What was life like before the NHS?

[Tatami]

The NHS turned 75 yesterday. It got me thinking about what was life like before the NHS. I'm most interested in the 1920s and 30s, when my Grandmothers would have been born. Would my Great-Grandmothers and their generation most likely have given birth at home, paid a midwife or just relied on the wisdom of a relative or friend? They weren't at all wealthy. Were working men given priority for any free or charitable care? Is there a good book or any records where I can find out more? Thank you.

I remember my granny telling me about a woman that had difficulties in childbirth and the doctor refused to attend because it was such a rough area ☹️

My grandmother died from sepsis after giving birth at home to my uncle.
My uncle died at 3 weeks.
This was in 1934.

My mum was born before the war. She remembers her mum not being able to afford medicine for her dying father. They looked after him at home for many months. They had a district nurse visit but I think this was funded through the local chapel.

These stories are why we must protect the NHS. Chronically underfunded for years now, it's the difference between life and death for millions, especially women.

Thank you all for taking the time to reply and especially to those of you who shared your personal family memories. What difficult, tragic and unequal times and all on the cusp of living memory. I will read The Citadel and also the memoirs of Harry Leslie Smith.

I agree with the PP who was disappointed I asked the question. I am too. It was someting that was never covered at school and I'm sure I've taken the NHS totally for granted ever since. The 75 anniversary was a trigger for discussion with work colleagues on what went before. I still am glad I asked.

It isn't underfunded. It's brilliant at wasting money

Take it from me after 40 years service, the last 10 in senior management

I also met many people through my career in healthcare who told me about how fearful it was not being able to afford healthcare and how wonderful it was getting help. Those in their 70’s and 80’s in the 1990’s.

We need better management and better social care. We need promote healthy living and community resources. The NHS has got more complex but with worse outcomes in my opinion.

Not the NHS but a couple of years back a friend in America who couldn't afford medical insurance broke her ankle.
She was taken to hospital and x-rayed, but when they found she couldn't afford anything more they wound a bandage round her ankle and sent her home telling her not to walk on it for at least 6 weeks, or she'd end up permanently disabled. She lives alone and they left her outside her house and she had to crawl up the steps just to get into her house.
Just the debt from that was huge and they chased her to make sure she paid. Thankfully for her, some of her friends heard and clubbed together to pay, and then paid for her ankle to be properly set and a walking boot.

That's the reality of paying medicine even today.

My father and his twin sister were born prematurely at home in 1918.Neither o them were expected to live as were very small.They were put into the same cot with a hot water bottle wrapped in a blanket and my grandmother was told they would not be there the following day. Both survived to old age and bought up families
My mother at two years old in 1922 needed her tonsils removed. My grandparents put together what money they had to have this done in a local hospital.They took her there in the morning, and as it would have cost them more money for her to be kept in overnight, were told to come back in the afternoon and to bring a blanket.My grandfather returned with the blanket, she was wrapped in it and he carried her home on the bus.
My maternal grandmother and her mother my great grandmother were latter day doulas. They were part of a team of what was called local handywomen. They went out to help at childbirths sometimes having to act as midwives as well.My grandmother was called out to assist a relative who it turned out was having a difficult labour.The GP had to be called in the end, my grandma said he dragged the baby out with forceps and threw her on the end of the bed as she was not breathing, declaring this child is beyond hope.Another lady who was helping picked the baby up and revived her by dropping a bit of brandy into her mouth.Both the mother and baby managed to survive.
My mother can remember people going to the local chemist for ''a drop of something''when their throats were sore as it was cheaper than the doctor.
In 1969 both my DS1 and myself nearly died at his birth which was in hospital by EMCS.I had what was called obstructed labour when he went into transverse lie and my uterus was beginning to mould itself around him. If it had been 30 years earlier and I was at home with no NHS neither of us would be here now.

My great aunt who is in her 90's was born very early and not expected to survive. Her mum, when she was alive, told me how she'd arrived quickly and been swaddled, and popped under the boiler in the kitchen to keep her warm and fed with a pipette of milk regularly. There were 5 other little ones so they had to just hope the baby survived. She did, but sadly had disabilities.
Today she'd have had early intervention and been in hospital not under the boiler!

Can you remember the name? I’d be interested to look this up.

While we’re imparting anecdotes - my great grandmother never got over the death of her husband. He had some kind of heart attack in his late thirties. They couldn’t afford the doctor and he died, leaving her with three children and no income.

Babies died before they saw their first birthday a lot.

It is the infant mortality rate that brings down the average life expectancy when looking at history.

People have lived into their 70’s, 80’s etc at every point in recorded history, it was just a lot more challenging to survive one’s first year, pre-NHS.

Ah, and my other great grandmother was pregnant with 14 children in total - only 9 survived childhood. 1920s/1930s.

Bleak, very bleak.

My mum, born 1923, trained as a radiographer preNHS and worked in private practice with a radiologist friend. She switched to NHS employment as soon as it was possible and was a great advocate for 'free at the point of use' all the rest of her life.

She came from a good family who were pretty wealthy, so calling for a doctor wasn't a problem for them. She was just appalled at the inequality; one child contracts an illness and dies and one contracts the same illness and survives simply because of the difference in ability to pay. It's just not right.

*Trigger warning: baby loss, stillbirth, twins.

My nana was born at home in the mid 20's. She was a twin, but her brother was sadly stillborn.

They were extremely poor and couldn't afford a proper burial. The 'midwife' who attended the birth took the baby and placed him on the back of the fire. Apparently this was the done thing back then in those circumstances.

As an NHS midwife, this story haunts me. I can't begin to imagine what my great nana went through. The trauma that must have stayed with her is unimaginable.

Women gave birth at home or at maternity homes (some still exist now around by us now, now large detached residential houses) funded by charity or some kind of friendly society that people would contribute to through work. Generally people used to have to pay to see a doctor at their surgery (usually a house).

Even once we had the NHS, I remember my mother telling me to get the pill in the 60's she had to be married and hand over money to the doctor for it. I'm not sure if this came under NHS prescriptions later, if it just applied to the pill, or other medications.

First thing to remember there has been massive, massive increases in the ability to treat illnesses in the last 75 years.
Vaccines, diphtheria, polo,
Antibiotics
Are probably the two biggest.

Second thing no money, no doctor. A bit like the USA.

There were some charities about that provided some care.

William Quarrier, who set up and ran a children's home, orphanage also set up Scotlands Sanatorium for Comsumption, (now known at TB) I think the three buildings were built in 1893, 1900 and 1907. And a children's building followed later.

He also built a Care facility for people with the "falling disease" now known as Epilepsy.

Thanks to whoever linked tht timeshift series on I
Player - watching now ! Can't sleep and an eye opener !

My dad was born 1935, the 6th of 8. My Nana was known locally as the local midwife. She wasn’t paid by anyone, but when a woman was close to giving birth, somebody would run round to get her and she would help deliver the baby. So much experience from giving birth herself, and happy to share and help others, as was the case back then.

I’m not sure this would have been before the NHS - it was probably some years after - but my DM was put off midwifery for life by an appallingly traumatic experience in a backwoods hospital in the Highlands, where women (most quite deprived) only gave birth in hospital if they really had to.

The stories she tells belong in a horror film and I won’t go into detail, but I’m including it because this community, I now believe, was stuck in a pre-NHS mindset of seeing medical care as an unaffordable luxury rather than a right, and hadn’t really changed much from pre-war times.

That was less about the NHS and more about weird historic dentistry trends though - when the NHS came in, my gran, grandad, and all their extended family all went and had all their (healthy) teeth taken out and dentures put in. I have no idea what possessed them, but apparently that was the done thing (like Turkey teeth today).

As a wedding gift, brides and sometimes grooms would have their teeth removed and dentures fitted, in order to spare the expense of dentists when they were setting up home.

To be fair there probably wasn’t much to do - my grandad died aged 50, in about 1960 (so treated by NHS GP), and the treatment for heart attacks then was bedrest for a week and hope you didn’t have another one. Unfortunately he did, and he died.

Obviously wouldn’t have died nowadays - I qualified in 2003, just as thrombolysis was coming in, and it was absolutely revolutionary. I spent all of my nights as a medical house officer sorting out post-MI arrhythmias, papillary muscle ruptures, and other complications of untreated heart attacks that you just do not see these days. Two years later, when thrombolysis finally reached my crappy little hospital, those complications just evaporated.

Obviously healthcare before the 1950s was piss poor if you didn't have money.

However.

Now in the 2020s healthcare in the UK is once again piss poor, and that's with the NHS.

Not much to celebrate, sadly. Little bit in the middle when things were ok. Crappy healthcare either side. And now, unlike in the 1920s, very few can meaningfully afford to buy out of it.

That's only part of the picture. Have a look at this fantastic report by the ONS.
It only goes up to 2010, I gather UK life expectancy is now falling.

https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/birthsdeathsandmarriages/deaths/articles/mortalityinenglandandwales/2012-12-17