Bathing Duties
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Record Number: 7.100
Record Type: Audio
Caption:
Photograph: Malcolm Alston in his office at the Royal Albert in the 1980s. (Courtesy of Malcolm Alston)
Summary:
Bathing Duties
This short extract is from an interview with Malcolm Alston, a former nurse, recorded on September 13th 2005. In it Malcolm recalls some of bathing duties he had to carry out on Dawson Ward in the mid 1960s.
Malcolm: The working practices I just took on because I didn’t know anything differently. And I accepted it. But I mean certain stupid things like the bath water had to be 98 degrees. And I remember the, another chap who’d joined who obviously a lot of experience, he’d been in the war, he’d been in prison camps in Germany. And this Charge Nurse kept coming in with the temperature and taking the temperature of the water and pulling the plug out because it wasn’t just right. And all of a sudden he just lost his temper and got hold of the Charge Nurse and said, ‘If you do that again I’ll throw you through the window!’ And I suddenly realised that, you know, authority wasn’t everything and common sense should come into play. And I mean nobody really enjoys a tepid bath at 98 degrees do they? But again it was the bathing rules. There was twelve bathing rules and one of them was that the water should be at 98 degress!
NI: Can you remember the other ones, any of the other ones?
Malcolm: Er put the cold in first. Staff should keep the bath keys, that’s the tap keys. Yeah… The tap keys because then the residents themselves couldn’t actually run the bath or they couldn’t go and put extra hot water in if it was cold… The taps didn’t have a top on and so if it was your job to do the bathing you got the tap key and you turned the taps on.… But it was ultra, ultra safety and very little personal dignity or, or whatever, But because it was the norm you didn’t question it…
Notes:
Please cross reference this to other bathing references: Record 12.104 relating probably to the 1920s or 30s describes an assault on a resident who refused to take a bath; and Record 10.101 in which the bathing routines of the 1920s and 30s are recalled.
Other personal accounts of bathing, particularly its indignities, at other instititutions for people with learning disabilities can be found in the following books:
Potts M and Fido R (1991) A Fit Person to be Removed Plymouth: Northcote House pp 52-3
Ryan, J with Thomas, F. (Revised Edition 1998) The Politics of Mental Handicap Free Association Press pp 39-42
Keywords:
Resistance 1960s Routines Privacy Regime Staff
Wardlife
Staff Photograph
Biography:
Name: Malcolm Alston
Gender:
Male
Date of Birth:1940
Role: Nurse
From: 1964 To 1992