The Nurse’s Car

In 1939, the parish subscribed to the purchase of a car for the District Nurse who hitherto might have had, in the words of the vicar, Rev. R.A. Edwards, to “cycle through the rain from Pallingham to Malham” in order to attend to patients. The following is an article that appeared in the April 1939 edition of the parish magazine, and was reproduced, with photographs from its archive, in the June 2024 issue of the history society’s newsletter.

“There can be no question that all of us, whether we are ever ourselves helped by the Nurse or not, must have an almost unbounded admiration for the self-sacrificing work of the District Nurses.

 Left: Wisborough Green’s District Nurse Lewis with Austin A40 car. Nurse Lewis came to the village in 1935 and transferred to the NHS in 1948

They have, like the doctors, to go out in all weathers and at any time. We take the doctor for granted.  When we are ill, we send for him without any      hesitation, and whatever he may be doing, even    if after a heavy day he has only just fallen asleep, he comes without the smallest murmur of complaint. Do we ever dream of saying, “Yes, but we pay him for it”? Of course not, because we know. perfectly well that no money payment can quite meet the devotion that he so readily shows, and often enough, though we may never know it, his bill when he sends it in represents not what he could charge for the time and thought he has given to us, but what he thinks is the amount we can afford to pay. Sometimes we criticise them, and, no doubt, they make their mistakes, for, like the rest of us, they are only human, but no one can think of doctors fairly without acknowledging their extraordinary devotion and kindness.

Well, if all that is true about the doctors, isn’t just the same sort of thing true of the nurses? Indeed, I sometimes think that they do even more for us than the doctors, and often enough I have heard a doctor say, “The recovery is due to nurse, not to me.” They, too, simply come when we send for them, and when they arrive they do far more for us than we ever expected.

How rarely have we ever heard one complain of anything at all! How seldom has a nurse ever been anything but gentle! They, too, have to travel long distances and in any weather. Do they start worrying about themselves when they arrive wet at our houses? Over and over again, perhaps on a cold, wet evening, I’ve been in a house when the nurse has arrived. At once faces brighten. Then in she comes in her glistening mackintosh, smiling, confident and so marvellously quiet and efficient.

Now, think it over. Is it reasonable that in a long, straggling district like ours Nurse may have to cycle through the rain from Pallingham to Malham? Of course it’s not. But that is what Nurse has been doing. But even on a bright sunny day, is it reasonable that she should have to spend all that time and energy getting from one case to another? Each of the cases may be a serious one that needs any amount of thought and patience and hard work, and is it reasonable that she should be tiring herself out in between them? Of course it’s not. But the only alternative is that we must pay for her car.

No District Nurse earns anything like enough money even to begin to think of buying a car for herself or even to pay for the cost of running it. What has happened here is this. Mr. Sidney Carter has most generously lent us the money to buy the car. He was convinced that Nurse must have a car in such a district. He talked it over with the Nursing Committee and offered to buy the car if the

Committee would raise the money to pay him back. He wouldn’t hear of waiting till the money had been raised, for he was sure that people, whether they were Nurse’s patients or not, would give gladly once the idea was put to them. We’ve got to raise about £70, and so far we’ve got about £15.

That seems a large sum to find, but if we all give what we can it can be done. I’m sure that we ought all to give something, even if it’s only a little, for it’s marvellous how quickly even shillings add up to a handsome total. Then the car will be a present from all of us, which is what it ought to be, a present that says, “Thank you.” Another point about the appeal is that it is surely important that we should give or make our promise at once. It isn’t right that Mr. Sidney Carter should be kept waiting. We mustn’t deal like that with generosity. So will you please (a) give your gift straight away to one of the collectors, or (b) tell your collector what you will give and when you will give it, or (c) send it as soon as you’ve read this to “The Treasurer, The Wisborough Green Nursing Association, Park Cottage, Wisborough Green.”

Andrew Strudwick