Doctor

St Mary Magdalene Church, Waltham on the Wolds, 1910. The sign on the right reads 'Post Office, Public Telephone'. Photo courtesy of the Record Office for Leicestershire, Leicester & Rutland.

Dr Atkinson: When I came in ’34, they came, several came round, it was generally the man came, and he’d probably been carrying on with some girl and got her in the family way and then he was wondering whether I could do an abortion. And I very politely said, however sorry I am for you I would never do anything like that because I’m struck off the register. So that’s that, your case might be a very worthy one, you may well have been carried away, but that’s that, as far as I’m concerned it’s out, and I never of course ever did one. I was sympathetic for the poor wretches, sometimes. I remember a parson stopped me in Branston, I didn’t like him very much in any case – he’s been gone a long time at any rate, he was rather a sanctimonious old so-and-so – and he said, what are we going to do about this, all these pregnant girls in this district, you see? And I said, there’s nothing I can do about it except deliver them, but I said it’s your job, it’s your job, I said you’d better go and preach to them, but he didn’t like it, he took offence and he shuffled off.

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