Memories Of Baby Burial At Dilston Maternity Hospital

A Memory of Corbridge.

by Mr Alex Hillary (April 6th 2007) - as reported to Susan Hedworth, Community Care Assistant

No, we don’t get the snow like we used to! Like it was in 1941, I mean. I was a taxi driver at Dilston Hall then and I used to bike to work. Never missed a day! There was me and the postman all the way from Prudhoe along the road through Riding Mill – just us two. And it’s a canny hike.

Well, you know it was a maternity place then – Dilston Hall. I still remember – I had to take the dead babies up for post mortem in Shotley Bridge. They crossed their little arms over their chests, just so, with a flower in the middle. And I would come and wrap the cloth over them, put them on a tray and lay them on the back seat of the taxi.

I used to have to take them to the Infirmary in Newcastle too. Live babies, but maybe with no roof to their mouths, you know. And the nurse used to go with them. There’s not one of them came back alive. She said they experimented on them - to make them better, you know. But it didn’t work.

Eh, I had some fun and all! There’s those big glass jars with handles on them and they were full of castor oil. I don’t know what that was for but they used it on the ladies. And I used to wheel the big jars along outside the windows where all the people in the beds could see, to tease them like. And they’d all shake their fists at me!

But I still remember all those babies, laid out in front of the altar in that old chapel they have there. They were so beautiful some of them. And do you know where they’re buried? There’s that cemetery on the back road from Corbridge to Hexham. Well, just over the wall - that’s where they are. Yes, it’s consecrated ground, and they put all the unbaptised dead babies there.

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