When Christmas in West Midlands hospitals meant ‘alcohol galore’

While Christmas in hospital would not be on many people’s festive wish list, for retired nurse Miriam Harvey, it was one of the happiest days of the year.

“We would close one of the operating theatres and eat our Christmas lunch on the operating table,” the former theatre sister remembers.

“We always kept one operating theatre vacant so we could have our dinner on it.”

When she started her training at Worcester Royal Infirmary in 1954, nurses lived in homes near the hospital and were required to work from 07:30 to 20:30 on Christmas Day.

“The kitchen of the hospital went to town – they sent up to each ward mountains of food, cakes and puddings, jellies and pies, alcohol galore,” she said.

“Health and safety wouldn’t allow it now, but we had plenty to drink, the patients and the nurses. It was amazing really that we were allowed.”

On Christmas Eve, nurses would compete to create the best displays, hanging rolls of cotton wool to look like snow, alongside holly wreaths and tinsel.

They would also flip their red felt-lined capes inside out and carry their lanterns to serenade their charges with carols.

“Christmas was a very special day for the patients,” Mrs Harvey remembers. “Everything was geared to make them a lovely day.”

Santa would always bring sacks of presents, but the highlight was usually the surgeon arriving to “operate” on the turkey, carving it up to serve to patients in their beds.

“It’s gradually fizzled out over the years, [but] it certainly happened for a good 10 years at the beginning of my career,” she said.

When she later married and began to spend 25 December at home, she described feeling “homesick for the hospital”.

“I really missed being in the hospital at Christmas,” she said. “It was a very very happy time.”

Pictures from West Midlands hospitals over the past century reveal child patients allowed into the kitchens to watch chefs decorating Christmas cakes, and helping nurses to festoon the tree.

Staff also remembered yearly in-house pantomimes, where they would take the opportunity to poke fun at their superiors, including surgeons and the matron.

Alistair Ritch from Sutton Coldfield worked as a geriatrician at the former Dudley Road Hospital in Birmingham, originally a workhouse infirmary, which later became City Hospital.

When he started there in 1978, many of his patients were on long-stay wards, which he and his family visited for “coffee and nibbles” on Christmas Day.

“The first time we went, we were going round six or seven wards or more. The children had so much at each ward, they came away feeling quite ill,” he said.

“The next time we went there, we were a bit more careful with what they had.”

He recalled the nurses would have “a good spread” in their rooms, and “a lot of alcohol around”.

In the 1970s, alcohol was still prescribed to patients and some junior clinical pharmacologists would stockpile it for the festivities.

Eventually at Dudley Road, they were told only consultants could order alcohol for patients, Mr Ritch laughed.

Now an honorary fellow at the University of Birmingham, he is carrying out research into the city’s workhouse and infirmary.

He said by the 90s, there was less food around the hospital on Christmas Day and the alcohol had disappeared entirely.

“In the end we felt we were more of a nuisance going in, because people were busy and we stopped doing it,” Mr Ritch said.

“Gradually, Christmas Day seemed to become just like any other.”

Worcester Acute Hospitals NHS Trust confirmed its staff were still well fed at Christmas, with the hospital’s charity delivering chocolates this year to teams across three sites.

It said there had been singing on the wards and carol services for staff, patients and visitors in reception areas.

Meanwhile, somewhat furrier friends have been visiting patients over the festive period, with volunteer therapy dogs Aero and Casper dressing up as Santa Paws.

Miriam Harvey recalls further memories in her books, Tales from Worcester Royal Infirmary and More Tales from Worcester Royal Infirmary.