The memoirs of Cissie Ewen

Daily life

Eddie gets lockjaw

We used to have beautiful, good, heavy furniture and ornaments. I remember one piece, French polished, in the livingroom (kitchen) was like a big cupboard, but at night the doors were opened and it was made into a bed. In the bedrooms, there was lovely furniture that would be worth a lot of money these days. Gradually, piece-by-piece, all the beautiful furniture and ornaments were sold and replaced by cheap, second-hand things. I didn't know until years later why they had disappeared; it was to pay the rent and buy food for us.

I remember when it was one of Mam's birthdays, maybe I was ten or eleven years old. My friend Laura Laws and I bought a birthday card for a penny and a slide for her hair for twopence. We put it through the letterbox, knocked on the door and went away. Later when we went inside, I found Mam crying in the front room. I asked her what was wrong, for she had the card and the slide in her hand. She said it was the first gift she had received since Dad had died. I feel she must have shed many tears when by herself, over the years, about different things. I don't think we kids caused her any worry as regards our behaviour, but she had plenty to worry about, trying to feed us.

When Eddy was about fifteen years old, he stood on a rusty nail and was later taken to hospital, where he ended up very ill with lockjaw. Mam had our Jimmy and his wife Lizzie come down and look after the rest of the family while she stayed with Eddy, who was in a room on his own. They put in another bed for Mam. She would sleep there with him, and come home during the day to see we were all right, then go back again to be with him. She told us how he used to scream with pain. The doctors had to take a tooth out to get a tube in to feed him. He used to turn black and blue, and all colours. The doctors and students would all come around his bed studying him. He had his own nurse to look after him. Eventually a doctor told Mam they'd like to try a new treatment on him; that he was going to die in any case, but the experiment might help somebody else. He got better after that, and Mam said there was a big write-up and records in medical books about it. Years later, when I was working at the hospital, the assistant Matron once said to me, "Did you have a brother once a patient here with Tetanus?" I said no, but I did have a brother in there once with lockjaw. She said it was the same thing. I said, "But it was a long time ago when my brother was here." She said, yes, she knew that; she had been his nurse, and that I looked like him. She apparently had never forgotten him.