This was one of the few follow up interviews we were able to get to. Maryanne went back to talk to Miss Jarvis to get a little more detail about some of the material she’d discussed in the first interview.
After doing a few interviews together, we realized we could save a lot of time if we split up and did them by ourselves. But, of course, that meant that we would both be missing out on 50% of the new material. To solve that problem, we decided to transcribe each other’s interviews. Once we were able to hire a professional to transcribe the material, we simply read the print outs. There weren’t many of these in the end, which I think is a good thing, because the interview subject’s tone of voice as she described an incident was often as informative as the words themselves.
I transcribed this interview, and I note at the beginning of the transcription that I left quite a bit of tangential material on the tape. As it turned out, most of the material I avoided was covered by Muriel herself in her book, “Thin Pink Lines: My Life As A Nurse and Beyond.”
MARYANNE: I’d like you to feel reflective. You had stated in your interview “It was a good period of our lives, I think it taught us a lot.” Tell me what was it that prompted you to say that.
MURIEL: My guess one thing was to work together, even memories of my young brother, rocking the babies, and you know we had to help mum with housework and other things, I think respect for people coming into our home, some appreciation, I guess, of new life, the whole miracle of birth and new life is always kind of exciting.
MARYANNE: You had said that the boys would, if there was a woman there they would just walk by, so they had a sense of privacy.
MURIEL: I know some women said to mum, “Why don’t the children stop in?”
MARYANNE: Did they have a sense that this was a private thing?
MURIEL: Oh yeah, sure.
Maryanne comments that Muriel Jarvis’ story of the nursing home began with the death of her father. Muriel covered this period of her life in detail in her own book, so I’ll just summarize the basics here. (The full account is available on request to researchers.) Everett Jarvis died of Hodgkin’s Disease in 1927, at the age of 30. Esther had given birth to five children in seven years, and had nursed her husband at home through his final days. When he died, she was only 26 years old.
Using the life insurance money, she bought a large house in Kenaston, where she had grown up, so she could be close to her father and step-mother. Esther received a widow’s allowance of $16 a month but, even in those days, for a family of six, Muriel recalls, “it was very, very sparse.”
Initially, Esther hadn’t had any plans to offer nursing care from the big house she’d just bought. But in 1931, her sister asked her to look after her when her first baby came. Esther refused, certain she wouldn’t know what to do. She was persuaded to give it a try by the doctor and soon began accompanying him out to the farms, sometimes staying to care for the new mother. Gradually, she realized it would be better for her own children if she stayed home and the mother-to-be came to her instead.
At barely 30 years old, the age her husband had been when he died, Esther opened her home as a nursing home. She provided 24-hour care to labouring women and their newborns, watched over accident victims as they waited to be taken to hospital in Saskatoon, and offered palliative care to the dying.
Growing up in this environment, aware of the load on her mother’s shoulders, had a profound effect on Muriel, the eldest child.
MARYANNE: Did the nursing home bring in enough money then?
MURIEL: That’s what she managed on. The $16 didn’t last very long. It just lasted a few years. With the mother and the baby, she charged $2 a day. And there were a few that didn’t pay. I remember once she got a couple of scrawny chickens. I always remember one mother came with absolutely nothing for the baby. Mother scrounged around among her friends and came up with enough at least to send the baby home.
MARYANNE: Re the little pink line…Where was it?
MURIEL: Oh it was up through her chest, just a little pink. I think we were all ready to sing hallelujah. She was limp as limp could be. I think she was very white as I recall. If she was purply-blue we probably couldn’t have seen the pink. There probably was a blood vessel that was very close to the surface on her chest. She gave a few gasps and started to breathe. She carried on fine.
Later (talking about what her siblings might remember about those days): They (the boys) remember taking care of babies and rocking babies. They didn’t have to do it a lot and it didn’t seem to bother them, I know my one brother recalls standing on a chair with a baby in his arms singing ‘Rock of Ages”. (Much laughter.) He was rocking the baby and calming it so he didn’t seem to be resenting having to do it. My sister was crazy about babies.
In the first interview, I had been struck by the fact that Esther cared for dying patients as well as maternity patients. I had asked Maryanne to see if Muriel would share a little more of her thoughts on that subject.
MARYANNE: Do you recall any deaths in the house?
MURIEL: Oh yeah, there were deaths. Because she had people with cancer and so on so there were deaths there, too. I guess it just taught us to accept all the aspects of life. I don’t think there was ever a death at the same time as there was a maternity patient there. I think they were quite separate incidents.
MARYANNE: If you did have somebody in with cancer say, and also a birth, would they be in different rooms?
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