RECALLING HER experience of delivering stillborn twin babies in the 1970s, one woman noted that she was never asked if she wanted to see her babies and that the nurses 'took them away very quickly.' She continued: I regretted that I didn’t ask to see them. I think they believed that what you didn't see … you wouldn’t miss them. A few days later the matron came down to see me and asked me to fill out applications for birth and death certificates. When I said I needed to make arrangements for the funeral the matron said, ‘Oh, don’t you know, there won't be any funeral.’ She told me that the babies had been disposed of. When I asked what did that mean, she said, ‘you don't want to know.’ Apparently I was one week gestation off what was considered ‘human life’……… a bit bizarre. [And] that was it. Later I did ask a nurse and was told that they put them in the hospital incinerator. It was a momentous day in the early 1990s, then, that the then-chaplain of t...
Newly constructed hospital 1939 with itas now-instantly recognisable art deco facade - Postwar boom - driven also by the clsing of private maternity hospitals in Perth and Fremantle p. 120 - Growth in buildings due to the Federal Government's postwar commitment to hospitals p. 123 - In the postwar period 'medical men' took chjarge p. 132-33 - the first hospital almoner appointed in 1955 p. 140 - immigrant mothers, housing, postnatal issues, adoption and home help. - twilight sleep was used until late 1950s p.150 - reduction in stillbirths due to Rh factor in 1945 p. 154 - advances in med tech, surgery and pharmacology p. 155 - changing cultural attitudes towards sex and marriage, the Pill led to a decline in babies available for adoption - led to social workers with more time on their hands By the early 1950s, the King Edward Memorial Hospital for Women had far outgrown its humble beginnings as a 20-bed unit. A number of building works had been commissioned, incl...