Sample article - issue 93
In the 1930s, Mr Hopewell, the head of a local rich and respected family in Lincoln Street, had pneumonia. When his crisis approached, they spread tree bark on the cobble stones on the road. in order to deaden the sounds of the cart wheels and the clip clop of horses' hooves outside his sick room.
We ordinary folk, however, in times of serious sickness, contributed to our patient’s well being by replacing the galvanised dustbin lids quietly and avoided dropping enamel buckets on the ground. We were as quiet as possible and refrained from chatting in loud voices under the bedroom window.
Before I left school at the age of fourteen, in 1937, I had had endless coughs and colds. I also had had boils, yellow jaundice, sunstroke (in Basford!) scarlet fever, measles, tonsillitis, sinusitis, some seriously contagious disease and possibly diphtheria.
Later, all our family of five except me had T.B, (tuberculosis) - but, polio and infantile paralysis thankfully passed us by. As far as I know both rich and the poor shared the same illnesses and received the same medicines, such as they were.
The only 'medicines' I recall are, brimstone and treacle, sulphur, honey and lemon, Zacharia Green's Salve, Febrissum for fevers, senna for bowels, camomile, liquorice and ‘two penn’th of four ha'p’th', which we got from Marlow's the herbalist on Lincoln Street. There was also butter and sugar, bread poultices, and kaolin.
Febrissum was a patent medicine from my 'Aunt Lucy's shop at the top of Westgate. According to my brother, this cost a shilling, which was a lot of money, and Boots the chemist wanted to buy the recipe for £50. Aunt Lucy wouldn’t sell it, but I wonder if its equivalent is around today? Penicillin was still to come.
If you could afford them, there were Bile Beans and, in case you forgot about them, a bi-plane would occasionally fly overhead trailing a banner declaring: "Bile Beans nightly keep you fit." Then there were Doctor Pinkham’s Pink Pills for Pale People.
Poor as we were, I had a piece of 'steak' rubbed onto a persistent stye and the meat was then buried in the garden. It did me no good, but a neighbour's dog became very friendly with us. Superstition and old fashioned remedies were forever in contention!
The Reverend A.E.Beedom preached a sermon at David Lane Chapel, I don't recall what it was about but he illustrated it with an experience from Otley in Yorkshire. A farmer had a remarkable substance, with healing properties.
Every Good Friday his wife would bake hot cross buns, as did many people before they invented Sainsbury's, but she would put several buns in the rafters of their farmhouse. The following Good Friday she would take the buns down again, but now they were covered in mould which she would spread on cuts or injuries to prevent infection! Alexander Flemming discovered the value of Penicillin in 1928 .but not until 1940 did it become available!
Somewhere near my 'Aunt Lucy's shop, at the top of Westgate, there used to be an old woman, who, I was told, without the help of medicines, cured whooping cough - a killer complaint in those days. They said that it was a "gift" and if she charged for the cure, she would loose her "gift". She never passed on the secrets to her cures and the "gift" died with her.
