Didn't the lady whom Grandma Lynch delivered look like Robin Gibb?!!!!! Even her sister with her rounder face looked a bit like another of the Gibb brothers. Or maybe I'm just seeing likenesses where none really exist!
Was it actually verified that James Lynch was Grandma Lynch's husband? Or maybe pre 1948 qualified midwives were different from qualified nurses and allowed to marry? Were midwives not viewed as nurses? The word 'wife' in this case within the narrow parish/diocese (Catholic and C of E) surely could be a bit ambiguous with midwives being called mid-wives and wif also being a term for a woman! Like the use of the word "constable" in the parish. Mind you, I suppose the word "nurse" can also have ambiguous meaning - nurse, wet nurse, nursemaid etc, although once nursing was formalised into a profession with a national qualification it becomes more definite in certain contexts.
Some people would say the Midwifery Council was rather narrow in not refering it to the GMC, as it was a communicable disease, and there was a doctor involved. The academic was very insistent wasn't she that the Midwifery Council was run by doctors (I think there is still a big doctor input with the Council although we're not going backwards nowadays, I hope!)?
It struck me there obviously there was a large amount of prostitution in these urban areas but the wives or women living with men didn't of course have to be prostitutes when the men brought gonorrhea into the home from the outside.
It would have been interesting if we could have known a bit more from the obituary. I noticed she was born in Birmingham and there was something about an RC school and "St Mary's".
Noticed at the beginning Robin Gibb did mention about madness and then turned out to have a poor ancestor classifed as being mentally ill for being depressed re his destitution! He doesn't seem to have been so prescient in mentioning his mother's remark about selling children, thank goodness!
There is a rather important weaving connection in the family which wasn't mentioned at all.
http://www.brothersgibb.org/history-part-1.htmlSir Samuel Crompton who invented a spinning machine, the mule-jenny.
Would have been nice to know something about the PASS family as well.
Still the access to the disciplinary records must be useful for many, although when he asked for an alternate avenue, I did wonder whether the local newspaper would be mentioned (it must have been a big case locally both about the midwife and the doctor) or even the local health board records. Unless the authorities wanted to keep anything to do with venereal disease out of the newspapers.
