Michael Wilkinson’s childhood experience of operations and long stays in hospital (in an attempt to make him walk) were typical of the 1950s:
“I had 4 operations altogether. Before that I used to crawl everywhere. After that because my legs were different, I couldn’t crawl again for ages afterwards… It was autumn and I was getting really anxious that I was not going to get out before Christmas.”
For many children with cerebral palsy, the medical obsession with walking ‘normally’ was the cause of much frustration and agony.
Anne Pridmore remembers a turning point in her life at the age of 5:
“Up to being 5, my mother had taught me to walk across the room to her, and then the professionals decided that I needed to go into an orthopaedic hospital…
“I do remember that particular visit to hospital, and that was one visit that I was actually in hospital for about 18 months. And when I went in, I could walk. When I came out, I couldn’t even sit up in bed. And the reason that my parents brought me out was the fact that they went to visit me one day, and I’d got my legs swinging over the side of the bed, with 2 pools on the floor, and they’d put my legs into plaster-of-Paris splints without any wadding and basically I’ve still got 2 holes in my heels to this day from what they did.”
The lengths that the medical profession went to get children to walk seem obsessional, brutal. As well as cutting tendons, breaking bones and resetting them, doctors forced disabled children to wear rigid callipers to straighten their legs.
Callipers: “a form of torture”
John Hawkridge described callipers as “a form of torture”:
“Unfortunately for me I got selected to be fitted with iron callipers. So all of a sudden you find yourself in leg irons…
“From being able to run, they’ve put you in these leg irons, and you can hardly stand up, never mind run. And they put you in them, and they tighten all the leather straps on you when you’re in. You know, it’s basically, it’s just a form of torture. They’re just forcing your joints against what they want to do.
“And so, you find yourself, you might be wearing your callipers ‘x’ amount of hours a day. Now bearing in mind I could take these callipers off and run and run, hop, skip and jump, that weren’t something that I enjoyed at all…”
“And then before I left that school, somebody came up with this fantastic idea of fitting me with night splints on me ankles, so I wore callipers through the day, so I was in agony with me legs through the day, and then when I went to bed I was in agony with my ankles, because I had my feet strapped into ankle splints, so in many respects it wasn’t a pleasure, and I definitely didn’t wear these callipers on a weekend at home, whether I was supposed to or not I don’t know, but I definitely didn’t, and I didn’t wear these ankle splints at home either.”
Barry Morgan also had a calliper:
“I was born in 1945, and my mother had problems when I was born, and consequently, I was born what they call ‘a cripple’ in them days.
“The early times were not easy for my parents, to be truthful with you, because the doctor said to my father that I would never, ever walk.
“My father was an Army man, and he was a sergeant major. He said to my mother, ‘I am not going to push him round in a wheelchair for the rest of his life’…
“He bought a horse on 4 wheels and a set of reins… He stood me behind this horse, and my mother moved my legs forward in the walking position, and eventually, I started to move my legs for myself…
“And, of course, there was times when I was falling over and things like this, and the old lady next door to where we lived, told me dad she was going to get in touch with the cruelty man, because I was for ever falling over and bruising my knees and things like this, but, eventually, I started to walk. It was not very well either, because I tended to fall over quite a lot, and they decided that they would give me a calliper.
“I was about 5 then. This calliper helped quite a lot. Of course, it meant that I had to wear boots and, and things like this, not as today when you can pick any types of shoes, you had to wear what you were given, and the next thing was my arm. I wasn’t able to cut my meat up, and feed myself as a normal child would, so there were approaches made to the specialist to find out if there was anything that could be done for my hand. They initially tried physiotherapy, and I used to go to physiotherapy about once a month, but unfortunately, I wasn’t very successful at it. They said that I was ‘subnormal’ because my brain obviously didn’t pick up things as quickly, and my development was somewhat ‘backward’ if you like…”
“The nurses put me arm under a big arch with electric lamps in it. They fitted electrodes to my arm to see whether it’d jump up in the air, and things like this, and it was quite daunting, the fact that, you know, they’d twist your arm, they’d pull your arm, and it’s a wonder you didn’t get a broken arm half the time, you know. I just didn’t enjoy it.”
Alan Counsell recalled how a doctor even wanted to amputate his arm!
“Six months later, my Mum and Dad got a letter from the Headmistress again… And this letter said that she had invited a friend of hers to visit the school, and this friend had met me and talked to me etc, and he was a doctor, who had been an army doctor, and he would like to meet Mum and Dad, because he thought it would be better if my right arm was amputated, and I had a false limb. Well, this sent my Dad into orbit!”
The quotes in this blog come from Speaking for Ourselves, the oral history of people with cerebral palsy.
Alex White writes 
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