WENTWORTH & ELSECAR
Common Threads:
Characters that framed the villages
Recall the MIDWIFEwife
Historically, midwifery has always been about ordinary women supporting and empowering other ordinary women as they witness everyday miracles - the birth of not just a baby, but of a mother too.
Women whose calming
presence, words of encouragement and even the simple offer of tea and toast will be remembered long after the pain has been forgotten by the exhausted new mothers they helped to make. To tie in with her Common Threads project, which involves working with the community to uncover interesting stories of women from bygone times in Elsecar and Wentworth, textile artist Gemma Nemer has been introduced to the tale of two former midwives, both of whom helped shape their respective villages one baby at a time.
Throughout the majority of the mid-20th Century, Nurse Edgar and Nurse Walker shared not only the first name Norah, but also a lifelong commitment to antenatal care – albeit a very different approach to the one that modern mothers are accustomed to.
Originally from the North East,
Wentworth’s midwife, Nurse Edgar (nee Jones) first trained as a nurse at Carlisle Union Hospital in 1912 aged 21. At the time of the First World War, the workhouse infirmary became a military hospital with young student nurses like Norah Jones drafted in to help the war wounded.
Nurse Edgar Nurse Walker
After qualifying as a midwife in 1920 aged 29, Norah married Alfred Edgar and the couple moved to Barrow in Wentworth in 1924 where she became the district nurse for Wentworth, Harley and Brampton, a post she held for almost 30 years. In the neighbouring village,
Nurse Walker was born and raised in Elsecar to miner Tom Walker and his wife Ada. The family lived at 8 Skiers Hall and were the first residents of the former stables which had been turned into cottages.
As one of eight children and with four younger siblings to help care for, it was perhaps no surprise that a young Norah Walker left school aged 13 to become a nanny for a doctor and his family in York. She then went on to work at St Monica’s House in Bradford, a single mothers’ refuge, where she stayed for nine months before deciding to train as a midwife at
Sheffield’s Jessop Hospital for Women in 1929 aged 30. On qualifying, Nurse Walker was appointed as midwife for the Elsecar and Hoyland area where she remained for 35 years. Like many pre-NHS nurses of their time, the majority of maternity calls were carried out at expectant mothers’ homes and both Edgar and Walker would do their community visits on foot or by bicycle, in all weathers day or night when duty called and the promise of a new tiny human was on the way. Some years later they both acquired a car each which would have made their trips a little easier – but both would still abandon their four wheels for two feet if snow or bad weather struck.
Unlike today’s delivery suites which are fully stocked with tools, pain relief and obstetricians on- hand for any complications that may arise, Nurses Edgar and Walker
‘Some of Nurse Edgar’s work has been included in the project which will be displayed around the villages’
Nurse Walker’s Elsecar home 38
aroundtownmagazine.co.uk
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