Ask The Midwife

[DaisyNonna]

Could make the basis of a really interesting social history syllabus

[ummmm]

That's what I thought. I'm not sure if Baths was under the impression he'd acted inappropriately towards young girls.

[Islay]

A young girl committed suicide in the 1970's and apparently named TB in her diaries. But nothing has ever been proved as it was JS show she was on.

[woofgang]

indeed horselady...and would she have checked?
I think one of the more subtle results of family planning clinics was that it was a wake up call to some GP’s who needed it about patient choice and confidentiality, especially for women. Apart from VD clinics (and I am not sure about them) and possibly A and E there weren’t routine services that you could go to as an alternative to the GP and be sure that your confidentiality would be respected. At the time, my experience of both family and college GP’s is that they did not view 18 year olds as adult and would have had no hesitation in passing confidential information on to parents or, in my case, the college authorities if they thought it was “in the patient's best interest” according to their view of the world!
Additionally, the power to make non clinical judgement about what they would or would not prescribe and who they would or would not prescribe to was broken. I also wonder whether this was the first example of the NHS successfully commissioning services from private agencies. (btw I wonder if the NHS paid the church for the services of then Nonnatans?)
As a sidebar, I remember being at a meeting of GP’s some years ago and the chair, himself a GP, saying that getting flu vacs from pharmacies would never catch on because “people trust their GP’s more” He said “It would be like going to Tesco’s”.....which is exactly what I did the year before last!

[woofgang]

Baths, no, I did not seek or expect to be groped by anybody without my explicit consent...looking back I don’t think anybody in my circle did. We wore the shortest of skirts and the tightest of tops but our rule was the same as that of the bunny club, look all you like but don’t touch. Touching without permission brought immediate swift and painful retribution.....but....and I mean this without criticism......we were college educated girls studying for a professional career. Our employment and preferment didn’t depend on being “nice” to anybody or putting up with anything. We didn’t live in in the hospitals we trained at and the profession we were training for (Occupational Therapy) even then emphasised choice and independence so I don’t think we were easy meat.

[horselady]

Oh yes, we certainly were groped at every opportunity. It was how things were in those days. We used to tell them where to get off, of course, but no-one would have taken a blind bit of notice if we complained about it.

[woofgang]

did you never haul off and thump anybody?

[Bathsheba]

@horselady.....I expect you weren't "college educated" either? I wasn't ;)

Baths
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[woofgang]

and that’s what makes it worse...what ever is said about the mores of the time...it was bullying and like all bullies, they knew how to pick their victims.

[horselady]

Not me Baths-good old secondary school girl!!

[Bathsheba]

Secondary Modern horselady? I can admit to passing 11+ and going to Grammar School, but that was pretty much it.....;)

Baths
x x