The Midwife's Tale: An Oral History from Handywoman to Professional Midwife
Oct 2013 · Pen and Sword
Ebook
256
Pages
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About this ebook
Mothers and midwives reveal the wonders and difficulties of early twentieth century childbirth in this informative and insightful healthcare history.
Before the foundation of the United Kingdom’s National Health Service (NHS) in 1948, expectant mothers relied on midwives to help them through childbirth. Based on interviews conducted with dozens and mothers and retired midwives over several years, Billie Hunter and Nicky Leap’s The Midwife’s Tale shares the stories of these women in their own words, shedding light on their experiences and on the realities of childbirth in the first half of the twentieth century.
Intriguing, poignant, and sometimes humorous, this oral history covers the experiences of women from the 1910s through the 1950s including accounts of the difficulties of rearing large families in poverty-stricken environments and the lack of information about contraception and abortion—even as midwifery changed from an unqualified “handywoman” skill to an actual profession.
Before the foundation of the United Kingdom’s National Health Service (NHS) in 1948, expectant mothers relied on midwives to help them through childbirth. Based on interviews conducted with dozens and mothers and retired midwives over several years, Billie Hunter and Nicky Leap’s The Midwife’s Tale shares the stories of these women in their own words, shedding light on their experiences and on the realities of childbirth in the first half of the twentieth century.
Intriguing, poignant, and sometimes humorous, this oral history covers the experiences of women from the 1910s through the 1950s including accounts of the difficulties of rearing large families in poverty-stricken environments and the lack of information about contraception and abortion—even as midwifery changed from an unqualified “handywoman” skill to an actual profession.
About the author
Billie Hunter was born in 1953 in South London. After training as a midwife in 1979, Billie worked in a rural GP unit in Wales, as an independent midwife in London and as a health visitor in the Outer Hebrides, covering remote islands. Since 1992, Billie has lived in Wales and has been engaged in midwifery teaching and research, gaining her PhD in 2002. She was appointed as Professor of Midwifery at Swansea University in 2006 and as Royal College of Midwives Professor of Midwifery at Cardiff University in 2011 Nicky Leap was born in 1948 and grew up in the West Country, England. She became a National Childbirth Trust (NCT) teacher in the 1970s and was a youth and community worker in London before training to be a midwife. For more than 30 years Nicky has worked in a variety of roles in midwifery practice, education and research. She is an Adjunct Professor of Midwifery at the University of Technology, Sydney and Visiting Professor of Midwifery at Kings College London. Nicky divides her time between living in Bristol (UK) and Sydney (Australia).
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