'Like a little baby heaven'

    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...

 Gravedigger memories here. - Post war under Matron Charlotte Latta the hospital's capacity doubled as well as dining rooms and quarters for the staff p. 50 - Agnes Walsh matron from 1923 to 1954.  - Most efforts on reducing the maternal death rate which remained alarmingly high p. 55 (in the 1920s and 1930s it was still as high as during Queen Victoria's early reign).  - The infant death rate, which had been comparatively lower than other states during the war, rose rapidly in the early 1920s p. 56 - an emphasis on antental care in public policy ' No one appreciates more than i do othe great importance of the child welfare movement in the interests of the state and the nation. They must realise that during the resent war there is an enormous wastage of man power and that loss could best be compensated by efforts to increase the inviolability of babies born and the fitness of those who survived.' p. 57 WA Public Health Comssionser James Everitt Atkinson 1917...

In 1909, some 400 members of 18 different organisations met in the Government House ballroom to discuss a proposed women's hospital 'for maternity cases'. It was a veritable who's who of Perth society, with  The fiercest debate was produced by the proposal that the hospital be for married and unmarried women; the Anglican Bishop protested that the 'delicate sensibilities' of newly-married women would be harmed by the presence of pregnant unmarried women in the shared ward. Calling the atmosphere at the meeting 'extremely sultry', contributor 'Egria' wrote shortly after in The Mirror that 'i f the married women require assistance at the hour of maternity, how much more do the unmarried women ? The latter are practically outcasts, and in addition to the suffering common to both—whether married or unmarried—the latter have the load of shame to carry, a much weightier proposition than that of - mere mo...