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					Porirua Ladies - Part 1 00:00 Former nurses Ngaere and Rita, and Bruce - the current museum curator - begin walking around the outside of the old F Ward - now the Porirua Hospital Museum. Ngaere: All of this was enclosed with a high fence - none of this was out in the open like that. These would be the posts. Bruce: This here’s the courtyard of F Ward and it was surrounded by a over six-foot high wooden paling fence. We have a shade shelter that was built, and that was for - various drugs cause sunburn for patients - one of them being Paraldehyde. Paraldehyde was used as a sedative wasn’t it Ngaere? Ngaere: Yes, yes - almost instantaneous. It was about the only thing we had was Paraldehyde - as a sedative. It wasn’t used indiscriminately. You could smell it all over the hospital, ghastly stuff - even the smell put you into sleep. Bruce: There was several of these shade houses built around Porirua, but this is the only one that still stands. Ngaere: It was never covered in, it was always just like that. Bruce: Open. Rita: And people used to come out and sit there, and it was a nice shelter. It’s been left to rot of course like a lot of the other things. But it was a great benefit to let people come out for the day, or part of the day, from the closed wards and closed rooms and so-on. And with nursing staff around they could walk around. Ngaere: You were supposed to walk the fence all the time - take a patient or two and exercise them as well. A lot of them wouldn’t walk on their own, they would just sit. Rita: But they got outside and they could talk to other people and walk around. Walking. Ngaere: Up this end, there were people there that were "workers". They used to help, they got paid a little bit of money by the government a week which bought their cigarettes and they were a bit independent. They would help in the ward, they would put the laundry out and polish the floors and do odd jobs that they were capable of doing. Rita: What about the kitchen? Ngaere: No, they didn’t have a kitchen here, they had a place to have [their meals]. The meals came from the main [kitchen]. But the patients here who helped slept along here. We all use to say - that was the worker’s area. They had their own rooms and they helped in the ward because there were only five staff with a hundred-and-thirty-odd people. We could never have managed without their help as far as domestic work was concerned and they were paid a little bit of money that bought their cigarettes - but cigarettes never lasted very long, and everyone would dish out smokes to them. You could get a lot of things done, they helped tremendously, if you took your packet of cigarettes out and took one out: "Would you like to go and do so-and-so?". Rita: It was done (laughs). Ngaere: It was barter. Of course that was all unofficial. Rita: I’m trying to think of a woman who came out of one of the closed wards and wandered away a little bit. I persuaded her to come back in, saying the placatory things you do say: "I hope you’ve enjoyed your walk, and now it’s time to come back in and do so-and-so ... We have to make sure we know where you are - we’re here to care for you". And she said to me, "Don’t worry about me nurse - I have a rich inner life". I just burst into tears ... Don’t worry about me nurse, I have a rich inner life - I know what I’m doing. Ngaere: She probably did too. Rita: They taught you more lessons than the text books, and you began to see people as human beings. Ngaere: You could laugh as often as you could cry, it was a great mixture. Rita: A great mixture, and sometimes they broke your heart because they’d come out with something and you’d think: I never knew that about that person. What a difference it would have made if I’d known - or we’d known. But by and large they knew who they could talk to, and what they could talk about, and who would listen, and would just say "Oh, come on cut it out Betty-Anne" (laughs). Ngaere points to the courtyard. Ngaere: But you imagine a hundred people on this court, all in navy blue denim frocks with a red and white stripe - tiny little narrow stripe. They were all in the same thing because they were hospital garments and you couldn’t have them in their private clothes - because how would they be laundered? But the other was hospital garment, and it went in the bag to the laundry. No trouble, you could change it as many times a day as you liked... Plenty of it, there was plenty linen, plenty of bed linen, plenty of blankets. There was no shortage of anything for their physical comfort or care - comfort is not quite the word. Ngaere: However, here they’d be lying on the ground, and you’d see all these blue humps. Call out "Lunchtime Ladies". Every hump would move, almost run, you’d think they were starved to death, they’d want to get there first. 06:47 Meg, a former patient, reads her poem "What Dreams May Come". Morning arrives with a shock and the sleepers stir in the long white ward as the key turns in the lock. My mouth drains dry of dreams. Nurse stretches, lifts knitting from a pool of light into her bag, all meaning speared on those needles. She is leaving. Her ghostly charges surround her, asking for a light for their morning cigarettes. She calls them 'ladies' with a touch of irony, and sighs. And the ghostly ladies sigh and fidget down corridors long as nuns' prayers. In the dining room, bewildered at formica tables amongst tea-cup clatter they watch while bread-and butter knives are counted and handed out. From the window I see a hedge between hospital grounds and cemetery. A fallen jam jar spills its dead gladioli’s on a grave. 08:00 Ngaere, Rita, and Bruce continue walking around the outside of F Ward. Ngaere: You tend to forget a lot. Good grief, normally that [plant] would never have grown, it would have been pulled out by the patients. You couldn’t grow anything in pots around there. But y’know what, they were our friends as well as - when they were well y’know. Ngaere: Y’see, this used to look like that. It didn’t look as crummy, and of course the shelter had a painted roof ... so it didn’t always look crummy. Rita: Well where do we go from here? Ngaere: Back to the tea-pot I hope. Rita: Eh? Ngaere: Back to look for the tea-pot I hope. Rita: I want something more than the tea-pot. (laughs) Walking. Ngaere: The trees around the hospital have always been beautiful. Rita: This one’s dying slowly. You can see it creeping up and dying. Ngaere: Of course the whole hospital was concrete and brick - slabs. It looked like what it was, or what you would imagine it to be. A car passes. Ngaere: A lot of these people couldn’t even dress or bath themselves, they went with the mob for meals otherwise they wouldn’t have known where to go. Bruce: In the early days you would have had all of the Alzheimers, Parkinsons, Epileptics. Ngaere: Yes, all mixed up... the Manic’s...And that room (pointing to F Ward), people that were in a manic phase - they would bang and bang and call out, you couldn’t have even a bed in there. Rita: You had people who just had mattresses on the floor, they couldn’t have beds because they wouldn’t use them. They knew why they were there. I remember a patient once, when I had to go in and give an injection, and I said to her "Ellen, it’s Nurse McEwan - I’m coming in" and she said "Don’t you come in or I’ll give you a bloody good hiding". I said "ok., stay there, just keep quiet for a while, I’ll come back later". You could have that sort of dialogue, or you’d say "I’ve got to come in and I’m bringing in two people to help me with you because you’ve got to have this injection". Deep sigh, and she’d roll over and ... out. Ngaere: And sometimes you’d have to bring the patient to the door with you, and somebody would be on the door to shut it otherwise you could never get away. It was sad but it was necessary. Rita: It was sad but it had so much humanity. I don’t mean in terms of wonderful humanity that we spread around, but there was so much humanness in the people we were caring for and in the staff themselves who had a monumental job to care for people - to be caring. But also to know when to control situations, and how to control them so that everybody didn’t get upset. Ngaere: They all belonged to somebody. Everyone that was in here belonged to somebody, and we were looking after them for them. And a lot of us thought of it that way, y’know they’ve got nobody else but us at the moment. A car passes, Ngaere points to the door to F Ward. Ngaere: That door there, had a great big wire window in it - and that was open all the time. The air went through there and it was like as cold-as-charity, everyone stayed in bed. But that is where the fresh air came in because you only had little windows. Bruce: Ok, we’ll go in. 12:50 Ngaere, Rita, and Bruce enter into F Ward. Ngaere: So the door was always here, but it wasn’t like that - you’d have had that wire frame in it - only at the top. It didn’t have all the windows around the outside either so the air blew in here like a gale, especially in the Southerly. But we didn’t mind that because they’d stay in bed. A lot of them wouldn’t get out of bed in the cold like that, but a lot of them would and it was not very good. I can’t see how else it could have been done - at that time. Walking in the dormitory. Ngaere: The beds would be down both sides facing out and sometimes we had to have two beds in the middle as well. Just ordinary beds, but there were no curtains, no blinds, you couldn’t have those - people would swing on them. These people were grossly psychotic, most of these in here. And it was more custodial care perhaps, and we cared about these people. We’d look in perhaps every quarter-of-an-hour just to make sure everything was all right. If there was a noise you’d come in smartly. I think on-the-whole, these people were very well cared for. You have the odd one here and there, and you have the odd staff that isn’t as tolerant as the next one, but that’s human nature. But there was no tolerance of cruelty anywhere between patients, staff or anything else. Never a tolerance by the authorities, which was great. Ngaere: We were very fond of a lot of them. There was one little lady, didn’t matter if I came when they were all out on the court or all inside, she could spot me coming in onto the court, and she’d coming running up and just put her forehead on my chest - I think my chest was as low as anybody else’s - she was only little. And she’d just put her head on my chest for two or three minute’s and then away she’d go because she’d said hello ... and I always use to call her ‘Mummy’ - she loved it. But those sort of things were just sort-of by-the-way. 15:53 Meg reads "Woman in Ward 10". I see you lingering still at the crossroads, poor martyr. You have been so often wrong, you'll never move again with resolution, each blunder bringing a further injection. You are nailed to the bed, crucifix slipping from slackened hand, big stubborn body thickly sleeping. Two days ago, as ill as you, I kissed the ring the Pope had given you and helped deliver your immaculate child into a hospital towel. We hid Him on a pile of linen - Get back on your feet, for God's sake. I prefer you awake and mad with staring eyes, relating stories that are neither truth nor lies, but which serve to pass the day here, at the crossroads, the corridors where we women wait. 17:00 Bruce and Ngaere look at an old map of Porirua Mental Hospital. Ngaere: Yes, it’s hard to visualise how big the building was, and how far you had to go to get anywhere: corridors, corridors, slopes what-have-you... and taking trolleys down to the main kitchen to load them up and coming back, going down the slope... Bruce: There was even a coal shed for the boilers. Ngaere: Where are the kitchens from here? Well you see they’d want that because they had coal ranges for all the cooking in those days. It was all cooked by coal, the stoves would have been 6 feet wide - great long fiery things they were, they use to almost get red hot at times. And they had these great big iron boilers for the cooking and you’d go down for the meal. Hopefully they’d lift it off for you. Sometimes they sent it up in the boiler that they cooked it in, otherwise they’d tip it into a tin thing which strained a lot of it. Yes, unbelievable. Ngaere: Is that locked Bruce? 18:58 Bruce brings out a book of old patient records. Bruce: This particular person came-in in 1911 and he died in 1912, and he died of Epilepsy. Ngaere: Oh really... The writing is absolutely beautiful and it’s in all the books - pen and ink. Bruce: This guy came-in in 1911 and he had "dramatic insanity" and he was discharged in February 1912. Ngaere: Must have been welcomed home... The terminology in a lot of these is very interesting - they wouldn’t use it in this day-and-age, but it is still very interesting. Bruce: This particular person came-in in December 1911, he had "senile dementure", "hopeless", and he died in January 1913. Ngaere: A lot of these people, their mental condition, took them physically down very quickly because they were over stimulated and they’d wear themselves out - these older ones. There was nothing you could do to quieten them in those days - we had no medication. They would wear themselves out, and that would cause an early death in a lot of cases. Ngaere: All these books are interesting because there was no medication. Half the time people couldn’t even have visitors. Bruce: Well the relatives would have seen the patient in the state that they were in - you couldn’t really let them. 21:38 Meg reads "Glimpses into Porirua Mental Hospital". Dirty old Rauta, and its red carpet and vaulted ceiling, and little white beds, heaps of them, and the strangest people, much given to burping, and striding away with a purpose up the red carpet to the end of the ward, then back again to the huge fire-place. They didn’t look ill. On the nurse's belt are some large keys which unlock the thick doors and the giant fire-screen. Rattling keys make this a prison hospital. I know, in a dull way, that we, the totally dispossessed, will not leave this extraordinary place. A little nurse sweeps and rolls up the long red carpet, then mops under the little white beds. She is sole nurse and char-lady. In the bed opposite is a lady with one fierce eye, a stroke having paralyzed half her face. She’s a retired teacher and talks to me about poetry. I soften a little. 23:10 Ngaere, standing in the main dormitory, describes the daily routine. Ngaere: Seven o’clock the staff would come in they’d sign the book and the night staff would go off after they’d handed over to the day charge. Then all the patients would get up with the staff dressing, helping, bathing - whatever was necessary. 8 o’clock would be breakfast: They’d have to be two shifts because the staff would have to go down to the nurses home for their breakfast - first lot at 8, the next lot at 8:30. So you had half-an-hour to get from here down to the nurses home, have your breakfast and get back up here again. In the meantime, the beds would be stripped and fresh linen put on by whoever was here - day staff, patients helped, and they got a little allowance... we could probably have never managed without their help. Ngaere: The rest of the day all these people would be bathed as necessary, dressed. There was no medication as-such to give out like there is now. They would go out into the courtyard if it was fine. If it wasn’t, they’d be down in the dayroom and the staff who were looking after the patients would take them down there. And you’d spend the day there doing whatever you possibly could. A lot of the patients couldn’t read, they couldn’t sew - you couldn’t give them needles and scissors, you couldn’t give them knitting needles. It was very difficult trying to entertain these people - a lot of them didn’t want to be entertained anyway. They just wanted to sit - y’know the old story "sometimes I sits and thinks, and sometimes I just sits". And that’s how it was. Ngaere: The staff would be on from 7 until 8 o’clock at night. Next day would be 7 until 5 o’clock at night. And the rules all said that on the third day you should be off duty - but your chances were pretty poor. You’d be called on for an overtime day, and then you’d start back on your normal routine: 7 till 8, 7 till 5, day off. You’d look at the roster board to see where the matron had put you, sometimes you were lucky to stay in a ward for any length of time. There was a charge nurse and a deputy charge of the ward, but the staff from there on could be different every day - which they tried not to have that happen, but of course in a big place like this it couldn’t be helped sometimes - sickness, absenteeism. They’d have to find somebody else who probably hadn’t worked on the ward for - lord-knows how long - and didn’t know what the routine was which was hard for everybody. If you only had four there to start with and you finish up with three and one that doesn’t know the routine - it’s almost a menace. However, we got by. Ngaere: Night-duty, you came on at 8 o’clock at night - you had to be there by 7:40 to do the rounds and check everything. You didn’t go off until 7 in the morning. It was a long night. You relieved each other. In some wards there was only one nurse - in some of the Villas - she didn’t get any relief. 27:30 Ngaere unlocks the Store Room door. Ngaere: This was our Store Room, our property room. In here they had a big rack that ran from there over to there and of course over the years, clothing had been left behind - like coats and frocks, and things were hanging on there. There was cases, pigeon-holes with all these things in around the room. But we use to bring our morning and afternoon-tea in here in the winter time. We’d get a suitcase or box or something and we’d get in it, under all these coats because it was the only place that it was warm. There was no central heating. Y’know we had our morning and afternoon-tea among the coats - some of them had been there since 1900 I think by the smell of them. Bruce: They probably were from 1910 - most of the patients came in 1910 to this ward. Ngaere: That’s right. Bruce: We have a variety of bits and pieces in this room ... Ngaere: What happened to my night-box? Bruce: Oh, it’s in the other room. Ngaere: Oh, I used to have a wooden box, something like that (pointing to a mortuary box). At night-time I use to have drugs in it, and I had a key. I used to take that with me out on the round in case I needed anything. Occasionally I’d leave it in the car, but I’d lock the car - a few times I forgot to lock the car and that would be full of drugs. I couldn’t get out there fast enough. Bruce: 1932 was the start of treatment: that was Insulin Coma. It never came to New Zealand until about 1937. Ngaere: That was frightening. Bruce: And very labour intensive, but it was the start of treatment. Ngaere: They were induced into a coma and they were held in the coma for a certain length of time, and then brought out - hopefully. It was always that little bit [touch and go]. Did you ever know of anyone that succumb to Insulin Coma treatment? Rita: No, I don’t recall anyone. Ngaere: But we were always afraid it might. Rita: Well, it was new and it was a little more dangerous than some of the other things perhaps we’d been using. But not necessarily so, but we had to be very careful with it because it was a new thing and so we had to treat it with respect. And it did help a lot of people. Ngaere: Oh it did help a lot. Rita: Suddenly a whole lot things were happening. Ngaere: It was like when they first started E.C.T. Rita: And Prefrontal Leucotomy - people were trying all sorts of things which were working or not working... They severe the frontal fibres and for some people it was almost relief. It was a recovery of sorts. People went on to live, I wouldn’t say normal lives, but able to function on a slightly higher... Ngaere: But if they’d never tried these things this would never have come to this stage. It’s like the medication - ok the medication is marvellous but I think some of them are zombies. Rita: It suddenly happened all of a sudden that there were conferences of international people - not just psychiatrists - but people concerned with mental health and well-being. And very famous names from England and America, Canada and Australia and New Zealand suddenly got together and things began to happen. There was much more of a medical model - a much more humane model so that you could have access to patients because of the affect of these drugs and so on, who hadn’t been able to communicate so well before - suddenly they could. So it had to go on didn’t it, and people were saying "oh its experimental". Well, what isn’t experimental. Ngaere: Well, if they’d never experimented we would have been back just as we were then... people out in canvas gowns walking around the court. Rita: Hundreds of people benefited. Ngaere: I can remember Dr. Medlicott telling me that he was planning on giving "treatment" to people - this was when I was down at Rauta, when I was staff nurse down there - and what he was going to do. I thought "oh my goodness", I think I better leave now. The thought of it - of what he was going to do in the hope that these people would recover. Rita: Well if he hadn’t had that hope, if he hadn’t been that sort of man it wouldn’t have happened. Ngaere: And when he was getting very close to it he said "I want to talk to you about it" - to the two of us and he explained what our part would be in the treatment of these two people that he was going to do. Anyhow after he’d gone, we both looked at each other and said "better have a darn good sleep tonight - we mightn’t sleep again!". Ngaere: Anyhow, the next day when we came to work we were all very toey because this was new altogether. He was going to put some electrodes on[to the patients head] and they were going to go off into a seizure - come out of again we hoped. However, it all went well. The whole thing went well and the patient, two days later, talked to us as if she’d been there all her life - quiet sensibly. She went home in a week. Ngaere: But she was a funny little thing. She was very plump and she hardly ever spoke at all, [and she walked oddly]. And when I saw her walking up the corridor [after treatment] I thought well if it hasn’t done anything better than that - she’s walking properly anyway. She went home in about four days - never saw her again. Bruce: That was the success of E.C.T. Ngaere: That was the first success of E.C.T. Her husband was absolutely over the moon, he was happy to take her home. 34:50 Meg reads "Hole in the Head". I have sung every song I know this night, my fourth in isolation. By morning I am hoarse, and none hears me but the ladies who kick the door. "You're down for treatment and serves you right ! making a disturbance ! But now they come, nurses who are warders, who are nurses, with hard, frightened hands, I plead and fight and pull my clothes off in a corner. Here is the doctor , nightmare eyes bulging, master of the machine which glides to the bed where I am held, temples bared, teeth clamped on a rubber gag .. .. ‘How are you, Arlin?’ he says, just as the magistrate did. There is a smell of meths, and then, no air -- no time to breathe .... I leave them through a hole drilled by fire in my temples, escaping the explosion that ends all worlds. 36:10 Ngaere flicks a light switch in the corridor, just outside the Seclusion Room. Ngaere: All of these (pointing to the light switch), when we did a round at night it was ritual... it’s really quite hilarious when I look back on it. You’d do a round with the night-charge who was taking over the ward with the day-charge who was going off. There’d be two nurses with the day nurse and two with the night one, and the senior nurse. And you’d all do a round. One would go ahead, open the door - if you could. The light would be on, and coming behind would be one to shut the door, one to turn the light off. You’d be running to catch up with each other. And you’d go every room. The one ahead would open the door, the next one would grab it ready [to close], and that would go on every night. You made sure that everyone was here that should have been, and that was alive and should’ve been. And then the next one couldn’t say "well she must have been dead when I came on". Ngaere moves down the corridor. Ngaere: In here (pointing to door), there’s a toilet, but all of that along there were about fifteen toilets. And at night-time we use to have to get all the people in that dormitory up - twice a night - to go to the toilet. What you’d do, you’d come along and you’d open these doors and make sure everything was all right. And then you’d go along and turn the light on, open up, and stand aside. They’d come tearing over there, use the toilet - perhaps, or whatever. If there was any toilet paper there somebody would go back with a whole roll ... And while they were coming to the toilet there’d be a nurse - perhaps if you had two nurses - changing all the beds, putting new linen on... and somebody here washing theses people. And you’d do that two or three times a night. The amount of linen that came out of this ward was unbelievable: some of it in strips and some of it as it went in. Ngaere: But they were human beings, and you never thought of them as anything else - they belonged to somebody. You always felt that this was somebody’s mother, somebody’s wife, somebody’s child - because we had younger girls in here as well of course. They weren’t all old fuddy-duddies like they are now, a lot of young girls. They all belonged to somebody, and we always thought of that. There’s many a time when you thought of a lot of other things too, but ... But you see this corridor went away down there and then out into the day room. So there were a lot of rooms... Did you have a look through there? ... 39:40 Meg reflects on being committed to Porirua Mental Hospital. Meg: I felt terrible. I felt as if everyone was ganging up against me. I suppose paranoia was part of the illness too, and so I felt completely betrayed by everyone: my doctor, my father [who] was supposed to have said something about me. Y’know people who I’d loved and admired, but I found out that they weren’t very good friends when it came to the crunch. They weren’t to be trusted - don’t trust anybody - that’s the message I got. I always feel people have another side to them, maybe they wouldn’t very often show you. I wouldn’t be as trusting now.