Cissie Carpenter and the Good Doctor

Here we publish an extract for our series of excerpts from our many Oral History audio files. In this one , Cissie Carpenter talks about a serious accident which befell her as a child, and her fond memories of the extraordinary care she received.

Listen Here

Cissie Carpenter with Trudy Yates 22nd March 1993
Dr Roe and the Founders of the Shipton Bowls Club
DR Roe

Transcript

But I’ll have to tell you about the little incident that I say in the winter which is Fox and Hounds and we used to make all the fun of chasing one another, you know. It was great fun. We had the packs for the hounds and the packs for horses and this sort thing, you know. All pretence, of course, but it, it was, they were happy days. You used to have just lots of laughs.

And one day I must tell you that I was playing with my brother up in the orchard and we were having, we were chasing, he was chasing me rather, and I was going down the path, a steep path from the orchard, down into the back door. And at the bottom of the path was a big grey water butt. I can see it now.

Well, of course, I chased down there, and thinking that I’m going to get there first. And I run into my grandmother with a, she’d got a big saucepan of hot boiling soda water. And I run straight into her and I got very badly scalded off. And it was the time that we had, it was Dr Roe then, and he was absolutely marvellous. He used to come in three times a day and dress my scold because I had blisters right, hanging right down.

(TY “On your neck and chest”)

Right from my, under my chin here, right down from my neck to the bottom of my chest Anyway he was so wonderful and then he wanted to send me to hospital I think you know because.

(TY “You probably would have been petrified to go away from your mother.”)

My mother said “No if she’s going to die, she’ll die here”. But he attended me so well. But he always said that I was his pet patient because he used to come in three times a day and put all this, it was like laurel leaves. It was a sort of a very thin green paper tissue, like.

(TY “Huh, I wonder what it was.”)

I don’t know what it was. But I remember him putting it on, dressing it with this and then ripping it off. Every time he come in and putting another lot on.

(TY “No ointment or salve under it?”)

No, nothing like that. It was all this green. I couldn’t tell you what it was. Never knew.

(TY “I wonder what it was. Still, it did the job. How long did this take?”)

Oh, twelve month. Twelve month.

(TY “For a four year-old”)

Yes, I was twelve months in bed with this. But on my, must have been my fifth birthday, I remember him coming in the front door with two parcels. It’s so vivid, isn’t it, when you’re a child? And Dr Roe come in with these two parcels. He said “You’ve been my”, what did he call me, pet patient I think. “And here’s something for your birthday”. One was a doll’s tea set and the other was a doll’s furniture set.

(TY “Oh, bless him.”)

Yeah, yeah, marvellous, wasn’t it?

(TY ”And by that time you were up?”)

I was up, yes. Yeah. I don’t know, I was still in bed, mind you, but I mean I’d got over the worst, I think. And I remember him coming in so vividly with these parcels. I can see him now.

(TY “How kind. Imagine a doctor doing that now. They’re all too busy aren’t they?)

Yeah, yeah wonderful, wasn’t it? Anyway, I got over that.

(TY “And now that that must have been before you went to school.”)

Oh I was at school at the little Baptist, up by the Baptist Chapel then.

(TY “Oh you were in school then?”)

I was in school then, yes.

The Full Interview

The interview with Trudy Yates includes memories of Cissie’s early family life, and her time at the infants school and then the Grammar school in Burford. Then her later time as a housemaid, including at Shipton Court. It includes her marriage into the close-knit Carpenter family . Cissie’s reminiscences also feature childhood games, memories of the local shops and businesses in Milton and Shipton, an outing to the the Scottish Highlands, and particulary this dreadful accident she had aged about four and her treatment by Dr Roe.

More Extracts