The day in question was July 5, 1948. A current BBC mini-series based on the memoirs of a woman about a decade later is showing just how significant it was.
In 1942 William Beveridge had issued his seminal "Report on Social Insurance and Allied Services" that formed the foundations of the modern British welfare state. (Incidentally, Beveridge, although influential in Labour Party thinking, was not a Socialist but was elected as a Liberal MP in 1944. After being enobled he eventually became leader of the Liberal group in the House of Lords)
In his report, Beveridge identified the "Five Giants" of deprivation that had to be tackled; Want, Squalor, Ignorance, Disease and Idleness.
The main tool to tackle "Disease", the National Health Service, started on the Appointed Day on July 5, 1948. The BBC series is based on the first book of a trilogy byJennifer Worth, nee Lee: "Call The Midwife" It recounts the start of her career as a midwife in the impoverished East End of London in the late 1950s where she was attached to a community base run by a group of Anglican nuns.
The area around the London docks had always been the poorest area of the city (and some parts remain so.) While employment had improved with the docks thriving, although they were to close in the next decade, when Jenny Lee arrived poverty and squalor were still rife:
The area still bore the scars of the Second World War: one in four houses had been demolished, and the overcrowding — she often found 12 people living in two rooms — was appalling. Water came from standpipes and a telephone was an unthinkable luxury. Families, many of whose older members had experienced the workhouse, eked out a miserable living in conditions of abject squalor.
Jennifer’s job was to deal with some of the 50 per cent of babies born at home, often by gaslight and with the aid of little more than water heated in the “copper”, towels and words of encouragement. “There was no law, no lighting, bedbugs and fleas”, she recalled. “It was a hidden place, not written about at all.”
Yesterday's second episode, in a minor storyline, showed just how much difference the NHS had made. That is apart from the most obvious that the community was no longer dependent on nuns and charity but had the services of these midwives for home births.
One of Jenny's expectant mothers had suffered rickets as a child. The doctor at the pre-natal clinic had to explain (I suspect for the benefit of the audience as much as the midwife's) that this was a vitamin D deficiency disease that had been eliminated by vitamin supplements for children provided by the NHS. In the mother's case this had resulted in bone deformity which meant she had to use leg calipers and crutches and her pelvis was misshapen. She remarried in the year before the episode was set but had been widowed in WWII.
The woman had had four pregnancies before the NHS began. All ended in a still birth because she was unable to deliver naturally and unable to afford or access anything other than the administrations of the nuns. As a result of the experience, she was distraught at the prospect of yet another painful and tragic end to her pregnancy. Her distress was relieved when she was told it was possible to have her new baby in hospital (obviously by caesarian section). In a voiceover postscript at the end we were told that was indeed what had happened and the baby was born healthy and well.
In the previous episode, a woman carrying her 25th baby (she was the Spanish woman referred to in the Telegraphy obituary) fell and was in a coma when she started to deliver when 30 weeks pregnant. Although the midwife assumed the baby was not viable that premature, it survived and was tended for at home by the mother with their support. She could have had the baby taken into hospital for specialist care - again never possible before the NHS.
The sub-plot that week involved a difficult delivery with a torn afterbirth resulting in severe bleeding. Prior to the NHS, there would have been no possibility of getting the mother to hospital in time and little likelihood of affording the care anyway. Instead, she had the services of a "flying squad" of doctors set up to deal with just such emergencies by the local NHS hospital.
Writing this diary set me back to thinking about how the NHS had affected me in that period and before. I can just about remember the taste of the thickened and fortified NHS orange juice provided free to all young children. I also remember the serious ankle injury I got in an accident with (my sister riding) a bike and the emergency appendectomy I had, about 4 and 5 years before the series is set. How much of that instay in hospital and the subsequent physiotherapy following the accident would my fairly poor working parents have been able to afford without the NHS providing it free?
Writing the diary also reminded me I had to get a repeat prescription for my blood pressure meds so I broke off earlier to log on to my local doctor's web site to order them - the office is about 250 metres from home but it saves the hassle of having the receptionist taking my details and ticking the same option boxes. I'll wait to Wednesday to give plenty of time for the prescription to be taken to the local pharmacist to fill and then I'll go and collect them (at no charge).
Yes, there can be a lot wrong and a lot of hassles getting some NHS treatments but, looking back at the progress since the inception; I cannot help thinking of the millions who have had better, healthier and longer lives since that day.