New infant centre exhibition items needed
A request for rusks, rattles and nappies has been made to help complete a new exhibition at the Black Country Living Museum.
Work is well underway on the Museum’s new 1960s mother and baby centre, which is a recreation of Wolverhampton’s Lea Road Infant Welfare Centre.
The Infant Welfare Centre will enable the Museum to tell the story of the birth of the NHS, the growing community of Commonwealth nurses and doctors who brought their skills to the Black Country in the 1950s and 60s, and the lives of young women and children in this period.
It will also help inform visitors’ understanding of public health in the present day.
In the Museum’s recreation, visitors will be able to explore the main hall, doctor’s surgery and dispensary, as well as meeting brand new characters who will share what life was like as doctors and midwives of the 1960s.
To help complete their recreation, the Museum is seeking donations of objects from the late 1950s which would have been commonplace in the centre.
This might include changing bags, nappies, food packaging, such as orange juice or cod liver oil bottles, milk tins or rusk boxes, or toys which would have been available for little ones to play with while their mothers consulted with the midwives.
Nadia Awal, researcher, said: “The stories which we will be telling in the Infant Welfare Centre are hugely important to the history of the region and the NHS.
"Not only will it enable us to share the advances in childcare seen post-war, such as increased availability of vaccines, technology, and medicines, but it will also serve as an opportunity to showcase stories of doctors and nurses from the commonwealth who came to the Black Country to support the new health service.
"Seventy-five years ago this July, the NHS was born, and so the opening of the centre will enable us to mark this milestone when it opens later this year.”
Having first been established in 1928, the centre became part of the brand-new NHS twenty years later.
The main hall was a waiting room, which doubled up as a venue for ante-natal and “mothercraft” classes, baby clothes sales, and as a social gathering for new mothers, always with a fresh cup of tea in hand.
Anyone with any items they wish to donate to the museum can do so via email on collections@bclm.com or contact by telephone on 0121 520 5600.