Recollections from a Mildmay Nurse from the 1970s
Hi everyone
I was tidying up the info@mildmay.org inbox and came across an email from a former Mildmay nurse from 2017. I don't think anyone ever responded, so I wrote to her - Juliet Priest as she was back then, and she was really pleased to be back in touch with the Mildmay Family. She permitted me to add her recollections to the Staff Stories page on our website. So much was lost, misplaced, or put away when the NHS closed Mildmay in 1982, and we are slowly rebuilding our collective memory.
This is Juliet's Staff Stories page
And this is what it says:
Dear friends,
I've been quietly celebrating the fact that 40 years ago, I completed my training at Mildmay Mission Hospital, and I'm still going strong!
It was a wonderful training for me in more ways than nursing - I was a hippy converted to Jesus with very few practical or people skills. They were important formative years both as a Christian and a young woman. We had to lead a little morning and evening service on the wards each day and pray with patients before they went for surgery. How politically incorrect that would be today!
I have some great memories:
matron had a white poodle that went everywhere with her, including the ward rounds
the day the building was rocked by a gas explosion across the road. I was in charge of a ward on nights and thought a bomb had gone off in the basement - it was at the height of the Irish Troubles. The noise triggered a fit in one of the patients, but I couldn't get hold of help because the switchboard operator was across the road seeing what was going on!
I well remember Sister Eunice - it was interesting and lovely to read about her life story. She definitely was a little dynamo!
My maiden name was Priest, and in my set were Sheila Bishop and Barbara Monk. Our names were on our nurse's home doors and our rooms next door to each other - a very religious corridor!
I want to give thanks to God for that period in my life and also pray for God's blessing on all the staff and patients at Mildmay that you will continue to receive and share God's love.
With gratitude,
Juliet Ross
Julia also added:
I retired in September 2020 after 30 years of being a GP practice nurse (a job I adored!) and 46 years after qualifying as a nurse at Mildmay. I moved to our house in France and had three years of restoration. I loved being in Brittany, but I was really missing my daughter and my friends. I moved back to the UK only two weeks ago!