大象传媒

This oral history reminiscence is taken from the collections of the McLean Museum and Art Gallery. Historical note: when war broke out Ravenscraig Hospital(or Smithston Poorhouse and Asylum as it was known then) was requisitioned by the Admiralty. In 1941 after the patients were evacuated to other hospitals, the Canadian Navy took over the premises, renaming the hospital HMCS Niobe

Bob Easton

WARTIME and CANADIAN NAVY AT RAVENSCRAIG HOSPITAL

Some of the incendiary bombs used to land on Ravenscraig, others used to even come into the wards. In 1940, before the Blitz, single planes were coming over, and they used to land on us. The bombs were in baskets, and they were just dropped. They were all over Ravenscraig. When the sirens went we all had to go to a certain ward. This one came into the Sick Ward and I can always remember this, it hit the patient's bed, the metal part, and bounced on to the floor, and he just goes up and looked at it and lay down again! (laugh) And of course the linoleum and that started going on fire. I was on duty at the time and I kicked it. We'd a veranda and it was all arranged that you'd kick it out of the veranda and there'd be people parading below with sandbags to smother them out. So here we kicked this one and we kicked it under a radiator! (Laugh) So I had to put my foot under to get it out and it burned all my shoe. It didn't damage me though! So I got it out to the veranda and when we tried to kick it out of the veranda it got stuck under the wooden railing and set the veranda on fire! (Laugh) Those down below were shouting, "kick the damn thing out" 'cos they were standing there with Well, we got it out at last. The bombs, they were all over the bowling green, just next to the sick room.

And when we came back to Ravenscraig, God! it was a right mess, because they(the Canadian Navy) used it like a ship! There were even big holes in the floors to let the water through down to the basement when they were 'scrubbing the decks'.
It (Ravenscraig) was run like a ship. They kept the ploughman on to work the lands. He was an old salt from Skye and he drank like a fish. It was coal boilers in those days, and he used to take the coal up from the railway in a horse and cart, across the front. Now to them this was the Quarterdeck, and it's sacred in the Navy, you know! You have to salute the Quarter Deck! He came in half drunk this day with his horse and cart, with his bunnet turned to the side he galloped it across the Quarter Deck. That was one of the funniest things - to be out on a charge of Horse and Cart across the Quarter Deck of the Ship (laugh).

They carried the Navy gradations, no matter where. Even in our Navy, down in Portsmouth and Devonport when you were in a shore base, in the barracks, you might be in for gunnery or torpedo training, you still carried on the gradations. There was still the Quarterdeck, and shore leave, even though you were only going out a gate! (Laugh)

WARTIME TRANSFER TO LARBERT

I went to Larbert, in Stirlingshire with...you had to take your patients with you. The females all went to Gartlock, and the fit, mobile males. We were there for five and a half years.

The Services took all the young lads first, but by the time it came to my age group, and with my occupation, they wouldn't let me go. The shipyards wanted me, the Navy wanted me, but so did the Hospital. I was a Reserve for the Navy but I put in for the Air Force, and I got it! I wanted to be an Air Gunner at that time. I was passed by the Doctor, but I didn't get going. We were all dying to get away, but instead of that we end up in Stirling!

There was a great rush to get married then. There was about four of us got married from Ravenscraig. We were expecting to get called up next week. You could get married, through the proper channels, asking the Minister, and it was done. I got married in Trinity, now it's Ardgowan.

During wartime they do awful daft things, to make way for the army. At Paisley Hospital some of them were transferred to Fife. We were transferred to Larbert,- and here was the funny thing, it makes you laugh when you think on it - when you got a day off, you'd try to go home to see the wife and children, we'd all be passing one another! The Larbert crowd coming back, the Paisley lot passing us going back to Fife, the Fifers were up in Aberdeen or somewhere. It was all done in a hurry with the result it wasn't planned out properly. The Larbert staff were annoyed because we were in their place and they had been moved to Fife.

We did a 70-hour week. We tried to get home once a month or so, especially if you had a young family. We had a job travelling, just buses, but it was a job. But when you think on the boys that were away, what they had to face... a lot of us wanted to get away but, oh no, you're more useful to us here! The army, they were priority, and they wanted this huge block for psychiatric patients in the army. Some of the Psychiatric nurses were in the Reserve for the Army, then they were called up. So they were the same as us, in the block across from us, but wearing khaki!
When we were at Larbert, we were still under the Greenock Corporation. They were still paying our wages, and they had to send it up to us. But because we were shifted away they took some money off us that we were getting here. We took our case to the union. I remember I was on night duty and I had to sacrifice that next day to come down. I got my trade union official from Glasgow to come with us. I was the chairman at the time, and the Secretary and I came down to see the Corporation. We went in front of the committee, it was only 2 shillings, 2 shillings a week, and we said we wanted it back, we think it is an injustice that you took it off us just because we were shifted from Greenock. Our union man was a big tall Irish Man oh! he was feart of nothing. When he stood up you were frightened of him right away. Gray was the Town Clerk and he was in the middle. He took out his watch and he said ' now, I've got to tell you you're ten minutes late for this meeting'. So the union man got up and he says 'we've come from Stirlingshire this morning, there's men here on night duty who haven't had any sleep. Ten minutes! Just put your watch back in your pocket. Ten minutes! he says, we've been waiting ten bloody months for this meeting!'. Reid Kerr, he was the Chairman, he used to live in Bagatelle, he was a strong Tory, yet even he agreed and gave us it back.

We went away in '41 and came back in '47. It took two years to renovate Ravenscraig. Two or three of a staff came back to try and get it organised. The heating, lighting and all this was out, because it had been turned into barracks. It was all stone floors - they got a certain grant from Canada to renovate it, but it didn't cover half the costs. Its an old, old building.

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