At the Coalface: The memoir of a pit nurse
A heart-warming story of a woman who devoted her life to helping others. This is the memoir of Joan, who started nursing in the 1940s and whose experiences took her into the Yorkshire mining pits and through the tumult of the 1984-85 miners’ strike.Joan Hart always knew what she wanted to do with her life. Born in South Yorkshire in 1932, she started her nursing training when she was 16, the youngest age girls could do so at the time. She continued working after she married and her work took her to London and Doncaster, caring for children and miners.When she took a job as a pit nurse in Doncaster in 1974, she found that in order to be accepted by the men under her care, she would have to become one of them. Most of the time rejecting a traditional nurse’s uniform and donning a baggy miner’s suit, pit boots, a hardhat and a headlamp, Joan resolved always to go down to injured miners and bring them out of the pit herself.Over 15 years Joan grew to know the miners not only as a nurse, but as a confidante and friend. She tended to injured miners underground, rescued men trapped in the pits, and provided support for them and their families during the bitter miners’ strike which stretched from March 1984 to 1985.Moving and uplifting, this is a story of one woman’s life, marriage and work; it is guaranteed to make readers laugh, cry, and smile.
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HarperElement
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First published by HarperElement 2015
FIRST EDITION
© Joan Hart and Veronica Clark 2015
Cover layout design © HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd 2015
Cover photographs © Photograph of author supplied by author (Nurse); Selwyn Tait/Sygma/Corbis (background)
Joan Hart and Veronika Clark assert the moral right
to be identified as the authors of this work
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Source ISBN: 9780007596164
Ebook Edition © July 2015 ISBN: 9780007596171
Version: 2015-06-22
For my husband, Peter
Contents
11. Practical Jokers and Perfume
13. Medical Emergencies and Marriage Guidance
14. Chewing Tobacco and Cursing in Casualty
Dropping the telephone receiver back down into its cradle, I jumped to my feet and closed the door. My pale blue overall was still grubby with coal dust from my pit inspection the day before. I was a nurse on call, in charge of thousands of miners, and right now one of them needed me. I clamped the palm of my hand against my hard hat and ran along the pathway towards the lamp cabin. With my metal checks jangling inside my pocket, I grabbed my lamp, battery pack and self-rescuer canister, and clipped them onto the side of my belt. It was still early and grey clouds swirled overhead. The air was thick with industrial noise and the threat of immediate rain. My pit boots picked up pace as I dashed from the lamp cabin towards the shaft side where the doctor was already waiting. The noise from the winding house groaned and creaked as the giant drum turned and toiled inside. The fans spat out air thick with coal dust as an avalanche of noise hissed above our heads like a steam train.
‘Hello, Sister,’ Dr Macdonald called.
‘Hello, Doctor. I’ve brought the amputation kit,’ I shouted above the din as I held the bag aloft to show him.
‘Good. Are you all right?’
I nodded, although my heart was pounding with fear and adrenalin. My fingers trembled and the palm of my right hand was sweating as I clutched the handle of the surgical kit. It contained artery forceps, a tourniquet, sterile saw and knives of varying lengths. The thought of it alone made me sick with nerves, and I prayed that we wouldn’t have to use it.
We approached the banksman, who checked we were ready to go.
‘No flammables? No battery-operated devices?’ he asked as a matter of course.
Dr Macdonald and I shook our heads. We knew the safety drill. He opened up the cage and loaded us into it. We switched off our headlamps as he pulled down the chain-mail shutters, enveloping us in virtual darkness. I felt reassured by the blackness because I didn’t want Dr Macdonald to see the fear in my eyes. The cage rattled into life as we began our descent, hundreds of feet to the pit bottom below. Clouds of white steam billowed up around the edges, making it feel like a journey into the depths of hell.
‘What information do we have, Sister?’ Dr Macdonald asked.
I tried to remember what I’d just been told.
‘It’s a man, in his early twenties. He’d been riding on the conveyor belt at the end of his shift, but he didn’t manage to jump off in time. His leg got mangled in the machinery.’
‘Oh,’ replied Dr Macdonald, his voice cutting through the darkness.
‘It’s an amputation,’ I continued, ‘though I still don’t know if it’s partial or complete. The deputy and first aiders are with him now.’
Moments later, the cage shuddered and chains rattled as we came to a halt – we’d reached the pit bottom.
‘Ready, Sister?’ Dr Macdonald asked. He switched his headlamp back on and my face was illuminated in a circle of golden light.
I reached out a hand and switched on my lamp too. The white circle of light waltzed around on the pit wall opposite.
‘Ready,’ I replied as we stepped out of the cage.
