May 14, 2015
From the archives: Helen Forrester’s 1986 address to our members.
Helen Forester, best known as author of Twopence To Cross The Mersey, worked for PSS in our early days. A recent trip to the archive unearthed a speech she delivered to our Members some 50 years later in 1986- and she has a fascinating insight into our history.
“Today, I feel that my life has come full circle. It is truly strange to me, to find myself addressing your annual meeting. Fifty years ago- more than fifty- I was the Society’s office girl. A slip of a girl of fourteen- everybody’s dogsbody.I am afraid that today my talk will sound like a muffled voice from the bottom of the pile- like the tentative meow of an office cat.
When I received your kind invitation via Mr Currie, the first thing I did was to read your annual report. It was interesting to see that, though the bias of the work of the society had changed with the times slightly, you were still fulfilling your most important mandate, you are filling the cracks left by the welfare state and more importantly, being a good listener- which civil servants rarely are.
There are so few people left who will listen while you talk your troubles out, fewer still who will try to be impartial listeners. Yet people allowed to talk freely begin to see how to solve their own problems. As an office girl and filing clerk, I used to have to enter rooms where interviews were taking place, in order to find files of other clients pouring into the basement waiting room; and I remember so well the quiet attentiveness of both voluntary and paid staff, as they listened to the rambling stories poured into their ears.
There is no answer to many of life’s woes, they have to be endured They are rooted too firmly in tradition, in the political systems, the current myths and popular beliefs, the inadequacies of the characters involved or just in appalling bad luck. Talking to somebody sympathetic, however, can sometimes alleviate the pain of perhaps circumvent it.
One of the best things in Canada which I have seen of late- and I see that it is also happening in England- is the way in which chronically unemployed people (who have a lot to bear themselves) are volunteering to help the elderly, the sick and the physically and mentally handicapped. It is a movement which can be the salvation of the helper, giving him new dignity and standing in the community and is a wonderful aid to the helped.
I think it means that the ordinary people are beginning to face the reality that we are not just going through a depression which will pass, we are also going through an Industrial Revolution, where vast numbers of hands are mp longer needed in factories or on farms or in transport of mining- or offices- not even in original service industries. We have to find something other than the idea that a man is as good as his wage packet to make our lives meaningful. And until someone comes up with a better idea, there is a lot to be said for voluntary work in areas which the government is not willing to support.
One scheme which you are undertaking- help the terminally ill in their homes. I wish with all my heart had been available in Canada last year. Against all the customs of the country, I promised my sick husband that I would nurse him at home; he should die in his own place. Our doctors of many years standing deserted- they would not make house calls. The city managed to find me someone to do the washing etc after a fashion. A public nurse visited, but all she could do was cheer the patient up. North Americans simply cannot face the fact of death- they wrap it up, put it away in back wards somewhere in the hospitals. The hospice system hardly exists. Anybody who wants to die at home is crazy and those who look after them are plain nuts. The support of a society like yours would have been an incredible help. More strength to your service. And just while I am on the subject of dying, it is not just a matter of giving on the part of the nurse; the dying return something ineffable to their nurse, a great richness.
To review, when I was a little office girl, I had one advantage. I was working and contributing to the National Health System. I was, therefore, entitled to the care of a general practitioner. Had I been a house wife I would not have received this service. Women at home and children were not covered by the medical services. The result was that our waiting rooms in the Society were crowded, not only by half starved mothers, but with women in dire need of medical attentions, of dental help, of spectacles. They died early, because they ignored their sickness until it was too late, when they would go to the dreaded parish doctor or to a hospitals emergency department.
The society had an arrangement with the Dental Hospital whereby people could save up with the Society a few pennies at a time to get a set of dentures. But for most this was too expensive. People suffered the agonies of toothache, alleviating it with hot bread poultices of oil of cloves. It was common to see people with dreadfully swollen jaws from a septic tooth.
An indication of the enormous improvement in the standard of living in Britain, despite the huge unemployment, is the fact the crowds of people no longer stink to high heaven. The lack of water, soap and towels was so profound that my strongest memory is of the appalling smell of our crowded waiting rooms. You could cut it with a knife- the sickly smell of bug ridden, lice ridden, unwashed clothes, people with breath so bad it would shrivel a T.V advertisement for mouthwash.
Most of the women sitting patiently a whole morning in our waiting rooms would be wearing a shawl, instead of a coat. A shawl was something that for centuries they had crocheted themselves from a few pence worth of black wool. A coat cost real money. I have not seen a shawl in Liverpool for years.”
Helen Forrester-1986
*Photo from the 2015 stage production of ‘Twopence to Cross the Mersey’. Courtesy of The Epstein Theatre, Liverpool.