| Description | Interview with Dr. Marie Ogston (nee Clarke), (M.B. Ch.B. 1962), which is being recorded on 10 May 2004, the interviewer is Jennifer Carter.
JC Well thank you very much for talking to me, and let's think back, if we may, to when you were thinking of coming up to university. Was it an unusual decision for someone in those days for someone of your background and your sex ….
MO No it wasn't really at all because my mother had gone in for nursing and although my father was a tradesman, but he worked at that time as a telephone engineer, the attitude amongst I suppose North-east people was to let their children do as well as they could and if they could go to university, I mean money wasn't, well I suppose it was thought about, but it wasn't thought about as being one of the things that would prevent you from going and in those days as long as your parents were willing to disclose their income. I mean we didn't pay any fees at all at university. There was also at school in 6th year or 5th and 6th year, if you were going to university, what was called the Bursary Competition, that you could sit and if you managed to get something from that, that helped too, financially.
JC Were you successful?
MO Yes.
JC Do you remember what your placement in the comp was?
MO Oh gosh, I can't remember now, but there were specific bursaries, it wasn't the top one anyway, but it was for medicine.
JC Some people I believe used to try several years running until they got the top place, but may be that was a bit earlier than you!
MO No. no, but that wouldn't have stopped me from going. My father was dead set and plus as I say, we didn't have .. it was more keeping me at home without having a job or anything because I was the oldest of five children.
JC I was just going to ask if you had siblings.
MO So I was actually the first one in both my mother's and my father's family, as far as I can think back on the generations, that actually went to university, so it was a great thing.
JC And did your brothers and sisters follow you?
MO One of my brothers went to university, to Aberdeen as well. He did Physiology. None of the others went. Two went and did nursing and another one was a secretary. My father would have given every one of them the opportunity, if that was what they wanted to do. I think that was a typical North-east attitude was to make sure that your children did even better than you did and maybe the advantages that you didn't have because of financial reasons, which I think in my father's case was certainly the case, that they were to make sure that didn't occur when their children came along.
JC I am interested that that attitude which I was very familiar with was still so strong in the late 1950's. How much longer did you think it lasted among North-east families?
MO I don't really know. I suppose I grew up with that background and therefore I was going to make sure that my children got the advantage that I got, had been given as well. And by the time my children went to university, obviously we had to pay out more. They didn't get the total fees that we had, and the student grants came in by the time they were at university and things if they wanted to apply to be a student..
JC In your day you didn't have a grant, you had a small bursary and you did not have to pay fees.
MO No, and I think the thing is that you just didn't pay anything. Nothing at all.
JC So did your parents support you or did you have to work in holidays?
MO Oh, yes. No. my parents never asked me to work, but sometimes I think one summer I was asked if I would like and I took this job in the "Uptown" baths selling tickets for the galas that were held in the summer. Another, the second year at university two of my friends went to Pwllheli, Butlins Holiday Camp and were barmaids, which was great!
JC Lovely, great fun!
MO And there was one summer when, I think, we were about 4th year, they used to, through the British Medical Association , advertise what they called clerkships, where you could go to any hospital throughout Britain and what you did was you sort of were able to sit in on clinics with consultants, you were given patients and you were able to take a history from the patient, which was actually put into the hospital notes at that time and then I don't think they do this now, but by the time we got into 5th and 6th year, you were actually allowed to do what was called Locums for the House Doctors in the ward. In other words you did their job, you couldn't sign official documents, like death certificates and things, and you could actually prescribe drugs, although they had to be checked, but more official things, you couldn't sign. You could go along and say that somebody was dead, but somebody else had to sign the death certificate! We got paid £1!
JC What per certificate or per week or ..?
MO No that was our salary, £1.
JC For the whole period that you did it?
MO Yes! It was usually something like a week or two weeks, because at that time, the Resident in the wards had to pay for living in the hospital, now they had to live in the hospital at that time, so they had to pay, so they regarded that as we were doing their Locum we had to pay as well and they gave us a pound and that was it! People won't believe that we got £1! But then we regarded it all as experience.
JC Absolutely and I imagine it was quite stiff competition to get one of these positions wasn't it?
MO Yes, if you knew somebody or if you had been in that ward as a group of students and the Consultant sort of knew that you were reasonable, then they were quite happy to have you there. But it was usually the Resident that was working in the ward and would come and ask one of us if we would be willing to do it, so it meant that you had to stay in and attend your classes as well, but stay in or forget about your classes if they were classes you had during the day if you were doing the job. Sometimes you did it during the holidays and things like that.
JC So all the earning opportunities you had were all sort of kind of pocket money but basically your board and lodging were provided by your parents. Presumably they had to buy books and things for you. So that was really quite a commitment for parents with five kids in those days? Good for them. You lived, I think you told me, in Old Aberdeen, so what would have been your schooling pattern before you came up?
MO Well the thing is that my father was Catholic, so at primary school I went to what was in Nelson Street, St. Peter's Primary School, and from there I went to the Central School, which wasn't a Catholic School and there was a bit of debate about that, but my father was adamant that I was going to go …
JC Because it was the best academically?
MO Well, it was non-fee paying, for one thing, and it was a very good academic school. You obviously had to, at that time you sat the Control exam which became the 11Plus, so it depended on how you, what you achieved in that, as to whether you actually got in or not. So obviously I put my name, well my name was put forward and I did get the result that was necessary to get in and I was in the A class, as the classes were grades A, B, C, D, depending on how you had done in the Control exam.
JC So it was a fiercely competitive school?
MO Yes.
JC And the area now called the Academy was it?
MO Well it became Aberdeen Academy when I was a 4th year pupil at the school.
JC And it is a shopping mall now!
MO And it is a shopping mall.
JC How the mighty have fallen!
MO Yes, that was my old school.
JC You mentioned that your father was a Catholic, you said specifically, was your mother not?
MO No. My mother was Scottish Presbyterian and I think that at the time she married my father they had to convert or say that their children would be brought up as Catholics, but my father, obviously the education overcame the, because the priest actually came to the house and tried to persuade my father not to send me.
JC Where would you have gone if it was otherwise?
MO What is now St. Josephs, but it was the Convent School then, an all girls school, run by the nuns at the convent, but in the same place as St. Joseph's is now.
JC But presumably would not have given such a good academic education..?
MO Well I don't know. It definitely didn't. The schools in Aberdeen that were the best academically for girls would have been the school I went to which was like boys and girls but from anywhere in the town and as long as your ability was okay and it was non-fee paying and then the Grammar School was part fee-paying as was the Girls' High School and Gordon's College was only for boys at that time, so that there was the only one other school for girls, you would get some help from the local council if you went to the High School, but otherwise it would have been totally fee-paying and obviously my parents couldn't have afforded that!
JC Just sticking for a minute with the religious issue and not wanting to be intrusive, but were you conscious at the school of other Catholics around or did you feel isolated?
MO No, not really. I mean there was no one else in my class who was a Catholic and I was told that at first, not by the school by any means, but by I think the church as such, that I mustn't attend the Bible class. So I used to sit at the front of the class and listen to everything that was going on, but I went to morning assembly and things as that was all part of the social of being at the school and I began to think "wait a minute, these are all my friends and things, what difference does it make", but again at that time, like in our street I think we were, I think there was maybe one other Catholic family and although we went to a different school in Primary School nobody talked about that, everybody just played together and mixed together. Certainly up in this part of the world it was not the sort of thing that made a difference.
JC That's interesting and interesting that you remember it so clearly. Did it become, just staying again with the religious issue for a minute, did it become that any stage an issue in your medical career. Or perhaps you didn't remain a Catholic?
MO No, because I think by that time I had just stopped. My father obviously asked one Sunday if I was coming to the church and I said "NO" and that was it and he didn't make any difference to me.
JC At what age?
MO I think I would be have been about 16 or so.
JC So by the time you were into medicine you didn't have any issues about that. Because I imagine in the 1960's it was quite difficult for some people at least.
MO But no it didn't make any difference and again once one was a student it didn't really make any difference. I mean there were people, obviously, certainly some people from abroad who were Catholic, there were people who were Muslim, I mean we had people who were from well what was then Ceylon and is now Sri Lanka, who were obviously Hindu, and I mean we all kind of mixed and talked about various things and …
JC It was a topic of interest was it when you were a student? Peoples religious and philosophical backgrounds.
MO Yes. You obviously hadn't met a lot of other people from these other religions being up in this part of the country and I mean there were not a lot of foreign people in Aberdeen at that time. Most of the foreign people were students.
JC I think that was still true, you know, when I first came. A lot of Mauritians I seem to remember.
MO Oh we had somebody from Mauritius in our class as well.
JC So moving on to university. You came up with your Bursary and you stayed at home all the time when you were a student except when you had to live in the hospital residence.
MO Well when we were medical students the Hall of Residence, at Foresterhill, was for medical students, we had to stay there for a number of weeks while we were doing our Obstetrics, so we could be called up at night to help with deliveries and things. I don't think they do that anymore.
JC But you didn't have to have or have the choice of staying at any other …
MO No there were no Halls of Residence in those days.
JC No there were no halls built of course.
MO I think the first Hall of Residence, The Crombie Hall, was maybe when I was about 4th year, a 4th year medical student, which would probably be into the 1959/60's sort of time. Everyone thought this was amazing when we took, you know, I played hockey, and when we took the people from Edinburgh here they thought this is a hall for men and women! And you have a Union for men and women!
JC Aberdeen was unusual in that respect, wasn't it?
MO Yes, we were.
JC Was it easy being a medical student whilst still living at home. Did you get time and space to study?
MO Yes, no problem. Even when I had younger brothers and sisters there was no problems. Then I think in my first couple of years, because we had friends doing other subjects as well and because I was so near King's College, I used to go down in the evenings to the Library in King's College and sometimes sit and study there.
JC What was the pattern of one's study? You started at King's did you, doing your pre-medical studies, did you?
MO Well we started, we did Chemistry in the Chemistry building, which I think was the only building there at the time and which had been our local swing park! So it was kind of ..so we did Chemistry in the Chemistry building , and we did Botany in the Cruickshank Building and we did Physics at Marischal and Zoology at Marischal and that was our first year and that was the 4 subjects in our first year, Physics, Chemistry, Botany and Zoology.
JC And you were running up and down the road between King's and Marischal were you?
MO Yes, well in the morning, depending, certain mornings we started off with Chemistry so it gave us a chance, because in the middle of the morning we would nip over to Elphinstone Hall where the students had their coffee and things and mix with our colleagues in Arts and Sciences and things. Of course we could see… a lot of the Arts students wore the red togas and they would be sitting on the green grass and things, but no medical students ever wore togas!
JC You were too serious!
MO I always thought it was great and I was a bit disappointed that medical students didn't wear the toga. So we were part of the university as well as being medical students and then some mornings we would obviously start off with Physics and then we would be able to go to the Union you know and mix with people there and then the Botany was out, as I say, in the building at King's, out at St. Machar Drive there and again, so we sort of mixed back and fore.
JC Yes the whole University I suppose was under 2,000 students then, wasn't it, so you must have known everybody, or everybody you wanted to know.
MO There were so many of our friends who had gone and done other subjects and through them we got to know to know students and of course before you started there was the same Freshers' Week like there is now and there were dances and things and you met up with students who were doing Forestry and people who were doing science subjects and a lot of your friends introduced you to people they had met up with who were doing the same as them, so in that way we sort of kept up and I think, I suppose because we were local and we had a lot of friends who were doing other subjects, you know some people said "you medics, you get so isolated once you go up to Foresterhill" and we thought "no" we are not going to do this and there was a bus at that time ran from outside, just across in front of Marischal College where there were a lot of shops, including Massies, which was a sort of furniture shop, and the bus left there after lunchtime and drove us up to Foresterhill, so I sometimes used to go home for my lunch, from Foresterhill, and we would come back up to Marischal College to get the bus up and the bus was crowded because people would come down to the Union to mix with others to have their lunch and things and then go back up in the bus and we decided that we were definitely going to do so we wouldn't be detached from our colleagues!
JC I am interested that you thought of it as a potential problem and that you ..
MO Well some people started to say that once the medics go up the way you forget that you are separate from us, so we decided right we will show we are not going to be separate, we are all one! Although there was a place for us to have coffee up there, there was no real place for us to have lunch. There was a café across the road from the front gate of the hospital, which was run by two ladies and was called the Gates Café. Now you could actually get a very nice lunch there and we did on occasion, when we were in 5th and 6th year, go there, but most times we went home, if it was suitable, or down to the Union so that we could meet up and have a chat with our other friends and the boys played snooker and then we all got onto the bus and got up to Foresterhill. So that was quite fun.
JC So the fact that the medical class as such was predominantly weighted in favour of men, as I imagine it was then.
MO Although our one wasn't too bad, there were quite a big proportion of women.
JC What was the rough proportions?
MO Well I just can't remember now and I did count it up. I think there were certainly about 60 of us graduated and I think of those, coming up for 30 were women.
JC So you were coming on to half and half.
MO Yes, we were coming up .. there was about 28 to 30 of us were women and I think this is why we felt, excuse me, but why shouldn't go to this dinner?
JC Yes, and you were precluded to going to the final medical dinner. Ludicrous isn't it?
MO Yes. Up until then there had been no comment, people just accepted it and the women went and had their own little.. but then there was just such a small group of them.
JC Why was your year a bigger intake of women? Had the rules changed or was it just chance or ….
MO Maybe just chance, I am not sure.
JC And I suppose the other characteristic of your group of students was that you were very predominantly local, Aberdeen and near by.
MO Aberdeen and round the North-east here.
JC Traditional recruitment area.
MO And as I say another eight of them were Scottish. There were two from the Isles, two from Carluke and somebody else that sort of thing, but the majority of them were from this North-east, you know, Buckie, Fraserburgh, places like that, Stonehaven and the rest, the majority from Aberdeen. And as I say I think it was unusual but in my class there were six girls from the Central School, from Aberdeen Academy and four of them were from my class, you know my one class! So I though that was really, that was a unusual I think.
JC One of the things I notice about medical students when I first came here a little bit later was how prominent they were in student affairs. You know student politics, the Union and so on. Was that true in your day?
MO Yes. I think so. Everybody in the class, men and women, but everybody either took some form of sport and a lot of them, including myself, you know, either were the Captain of a team or something eventually. Certainly two or three of my friends were in the Union and the SRC, some were in the British Medical Students Association and certainly the Student Show.
JC So you were all pretty active students.
MO I think people just decided that this was just what university was all about. It wasn't just about you know studying it was also about participating in the sort of the life of the University and I think that was very much to the fore, you know, you went down on a Friday and bought Gaudie and you discussed what was in Gaudie, the student magazine. You know, you were determined that you were going to take part. It was a bit like, recently, I was down to the Torcher and I was really disappointed this year, but the thing is, that was another thing. This was part of being a student. You must go out on Charities Day and we all got dressed up. We all made our own costumes, and of course at that time you walked up and down Union Street on a Saturday, all day and collected money and I mean this was a big thing. If you lived locally while the holidays were on, you went round the schools. There was the school collection, so you did that, maybe for a week and then on the Charities Day, there were those who were in the show and they came out in the Charities morning some of them and they would go to the at night, and then in the evening you walked a much longer route than you walk now, with the Torcher. And at that time you were shaking your can all the time and you would chase somebody up Union Street just to get a penny!
JC That of course is completely different.
MO Totally different. When I was a medical student first it was only the University of Aberdeen that did the Charities and then they gradually took in the other Colleges and things, but when I was a student it was only the University of Aberdeen that did it.
JC And it must have been great fun actually!
MO It was, it was just great fun. I think having been a child in Aberdeen, you know it was "here is your money to go and see the students" and you would think "Oh wait until I am a student"… So it was. And we used to spend a long time, and made our outfits. I remember one year, the first year I went, I was dressed as a Red Indian and I sewed all these beads on to this costume and things and then another year I was a rabbit and I made this thing with a great tail. My friends and I decided that everybody stayed on Union Street, and we thought, right we are going to go up Rosemount an catch these people up there and we went all the way up Rosemount Viaduct right up and came down Esslemont Avenue back onto the top of Union Street and we were standing outside one of the shops, I think it was Bells Antiques it was, at the top of Union Street, and this man came puffing up with this small child and he said "Thank goodness you have stopped. We have been chasing this rabbit all the way from Rosemount."
JC You were hopping along too quickly!
MO That was how keen people were, but I suppose times have changed and it is maybe not so easy to do these things now.
JC Well it is different in many ways. We talked about your first year classes, so coming back from all the socialising, which sounds great, to the sort of academic side. After first year at what stage did you move up to Foresterhill and begin doing things there?
MO Well you see first year you had an examination and if you passed that exam you then went into second year, and second year was then mainly Marischal College, in fact it was all at Marischal College. You did Anatomy, Physiology and Bio-chemistry and that was all at Marischal College. Now you did that for a year and like up until the Easter of the next year.
JC So by then you were a third year student?
MO You were into third year, so that at the end of the Easter term, you know, it would have been the term from January until March/April, then you sat what was called the second professional exam and that was in Anatomy, Physiology and Bio-chemistry and it was then after that for the Summer term that you started up at Foresterhill.
JC Right, so you first saw a patient as it were at a hospital situation as it were ..
MO At the end of our third year.
JC Did that probe difficult for some students, I mean, did some drop out at that point or feel they had made wrong choices, because up till then it had all been classroom based hadn't it?
MO I think that the vast majority of students we lost was at the second professional, with people who failed. There were a couple of people, funnily enough, opted out just before we went down to the Anatomy. They went down the night before to have a look and decided that they couldn't possible do it, because we actually dissected every day for all that year and a bit, we went down, and we were so keen we went down on a Saturday morning as well!
JC So there was huge emphasis on Anatomy within the curriculum. Was that in any peculiar to Aberdeen because of the influence of Lockhart, or was it normal in a medical course.
MO I think it was normal at that time in a medical course, I think that was just the done thing and the thing is that, you know, you had junior and senior students, because of being over two years, you shared. At one table you had the junior students were doing one part and the senior students were doing the more complicated parts, so you got to know them as well. It was also, this is a terrible thing to say, but it was also a social experience, and I must admit with Professor Lockhart, I mean there was great dignity given to the dissection to these people who had donated …..
JC No larking around?
MO No, absolutely not! And we regarded them with great respect, although you know you often had, part of your conversation which had nothing to do with your dissection was often, there was a bit of laughter and things, but I don't think you could have coped with the situation if you hadn't made light of it in certain ways, but the actual dissection was very, you know, we wouldn't have dared, I mean we were made by Professor Lockhart to think these people had generously donated their bodies and we must treat them with respect and apart from one occasion on which Professor Lockhart came in and found something rather bad going on at which we were all appalled ourselves and the person got an absolutely dressing down and never did it again, it was just a mistake. We would never ever have treated them any other way but with great respect and I mean we had to make sure that we preserved them every night and covered them up and treated them properly and when the Junior ones came and they weren't behaving then the Senior students told them "Come on!"
JC Quickly stepped on them.
MO Yes. So you know it was a great learning experience, as well as learning all about Anatomy it was also a learning experience in many other ways. It was learning to live together with other people in a situation which was very difficult sometimes.
JC So how old would you have been when you were doing that? You would have come up at what, a 17 year old, an 18 year old?
MO Yes probably just getting on for 19.
JC Because some people came in quite a bit younger didn't they?
MO Well as I say with the 6 of us who came up, four of us were from 6th year at school, but the other two were from 5th year at school, so they would have been a year younger than me.
JC You mentioned Lockhart as being a fairly prominent teacher, were there other teachers who registered strongly with you?
MO Yes, well I think there was somebody in just about every year. The person who obviously we met first because we… he was the one that told us about all what was going to happen when we came the first day was a Doctor Roy Strathdee.
JC Oh the chap after whom the OTC building was named?
MO Yes, well he was very involved with that, but he got involved with us in a very personal way. He wanted to make sure if there was anything we weren't sure about, if there was anything we wanted to speak to him about. At that time I had always tried to learn to swim and I couldn't swim and he asked if there were any people in the class who couldn't swim to come and speak to him and he arranged these swimming classes over at the University swimming pool, certain mornings and they were just for the people who couldn't swim and I went to these classes.
JC Why did he think that it would be important for would-be doctors?
MO Well he just felt that they should take advantage and that was one of the things maybe. I mean there were people that we heard about who were characters, I mean, even the person who took us for Botany, who was the professor there, I mean, we didn't see so much of him, but we heard a lot about him. There was the man who was the student medical doctor, that was Dr. Macklin.
JC Was he the one who had been on a Polar Expedition?
MO Yes, he had been with Shackleton to the South Pole, so we thought this was great, we have this man, and he was such a nice man.
JC Presumably being medics you all had to have a medical examination did you?
MO We all had to have a medical exam and if we hadn't . you know we were all tested for tuberculosis because at that time the BCG vaccine was not given in schools and things and at that time if we obviously hadn't had tuberculosis then we got this Mon 2 test we were then given BCG and obviously in time we were going down to places like the City Hospital and places like that where we would be seeing patients with TB and things like that so to make sure that you were protected as far as possible, but he was a great character. He was very nice to us all.
JC Who were the sort of professionally outstanding people among those who taught you in those days. I don't know?
MO Well I would have certainly Roy Strathdee and I mean certainly Professor Lockhart and then there was Dr. Gilbert Hamilton who was the senior lecturer in the Anatomy Department and I mean he was much more "dour" I suppose I would have put it, but it was just because professor Lockhart was always the one that everybody had heard about, but he was a wonderful man and stayed in the Old Town, that house next to where the Post Office is and the lane, the house between.
JC The house where the Shepherds now live.
MO He was a lovely man, I liked him very much.
JC Was there very much coming and going between the students and those who taught them. For example were you socially entertained by them?
MO No, Professor Lockhart seemingly, but you had to know about this, but at New Year his house was kind of open ..
JC To anybody?
MO And if you wanted to come, but you know some people only heard from people they knew who had been senior medical students , but that seemingly was a very common thing for people just to knock on Professor Lockhart's door and they were just accepted in. I don't think there was so much coming and going between people but from that point of view, of after hours as it were, but you know they would come to certain things and there were certain things maybe in the department where there would be a little talk or a meeting and then they would come and speak to you afterwards and when they were teaching you they would come round and speak to you, especially down the "Drain" as it was called, in the Anatomy department. I mean the lecturers would come and speak to you and at that time we had, you know, they seemed so much older than us, but they were obviously young men who were ….
JC We are now on side two of the tape and we were just discussing the degree of social interaction between seniors and juniors and trained staff and students and as I have got the picture it wasn't, everything was very friendly within the context of teaching, but there wasn't any, or there was very little extra-mural contact between students and those who taught them.
MO Not in their own homes and things but occasionally you know there would be at certain student functions people would be there and certainly during the teaching session people would come and ask you how you were getting on and things like that and if you had any problems they would ask you to come and speak it out with them and things like that.
JC Did you have a formal Regent, or Adviser or somebody like that?
MO No.
JC You did not. That was a later invention. Did you have any sort of mentor who told you how to behave as a medic?
MO I think that it was each time that we went to a different you know, when we went to Anatomy obviously Professor Lockhart took us. Funnily enough somebody was just saying the other day "Do you remember when Professor Lockhart would say, he called the Register every morning he gave a lecture, he called the register, and it was always some of the boys who weren't there" and he would say "Right I will be speaking to your mother about all this"
JC And he would have done probably!
MO Yes. But you know he was very much the sort that in spite of the fact that you would have thought he was away above worrying about you as a person it was amazing how somebody like him often sussed something out and it was amazing for somebody who seemed so high and mighty to us could actually have a good laugh, you know, could see the funny side of something we were doing or something and we would be thinking "Oh he is going to say something about us" and he would come and have a good laugh at this, as long as we were behaving and doing the right things and doing our work. I don't think we had anything to fear from anybody, we felt everybody was on the whole reasonably fair. If anything went wrong for us it was often because it was our own fault and we just hadn't bothered to go to speak to somebody and get advice and things, but on the whole I wouldn't have had any real complaints about anybody.
JC No prima donnas among the consultants?
MO No. I wouldn't have so, not until you went up to the hospital! There were one or two there!
JC Of course you were presumably taught by consultants who were not actually members of the University, they only held Honorary status.
MO Some. I mean obviously some of our lecturers were., well most of our lecturers were University and many of those obviously taught us, because the University Medicine Department had a ward, the University Surgery Department had a ward, the University Department, of what was at that time called Materia-Medica, and then Materia-Medica and Therapeutics they had a ward and the Gynaecology people did clinical work as well and they had a ward, so they taught us clinical work as well as lecturing to us.
JC So it wasn't a division in the sense that once you started doing ward rounds and things …..
MO No, you were often seeing the same person who lectured to you in the morning. I mean even the professor did clinical work.
JC And thinking of that structure within the hospital, how did this effect patients. I mean did people vie to be on the University wards or not to be if they were coming in for operations?
MO No, I don't think so.
JC Or perhaps they weren't even conscious of it?
MO Well I think the thing is that because it was a University hospital and I think in this area at that time patients realised it was a teaching hospital and as such they knew that they were maybe having going to see students and didn't really on the whole really bother. I mean whereas now you know I mean a lot of people complain they don't want to see students.
JC Is that so? I didn't know that.
MO Or they have to ask "is it all right for you to see students?"
JC And people actually refuse, do they?
MO Oh yes, there was only the very, very odd one sometimes who refused to see students, but a lot of them just said "No we don't mind, I mean this is a teaching hospital, we don't mind"
JC Get on with it. But that would in the structure that you have described that would have only applied only, would it, to patients who were in the University's wards?
MO No, in all the wards.
JC It applied to all the wards.
MO You see at lot of the NHS people had what were called Honorary Consultant posts, in other words because they were teaching students and the vast majority of them, even the junior staff taught students. I mean, certainly in surgery, most of our teaching would have been done by the Senior Registrars or in the University ward, the Surgical ward, most of the teaching would have been done by the Junior Consultants or the Senior Registrars, who were probably the ones who were doing the most practical surgery anyway.
JC And at what stage did you yourself begin to decided what line you wanted to pursue in medicine after you had graduated?
MO Well after I graduated, well I think the thing is, that while I was a student I had this idea that I would like to be a surgeon, but I think it was just hopeless in those days.
JC Would that have been unusual and difficult would it?
MO Oh very, very difficult. I think even by the time I graduated there would have only been one from Aberdeen who had been about four years ahead of us who had gone into Surgery and I think the initial women who went into surgery that you heard about went into things like ENT and Plastic Surgery and there are still very few general surgeons. I think there is at least one in General Surgery in Aberdeen if not two, but you will find more in things like eyes, Ophthalmology, ENT, but I mean most of the surgeons at Foresterhill are male.
JC What is the reason for that, is it sheer prejudice, is it tradition, is it simply that the surgeons need exceptionally strong hands?
MO Well I think at one time it was thought that women wouldn't be able to cope with this sort of thing
JC What with the emotional strain you mean?
MO Well I think this idea of some of the things maybe you saw. As students you know once you got into the 5th and 6th year, if you were attached to a ward you were expected to go along on the receiving evening and if there was any special cases you also went into theatre and stood and watched what was going on and I remember one of the consultants, who in no way put down women, but it was some breast surgery that was being done and he said to me "Are you all right?" and I said "Yes", because ...but I think you know me being a woman watching an operation like this did it not make me feel "oh my goodness", but it didn't because you just accepted this was part of the system, but I think there was still this idea that women maybe would be able to put up with this sort of thing, or that women wouldn't be strong enough to be able to put up with standing there for hours on end at night, if you were called up at night and doing a full surgical list at night into the early hours of the morning and then coming back the next morning and having to get on with it again. I think in those days women were still regarded as the weaker sex!
JC This is the 1960's we are talking about!
MO Yes. Well this was it, it was just the beginning and I think it still has taken a long time. I think partially that women thought there is no point, it is going to be a struggle, but then I think as women thought, "Wait a minute, if we can struggle and get there in the end", but you know it just wasn't so. So I sort of gave up that idea and that I would much prefer to be more orientated towards medicine, general medicine, and then of course I met my husband when I was a Houseman in the ward and I did my medical house job in the professorial unit.
JC So was Derek someone who taught you when you were still a student?
MO Yes.
JC So you knew him as someone who taught you before you became friendly with him personally. And that also had helped to draw you in the direction of being a Physician rather than a Surgeon.
MO But then it was very difficult because at that … now you go from being a Junior House doctor to being a Senior House Officer and from Senior House Officer when you sit various exams you go to being a Specialist Registrar and then as Specialist Registrar you go on to do more training and sit your final exam in whatever speciality and you are then available to become a Consultant. Now when I was a House Doctor there were no such things as Senior House Officers, so I think what happened then is you just went on to be a Junior Registrar in a ward and it was very difficult to get a job.
JC How did you make that jump in fact then? How did one make that jump?
MO Well you just had to apply. Somebody like Audrey Dawson for instance she went down to the Hammersmith Hospital in London.
JC Simply to get a position?
MO Yes. I mean a lot of people left Aberdeen to get a position and then a lot of them when they got their membership and that in those days then came back to Aberdeen to be a Senior Registrar to train and then it took them quite a time to get a Consultant's post, because at that time there were no new Consultant posts being created and it was a case of waiting or somebody to go or to somebody..
JC Waiting for dead men's shoes.
MO So I mean even when I was a student there were very few female doctors in the hospital, senior doctors…there was Audrey Dawson and Elizabeth Priest, who was out at Woodend, also a general physician, were in the medical side. That was all there was in the medical side and in the surgical side there was Nina Gillan, I can't remember her name then, but she was ENT and I think there some people in Ophthalmology, there was maybe two women in Ophthalmology and I mean there were certainly no women surgeons. So you know that is how difficult it was for people to go on. A lot of people went into General Practice.
JC I was just going to say, so most of them women went out into General Practice.
MO General Practice or I think the other one was Psychiatry.
JC I wouldn't have thought of that as a big option.
MO Well it begun to be the thing where it was easier for women to do that. The other point was that in our day if you got married it was very difficult to find something that would fit in.
JC The hours would be very difficult, yes, and presumably no effort on the part of the authorities to make the hours easier.
MO And so as I say a lot of women… and at that time you could go straight into General Practice, whereas now you have to do a course before you actually go in as a sort of junior person into a practice and you work up to be a partner or something. But at that time you went straight in as a junior person to a general practice ands they sort of trained you up there. There was no training, you went straight into general practice!
JC And in those days how did you become a GP? Did GP's simply advertise that they had a vacancy? And you just applied. Rather like lawyers apply for people to be apprentices.
MO Yes, and they would take you, you know if the GP was on call at night he would take you on call with him or he would take on call doing his rounds and you would gradually be .. you would maybe take clinics. I didn't do that, I know from my friends that did, that was the sort of things. Some people went into to Junior GP and came back and you could do like a job in Obstetrics and sit this Diploma in Obstetrics and that was helpful if you were going to take on that side in general practice and some of them did Anaesthetics, so that if you were in a practice out in the country or somewhere where they might have done certain things.
JC So which was your own career path, I don't know?
MO Well the thing is that at first as I say it was a bit difficult for me, and Derek and I got married the year after I graduated, and then a job became available as a Research Fellow in the Medicine Department and for three years I was a Heart Foundation Research Fellow in the Medicine Department and then Derek got this MRC Research Fellowship in the United States for a year.
JC So you both had to pack up and go there.
MO So I went with him. Fortunately Derek went to work for this Professor Ragnoff in Cleveland, Ohio, and Professor Ragnoff was the man who discovered one of the coagulation factors in the blood, called Factor 12, the Hageman factor after the man who he had found the deficiency in. So we went to work for him and although I didn't have any scholarship to go there he was quite happy to let me work alongside Derek in his department as well. So I worked for nothing.
JC So you were an unpaid research doctor!
MO Which was very good for me.
JC Well good experience, but it would have been nice to have some pay too!
MO So we worked that for a year and when we came home I started my family and so it was after my children were at school that I was asked by Professor Douglas who was the then Professor of Medicine if I would come back and help with this research job that he was doing, which was the association with lots of centres both in Britain and the United States with people who had heart attacks and they were doing a trial of drugs, so I did that for about 3 years. Which was really very interesting and I got to do partially clinical, seeing the patients, I was the only one who was seeing them, so they were my patients.
JC They were relating to you.
MO I really enjoyed that, and it was taking blood, and doing research and then going to meetings and things which was quite good and then after that it just sort of led on to the job that sort I have been doing all the time which was, which unfortunately didn't have any clinical work attached to it although it is clinical data collection that I do. Audrey Dawson and Bruce Bennett were doing this and the person doing it was leaving and they asked if I would be prepared to do it. So that's what I have been doing.
JC So you must have been an early one into the computerised methods and so on.
MO Well the thing is that I didn't have … I was forgathering all the date collection, a bit like you, although I was physically going collecting the data and at that time writing it and putting it down.
JC Somebody else was putting it on the computer!
MO It was on a centralised computer as there wasn't much in the way of individual, I mean all the computers were just you know the sort of more for the secretaries using instead of a typewriter. I mean all that has come in since, I think I am just at the end of that, I have stayed on longer as they can't get anybody else to do it and I think they are a bit worried about somebody else doing it.
JC So you have not retired yet!
MO I think I will be at the end of the year though! The secretary said the other day "My you will be still be here when you are 70" and I said "No, No"
JC Why not!
MO But you know I mean I quite enjoy it and I think now it is not so easy to get people who are willing and it is easier for the women now to go back, because they come back to work, they go off to have their children and of course get all this maternity leave and things, they come back and they get to come back part-time.
JC Yes a bit more flexibility about hours now.
MO There was just no way you had to work full-time or no way at all and I think the only one where you could have a bit of flexibility was something like General Practice, but I didn't fancy it at that time I just fancied hospital medicine and fortunately it wasn't to be but I really enjoyed the research side. I got a lot of enjoyment out of that and met a lot of patients anyway doing that.
JC So you didn't have the medical career you wanted but in a way you had one you couldn't have thought of when you started out. That is very interesting. Is there anything we haven't touched on that you think we ought to have done in reviewing your own career those days in medicine particularly when you were a student, but subsequently.
MO I suppose, but I see now amongst the students, it is the way we dressed! There is absolutely no way that any of …..
JC Would have appeared in trousers…
MO Suit, either a sports jacket and trousers and suit, a nice reasonable shirt and a dark tie and the girls, a dress or a skirt, no trousers, definitely no trousers.
JC How was that enforced? Did somebody tell you not to wear trousers or didn't it occur to you to do so?
MO It was just more or less told you that you were expected to appear reasonably dressed and looking at the person who was facing you who was reasonably dressed and when you went to the ward… and of course the nurses in those days all wore a uniform which was a dress and a hat, an apron, and all the consultants who came to the ward all wore their white coat and they all wore a collar and tie and a suit so that was how and especially when you appeared for an exam and when you went to a patient it was regarded that you know that you should look the part when you went to see a patient.
JC I think that is still true today at least to an extent. I don't think they encourage …
MO They don't wear white coats anymore. We didn't wear white coats as a student , now the students wear white coats and the Consultants don't! Doctors don't.
JC So in your day it was the opposite, the students were in civvies as it were and the Consultants were in white coats. When did that change then?
MO Well I think the thing is when I went back to work in about 1980, the first thing I had to get was a white coat, as it is very handy for carrying things about in, you know your stethoscope in your pocket, now you see they wear their stethoscope round their neck, which I don't like, it looks kind of … I like the stethoscope in your pocket! Women didn't tend to have pockets, but anyway I suppose, now what were we talking about, I have sort of lost the track…
JC Well you were talking really about dress codes, when wearing white coats came in and out ..
MO Well I think the thing was that when I went back to work in 1980 as I said I had to have a white coat and I suddenly realised that one or two people … the patients all said to me, "It was nice to see you wearing a white coat because we knew who you were" and I thought they always wore white coats. But then I began to look and see that some people were not wearing white coats and some body told me that the reason for that is that the Psychiatrists don't, well when I was a student the Psychiatrists did wear white coats, but the Psychiatrists thought that wearing white coats created a barrier, and that down at Sick Children's, where I had done a surgical job down at Sick Children's, and again we all wore white coats, but they thought it wasn't the done thing to wear white coats as the children might be frightened. I thought "well they weren't frightened in my day!" But the thing is that I think it then became that more and more started to think "This is a barrier", but I thought that the patients that I saw thought that it was the very opposite because they could tell who I was. The funny thing was that, this was some years after I had graduated and things, and I went down to visit a relative in Cornhill with my sister and although all the wards were not locked by that time, when you left at night, we had be talking for quite a while, and when we left at night we couldn't get out! The door of the ward was locked! And I said to my sister "Who do we ask?" because everybody looked the same, the patients, the nurses, the doctors and we just said "Ennie, Meenie, Mo…" and chose somebody!
JC Luckily it was a nurse!
MO And it was a nurse, yes! And I mean I can see maybe why a white coat creates a barrier but I do find still, I still wear a white coat when I am going from ward to ward as I sometimes have to go and ask for notes and I go to the Pathology department I find that by walking along the corridor you see all these people coming along, who is that these people ask the way, etc., it is me, because I am in a white coat!
JC Absolutely. I was going to ask you something else though about your student days and that is how students were addressed, you know Miss so and so and Mr. so and so or were you addressed by your first name?
MO I think we were always addressed as Mister, or Miss.
JC That's interesting.
MO I think the boys were always addressed by their surnames, but the girls were always addressed as Miss.
JC So you were Miss so and so but the boys might just be given their surname.
MO Yes. Birnie, or Douglas or whatever.
JC That's a surprise because that is not a very strong Scottish tradition it is much more an English thing, isn't it? And you spoke to the staff always in terms of their titles.
MO Yes, we would always say "Good morning Professor" or Doctor..
JC But never a first name? You were never on first names with the staff.
MO No, except if you were with some of the Junior staff who were students with you or personal friends, but never in front of anybody else. Today this is something that I still find that I do. The Sister in the ward, even as a House Doctor, you called her Sister, and Nurse whatever her name was, in the ward, although you might have been socially friendly with them and you would have called them by their name outside.
JC Jenny outside, but in the ward Sister..
MO And they always called you Doctor. The Sister, although I was probably half her age, always called me Doctor, even when I was the Junior Doctor in the Ward.
JC Just Doctor, or Doctor so and so?
MO Doctor.
JC Just Doctor.
MO When I was in the ward she would call me Doctor, you know as everybody knew I was a doctor, I was Doctor Clarke then .
JC But it was interesting that she called you Doctor, and not Doctor Clarke.
MO Yes, and in the same way she would have said "Nurse" to the nurse and they would have said "Sister" to her in that way and the same if Matron came in it would have been "Matron'" that is just how you would have called them. And there was still a Matron then.
JC More formal days in some ways weren't they then?
MO Formal but at the same time ..
JC Useful
MO Very friendly, and that was what I said to somebody that when they speak about nurses now wanting to be more like doctors and this idea that was on the television the other night that nurses are too clever to look after you, that this should be sort of lesser people that should do all the nursing.
JC Care Assistants or something.
MO Yes, that they should be doing, now I would have said in my day that there were many things that nurses could have done that they weren't allowed to do, they could give intra- muscular injections but no intravenous injections, they couldn't put up drips, they couldn't do anything that was an invasive technique. They could give you a subcutaneous or an intra-muscular but nothing beyond that. Now most of them were very, very able to do that, but what I did like was, especially the Sister in the ward, if you as a Junior Doctor came up and had forgotten to wash your hands she would say, "Now Doctor the soap is in the corner there" meaning you haven't washed your hands! But she would never have said "You should be washing your hands" or she would never have got onto you in front of a patient in that way, it would always be done and you would have appreciated it because you knew that you were wrong and she was right! You would never have got on high dudgeon with "Who does she think she is" because you knew that she was more experienced than you and you appreciated that, and a good nurse was worth their weight in gold in those days, really!
JC I could imagine.
MO And because of that you didn't put them down, you worked with them as partners, and that is what I feel the situation has changed now.
JC It is more hierarchical in some funny ways, yes.
MO And I mean this idea that you know we are too good to do this or that some people think ,who do they think they are they are doing this. People were good at doing things and they could have really done much more in those days, but boy they looked after the patients and they looked after them well and they knew all their patients as well.
JC That is a very interesting observation actually because you know it would be the common assumption that things in the past were more hierarchical and less so now, but what you are saying is that in some ways it is exactly the opposite, isn't it?
MO But the thing is, that I was once so chuffed as a Junior Doctor when I went into the ward, because you were there all the time and you went round you were there and night, because in those days you actually worked 24 hours a day, 7 days a week and you got in six months if each of your House posts were 6 months, you did a Surgical House post and a Medical House post and in each of these 6 months you were allowed two weeks holiday plus any Statuary Holidays. You were not allowed nights off or days off or time off, the only way you were allowed time off was if you organised with your co-resident if, always at a time when there wasn't really much to do, they would look after your patients, but there would never be a call for you all night, say you were going out or you had to go somewhere as long as you were back before 8 or 9 at night they didn't have to cover for you all night and you did that for them or if they had to .. suppose they were wanting a passport and they had to go down and collect it, you would say "Alright go away and I will look after your patients", but that in your contract wasn't stated, that was a negotiated thing between you and your co-resident and as long as that was alright with your Consultant. If your Consultant had said "No way. I want you to look after my patients and I don't want any one else interfering" then you would have had to be there all the time. I mean my first, as I said to you, you had to pay for your Residency and you had to stay in the Hospital, even though you stayed in town, you had to stay in all the time in hospital and my first pay for my month's work was £32. I thought it was a fortune actually! But you got a lot of back up and if anything went wrong in the ward, whereas now there has to be all this writing down about anything that happens. Your Consultant was the one that was in charge and as such anything that you did wrong he took the responsibility so you knew you had back up from that point of view. They didn't leave you and said "Right it's your lookout. You are the one that is going to have to go along and what not.." And so as a result on the whole you never had these situations to face up to. You went along to the Consultant and got a dressing-down but if anything else came of it he dealt with it. It was his responsibility, your were his Junior staff. In a way it was like being an apprentice!
JC Yes. Well that has been fascinating.
MO One other thing I always so remember to this day was all the Surgeons were characters and we all knew about them and the things that had been handed down from one lot of Medical students to the other, there was this man called Sidney Davidson and I thought he was great because when I realised that my children were going to Ashley Road School, I found out that he had been at Ashley Road School, Audrey Dawson had been at Ashley Road School, but we were doing a clinic round a bed with him and he was saying that if this patient had stopped breathing that we would have to do a tracheotomy and he said "What would you do it with? "Come on, come on" he said "Where are your scissors?" We just looked at each other and he said "No body got a pair of scissors? Right any time I see you in the corridor I am liable to stop you and ask if you have your scissors. Now I mean that" I thought right "From then on I will always carry my scissors, and if he every stops me, I will say "Here are my scissors!" and I did from that day on. But there were things like that which were jokingly done but to impress upon you that when medical emergencies arose you had to be prepared!
JC Well very good teaching.
MO Well this is it and I think a lot of things that we were taught remained with us because they were taught to us in this sort of way. They weren't just taught out of a book they were taught with some story behind it or some example or something that happened to them as Medical students. I remember also once going to a clinic. It was the time of "Dr. Kildare" which I loved listening to and this patient came up and the Consultant said to me "Now what do you think about this patient?" and I said something and he said "Oh how did you know that" he said . I said "Oh I was listening to "Dr. Kildare" the other night.." and he said "I beg your pardon" and he burst out laughing! But he didn't say to me what rubbish! He thought this is great listening to "Dr. Kildare" ..
JC Lucky they got the script right!
MO But you know that was it and you learnt that these people became like icons and you held them up and you never forget them. Even when we have class reunions now and we have had so many with having all these foreign people in our class. We had two reunions in Aberdeen then we went to Vancouver, as a lot of our class emigrated to Canada and then we had the Quincentenary in Aberdeen then we went to Guernsey where one of our friends had been a GP, then we went to the Lake District because a lot of our people were in the North of England and the last time we went to Norway, to Oslo and this next one we are having down in Devon.
JC Good.
MO And after that we are coming back to Aberdeen. So we have all kept up and we all talk about these things, that's why I remember them so well, because we all talk about them and have a laugh and I think we really enjoyed our student days. Not only being a medical student, but being a student of Aberdeen University. Being involved in sporting things and things to do with the University and the hops that went on at the Students' Union, and over in the Mitchell Hall, and the Graduation Ball which was in the Mitchell Hall at that time, and things like that. We all thoroughly enjoyed it.
JC Well that is a very good note on which to end as I think we are going to run out of tape.
End of Interview.
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