When doctors rattled tins to feed patients

YOUr recently published letter about hospitals and their food (Yorkshire Post, February 25) reminded me of my own hospital experience long before the National Health Service when in 1939 my appendix burst and I narrowly escaped death.

Coventry and Warwickshire Hospital was kept going by the floats of an annual Saturday Summer Carnival. As the huge procession wended its way through the crowded and traffic-free streets, nurses and doctors walked alongside rattling collecting tins at the crowd and shouting “Every penny helps”.

To bring out all the “peeping Toms” a local girl, selected after keen competition, appeared either on horseback or on one of the floats as Lady Godiva, and so city Puritans denounced the money raised as the “thirty pieces of silver” (Matthew 26, Verse 15).

Well, the silver helped to pay for a cooked midday meal for me during my three weeks in hospital, along with bread and butter and a cup of tea at breakfast (5.30am) and every evening, plus a good choice of hot drinks mid-morning and at night.

Visitors could bring food in to supplement this, but the kitchen (where all food was prepared) would only boil eggs pencilled with the patient’s name – some eggs were bigger and fresher than others.

One chap had spring onions brought in. They were immediately confiscated by the strict Ward Sister, who would stand no nonsense. “Sit up,” she would bark, as she passed by my bed. “How on earth do you suppose we can get all that poison out of your body if you keep lying down?” The man next to me died one night and, although not quite 13, I wondered if it would be my own turn next.

Male patients were known by their surnames. “Splendid, Hayward, splendid, splendid,” the doctor in charge of my case would roar, with a clap of his hands as he strode towards his next patient when I told him I was feeling better.

War was declared one month after I was discharged. Twenty months later, the hospital was destroyed in an April 1941 air raid, with heavy loss of life. I have often wondered since how many of the excellent nurses who did so well for me in the only illness of my life (so far) were among the casualties.

Barmy way to govern Europe

From: David Cook, Parkside Close, Cottingham, East Yorkshire.

VINCE Cable, recently arguing in favour of staying in the EU, suggested that Ukip’s policies range from the dangerous to the barmy.

If a private individual was uncertain which of two cities he wished to live in, even though they were 300 miles apart and in different countries, he would be considered unusual to say the least. If his solution to the problem was to live for a month in each and take all his valuables, at great expense, 12 times a year to his alternative accommodation, he would rightly be regarded as mad. Yet this is exactly what happens in the EU with its Parliament’s monthly travels from Brussels to Strasbourg and back – at a cost of some £93m annually. What could be more barmy than this?

Perhaps we should indeed be like Switzerland and Norway and prosper under our own management without any help from the EU. At least we would control our own borders.

From: Karl Sheridan, Selby Road, Holme on Spalding Moor, East Yorkshire.

ED Miliband’s dismissal of Ukip’s threat to the North (Yorkshire Post, February 23) just proves how both the Conservative 
and Labour politicians are 
out of touch with reality – 
with immigration and the bureaucracy of the EU being 
the issue that is foremost in people’s minds.

The open door policies that the EU have foisted on us are fine for other countries in the EU because they have a huge land mass, whereas the UK is a small island – let’s face it, even the Swiss are getting twitchy about immigration.

When will politicians realise that Great Britain is no longer the great world power that it once was? We no longer have the Commonwealth and over the last few years world influence has hit us hard as a nation.

Continually blaming it all on the last government is merely propaganda and it was just unfortunate that Labour were in power at the time, just like the current situation as regards the flooding that has come to roost under Conservative rule.

Hunt for hero’s resting place

From: Clare Chalmers, Summerhill Road, Saffron Walden, Essex.

I AM trying to find the grave of my uncle who was killed in the first battle of the Somme in 1916.

He lived in Leeds, and some time ago I was sent a cutting from (I think) your newspaper, reporting his death and showing a photograph of him. Unfortunately I’ve lost it.

My uncle’s name was Reginald Jones; on the 1901 Census his address was 4 Lucas Place; his father was John (or Joseph) Thornton Jones.

Beyond belief

From: Allan Davies, Heathfield Court, Grimsby.

UNTIL I read Sayeeda Warsi’s article (Yorkshire Post, February 22), I had not realised that David Cameron had appointed a Minister for Faith. It is about all he has left, for he is devoid of hope and bereft of charity.