’ or ‘Personal Reasons’. But it stayed as I had written it … ‘An inability to work within a Victorian System’.

The Male Student Nurses Hostel
After my first month as a nursing assistant I decided that I wanted to pursue a career in mental health. K, the friend with whom I entered into this, had decided that it was not for him and left. (We never did manage to make our way around the world). Still, I must have been doing something right because I was accepted as a student and found myself allocated a room in the new hostel.

The 18 bed hostel opened in early 1965. Intended mainly for student nurses there were also a few nursing assistants and we were overseen by a resident staff nurse. Jim, our ‘guardian’ staff nurse, was a large, rumbustious Irishman and a great fan of the Guinness. Far from curbing our excesses, he seemed to thoroughly enjoy participating in them!

Female nurses were accommodated in the original large Nurse’s Home (always referred to as The Virgins’ Retreat). Here they were fiercely guarded by a resident Sister who had a room next to the only entrance and who was rumoured to be able to hear a male footstep at a thousand paces. For the romantically inclined one of the best options was the comparative privacy and comfort of the abandoned greenhouses near the Garden House. I was reliably informed that it could be a tad chilly in mid-winter … I, of course, could not comment on this.

There was a connecting corridor between the old (female) accommodation and the new (male) hostel – but this was kept firmly locked. To the north of this corridor, open to the male side only, was a recreation room. On a few occasions we were permitted to invite female guests for a dance. Music was usually on the record player but, on one occasion, was provided by a band that featured one of the male students on bass guitar. Propriety was ensured by the all-seeing presence of the resident Sister.

One instance highlights just how rigidly separate management tried to keep the sexes. Two female students were waiting outside the male hostel for a couple of lads to get ready to go down to the Red Lion for a lunchtime drink. The weather was thundery and, during a particularly heavy downpour, they stepped just inside the hallway to avoid getting soaked. They were seen there by the hostel housekeeper and reported. Despite the fact that it was mid-day; they were dressed in soaking rainwear and were no further than a yard or so into the very public hallway, they were both dismissed. These two Greek girls had traveled across Europe at their own expense to train in a job that few British people were prepared to undertake, only to be sacked over such an unbelievably minor infringement.

Not that those of us who lived in the hostel could come and go as we wished. The door was always locked at midnight. All the windows on the ground floor were chocked so that they would only open a few inches. The fire door was kept locked! In theory we could apply to the Night Superintendent for a late pass. However, this required him to come over from the main hostel to unlock the door and was not something that could be done too often if you wanted to stay on the right side of the Night Super.

Naturally, we considered that if we were adult enough for the responsibilities of the job, we were mature enough to have a front door key. Apart from that the situation put us in a dangerous position should there be a fire at night. Several meetings between the union and the Chief Male Nurse resulted in a solution … a key was placed in a glass fronted box in the hall and this could be smashed to access the key in an emergency!

Of course rules are only there to be broken and we had our own way of getting in and out after midnight, despite all the red tape. There was a rudimentary and easily climbed porch over the front door. The room over the door was occupied by a fairly studious guy named George who tended to play a lot of chess on his own and to have early nights. Being on the first floor he also had that most important factor - a window that opened fully. So, especially at weekends, there would be a steady stream of late-night revelers climbing the porch and going in through George’s window with a cheery “Goodnight George”. Fortunately for us George was a forgiving sort of person who never really seemed to mind his nocturnal visitors.

After 6 months or so it was time for the hostel to have its official opening. Somehow they had talked Princes Alexandra into performing the opening ceremony. The hostel residents were told that we had to ensure the place was spotless; that all our rooms were immaculate and vacated as the (minor) royal personage would be shown one of our rooms (and obviously could not be allowed to come face to face with such a low form of life as a student nurse). Surrounded by higher management and the upper echelons of the nursing hierarchy, Princess Alexandra was given to brief guided tour. Much to the chagrin of the assembled dignitaries the room chosen for her to look into just happened to contain the snoring, sleeping form of its occupant ... who had been on nights and, as a fervent republican, later explained was “b*gg*r*d if he was going to lose any sleep for her!”

Life in the hostel during the mid 1960s was pretty good. For many students it was their first time away from home and some managed to kick over the traces in a most convincing manner. We worked hard and certainly made sure that we played just as hard. Initially we had to make it up and down the mile long drive to the Red Lion in Coulsdon. Very few of us could afford cars but the affluent few who did would often ferry a crowd up or down the drive ... I even managed to transport a few at a time on the back of my old BSA motorcycle. A year or so after I started at Cane Hill the Social Club gained its own clubroom next to the bowling green. The drinks were comparatively cheap and we were frequently found to be ‘drunk in charge of a bowling ball’. Unfortunately the swimming pool, shown on later maps, had not been built during my time at Cane Hill.

During one of the more hectic parties held at the hostel one of the students, who had been part of a drag act in the northern clubs, gave us a display of his show-stopping routine. Word of this got to the bosses and within a few days everyone living in the hostel was brought before the Chief Male Nurse. He only had one question for each of us … “Are you a queer?”. To most people today this would seem to be homophobic and a real intrusion into our privacy, but, to put it in context, homosexuality was still illegal at this time (it was only made legal in the UK in 1967). My response that ‘I was happy to prove my heterosexuality with any female of his choice’ was deemed to be insolent and uncalled for … you just can’t please some people!

Ray
January 2007

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