Sister Evelyn Betham 1919 - 2010

Evelyn was born 25^th December 1919 at The Causeway Hotel, Sherrif Hill, Gateshead, County Durham. Her parents were Rose Ann Betham (Nee Prest) and James Edwin Betham. Evelyn was the first-born of their three children. Her father, James, was born on 19th December 1894 in South Shields. At the time of Evelyn's birth was stated to be a shipyard labourer, a 'Molder'. His occupation was by no means unusual in Gateshead at that time, when the British shipyards were, to use a pun, at full sail. The Betham family line has been traced back to 1811 in Bristol, the fourth generation of the Betham family.¹ The Prest family has been traced back to 1853 in Norfolk. The census of 1911 shows the Betham family living at 37, Eldon Street, South Shields. How they came to be living in Gateshead is a matter of family history - as is the fact that her family were living at a Public House! (Need to expand this?).

During her teenage years, Evelyn was educated at Gateshead Central Girl's School for four years - between 1931 and 1935. Her leaving Certificate, signed by the headmistress, A.G.H. Hannam (possibly 'Harram'), said that her results were never below the second class, and that with four subjects from ten with first class results (Mathematics, History, Drawing and Shorthand) and a distinction in Science, that Evelyn was most probably an above average student.

Immediately before entering nurse training, Evelyn worked as an assistant in the children's shoe department of E. Shephard Ltd - Drapers, General Outfitters and Boot Dealers - of West St and Ellison St, Gateshead. She had commenced there on September 2nd 1935 and her final reference indicated that she was well thought of and that they were sorry to lose her services. It described her as a 'very bright, conscientious and painstaking girl'. It went on to describe her as having a 'happy nature' and that they know that Evelyn would bring 'really useful service and cheerfulness in her new job'. An excellent reference from a company having at least twelve branches in Tyne and Wear at a time when replacing unsatisfactory staff was a very simple matter. They clearly regretted losing Evelyn...

Evelyn commenced her nurse training on 23rd November 1937 - the same day that her resignation from Shephard Ltd took effect. That, of course, was another sign of the times - no one who could find work could afford to be without it - even for a day. She commenced her career at *Seaham Hall Sanatorium, a tuberculosis hospital at Seaham Harbour, County Durham, at that time run by Durham County Council.

She completed the full two years training in Tuberculosis nursing from 29th November 1937 until 29th November 1939 at Seaham Hall, and was awarded their own hospital certificate. There is little history of Evelyn's time at Seaham Hall, but at least one story is recounted by her daughter, Barbara...

Just four years later, by 1944, that two year training would most likely have resulted also in an SEAN (later SEN) qualification by the General Nursing Council for England and Wales - the date that qualification was first introduced. But in any case, the GNC never acknowledged tuberculosis nursing as a special field.

Not that this delayed Evelyn's career development in any way - by January 5th 1940 she had obtained and taken up her place as a student nurse at Oldchurch Hospital, Essex, training under the auspices of the General Nursing Council. A three year course leading to State Registration. She successfully passed both parts of the *State Preliminary Examinations of the GNC in April 1941. She completed her training - which followed the syllabus recommended by the General Nursing Council throughout, on January 4th,1943 and successfully passed the hospital final examinations on 23rd March 1943. She was formally admitted to the Register for Nurses on the 28th May 1943.

Becoming a Registered Nurse was no small achievement. Simply stating dates hides the real complexities of nurse training in the early 1940's - the years encompassing the second World War. A war which cost between 68 and 70 million deaths, both civilian and military - reputed to be the deadliest war in human history. Every nurse trained during this period, and for many years afterwards in the United Kingdom, underwent rigorous professional training and evaluation by senior nurses. Nurses who had themselves more often than not been the product of other wars, which had left many of the profession, whilst compassionate beings, incredibly strict in the execution of their own duties. One of which was the training of nurses for the professional register. Many of these nurses had also served in the military reserve forces during the wars in question. Their experiences indelibly etched upon their memories. Perhaps that was the explanation for mixture of compassion and rigidity seen in many of those nurses. Whatever the explanation, there can be no doubt about the influence on nurse training existing.

Such was the hierarchy at the time that a newly qualified nurse, a staff nurse, would for example be largely responsible for all direct communication between herself and the lower ranks, which included student nurses and assistant nurses, and the Ward Sister. The latter held almost total authority for the immediate control of a ward, and of course for assessing the progress of the nurses therein. Her word was more often than not make or break. It was indeed a brave, or perhaps very foolish, nurse who would challenge the authority of a ward sister. Even to appear to challenge more senior staff, an Assistant or perhaps Deputy Matron, could very easily mean the end of a nurse's career. Challenging the Matron? It wasn't done! Every student was taught to adopt a strict hierarchy status from day one, those in each year being divided from their peers on the basis of their rank. Rank being the length of time in training and stage reached. Even down to their individual months of commencing training. Each and every one had a designated place in the team, and each and every one knew exactly where it was in relation to all the others. More often than not each member of the team played their assigned role - though perhaps not always liking it! The pressure to conform was almost without exception too great to resist. A missing team member was never missing without noted reason - and the noted reason would need to be good if training was to be successful.

An assistant (or occasionally deputy) Matron would visit each ward at least once every day and take reports from the ward sister - including any appertaining to the nursing staff. There would also be a daily written report from the ward sister regarding the treatment and the outcome thereof to the patients, to the office of the assistant matron. This report would be discussed directly with the ward sister and the senior staff at least once every day. Irregularities of any kind required direct explanation about what had, or would need to be, done to rectify such situations. At the same time, it would have been very unusual for a ward sister to involve the senior administrative staff in matters pertaining to her own ward staff. Such was regarded almost universally as her concern...

Given the religious and military antecedents, the nursing profession was, during the 1940's, an undeniably rigid profession when viewed from the angle of being in authority. There was only one Matron in any general hospital. And she had her own seat on every management committee of that hospital. A supreme being... It was to be many years before this was to change...

That Evelyn Betham had managed not only to gain initial entrance to the profession during this period, she had, having completed her training been accepted for State Registration - been accepted into the profession, had one foot on the ladder, but only one foot. The case for any newly Registered nurse. Whether she climbed or fell was largely a matter for herself. But whatever, she would need to maintain the high standards of the nursing profession to remain a member. Being a staff nurse was perhaps one of the most conflicting roles ever invented. Somewhere between the devil and the deep blue sea!

Post Registration. Almost immediately afterwards Evelyn undertook what could only have been a post-registration course at Scotton Banks Sanatorium, Knaresborough, in Tuberculosis Nursing, commencing on 1st August 1943, and successfully completing on 31st July 1944. Just why she did this is not clear, as gaining a certificate in TB nursing was not recognized by the GNC, and she already had a similar certificate from Seaham Hall in 1939. Whilst there is no mention of the British Tuberculosis Association a formal external certificate contained within her documents, a certificate was issued by the Scotton Banks Sanatorium by the West Riding County Council, detailing that Evelyn had been employed as a Staff Nurse and had received the full years training in Tuberculosis (nursing). The certificate was signed by the Chairman; vice-chairman; Medical Superintendent; and the Matron (M.Heslop) of Scotton Banks. She was already a qualified, State Registered nurse, but the General Nursing Council as a body refused to recognize Tuberculosis nursing from the beginning.

The Sanatorium Superintendents Society had first been formed in 1924 - only five years or so after the General Nursing Council in 1919 - and had formed an Examination Committee and began awarding certificates in that year. In 1928 the Sanatorium Superintendents Society merged with the Tuberculosis Society to become The Tuberculosis Association, which continued nurse education and the award of certificates until 1945. The year before Evelyn had qualified for the second time. This time as a Tuberculosis nurse, at Scotton Banks Sanatorium, Knaresborough. Looking again at her history, it is apparent that had she qualified just a year or so later, her Certificate would have been issued by The British Tuberculosis Association along with it's badge, following the reformation of the Tuberculosis Association as 'The British Tuberculosis Association' (BTA), in 1945. The General Nursing Council, however, continued to refuse to recognize this branch of nursing as a separate entity. Not that this would have affected Evelyn in the slightest - she was already an SRN.

Evelyn had also, like many other nurses of her era, attempted to undertake midwifery training, but had apparently had to give up her attempt because of the illness of her mother, unfortunately no details of this attempt have been uncovered to date. But the story itself may not be unusual as it often fell to single members of families at the time having to care for their relatives...

Two years or so later, Evelyn had obviously conquered the next step on the ladder of nursing, becoming a ward sister. It was at this stage in her life that Evelyn faced one of the stark realities of the profession. Although times were changing, there was still much prejudice in the profession, and one prejudice was against the married nurse. Marriage would often cost a ward sister her rank, if not only because she would move to the role of home-maker and mother and become a part-time nurse. Few part-time nurses were employed as ward sisters. Many experienced staff nurses were once ward sisters who had opted for marriage and a family and returned to practise as part-time staff. There was, in reality, little real alternative at that time to the seriously austere unmarried professional - or wife and mother. (Although of course there were an increasing number of men joining the profession) In the event wife and mother won the day and Evelyn married Mr Basil Maurice Randolph Selby at The Parish Church, Gateshead Fell, County Durham. Her husband was in the RAF, a corporal and radio operator.

After her marriage Evelyn moved with her husband to Japan as part of his military posting. The next part of Evelyn Betham's history, her time in Japan, contains, not surprisingly, no reference to any nursing practice. Indeed, the next reference is following the return of herself and her husband to Scotland, where her husband was based at RAF Leuchars.

Evelyn's career after her return from Japan appears to have been more difficult to detail, but having said that she had, in common with many of her contemporaries at that time, a child to bring-up. Her daughter Barbara says:-

 

Evelyn Betham was born on the 25th December 1919. She died on 6th September 2010 in her 91st year. A long and active life which had seen her achieve her ambition to become a nurse during the wartime years of WWII, a time when becoming a nurse was difficult - if that, indeed was ever easy. But that was the case with the vast majority of nurses. It is the in nature of the profession that they must face and overcome difficulties. Like many nurses of that era Evelyn Betham did not seek to tell her own story, telling her daughter Barbara that no-one would be interested. There could of course be another reason - nurses were routinely cautioned about confidentiality, and of course revealing information about other people, especially the patients of a nurse was, and hopefully still is, a major professional sin, with the exception of course of those responsible for the medical care of the patients.....

At the same time, there are possibly many snippets of Evelyn's history to be found and fitted into her story - at least one highlighting the sort of person that she had been during her nursing career as retold by her daughter about Evelyn's days off during 1944:-

Taking a day or two off would seem to have been at least as difficult as not doing so. At the time Plashetts was a small coal mining community about 22 miles west of Hexham. ⁽³⁾ Part of the community, including the railway station used by Evelyn, now lies beneath the waters of the Kielder Water ⁴, a very large reservoir built between 1975 - 1982. Kielder Water was flooded 1982, vanishing beneath the surface of 44 million imperial gallons of water - along with the dwelling where she once nursed her own mother...

Evelyn's lineage was not without note. One ancestor, James Edwin, and his son, James Edwin Jnr:-

This reference related to the time that Evelyn's father had summoned her home to care for her mother, and then told her that she would have to pay for her own keep! Life was very different for families, and the nurses who cared for them, in the north-east of England in the 1940's....

Looking back on the surface of Evelyn Betham's story, one cannot help but being struck by the fact that there should be much more about the nurse herself, Evelyn Betham. But what we have is sufficient to make the story worth telling. If one adds the missing historical detail about nursing at the time, which is now much more readily available to researchers, one finds a story of one nurse's rise from the poverty and hardship of her time and place, to becoming a valued member of her profession. A profession which she served, in one way or another, for something like 50 years.

How many of us, I wonder, would walk for miles up a darkened, cold railway track to visit home on a day off?...

When Evelyn's daughter, Barbara Carr, first asked whether we would be interested in publishing her mother's history here she said::-