Metadata
WORK ID: NEFA 21687 (Master Record)
Title | Year | Date |
JUST ANOTHER DAY | c.1957 | 1954-01-01 |
Details
Original Format: 16mm Colour: Black & White Sound: Sound Duration: 12 mins 4 secs Credits: Independent Cine Arts Ltd and Music in Minature Films Ltd, Samaritan Film, Board of Governors of the United Newcastle upon Tyne Hospitals Samaritan Film for the Royal Victoria Infirmary Newcastle upon Tyne Commissioned by the Board of Governors of the United Newcastle upon Tyne Hospitals Cameraman Michael Barnett Editor Douglas Myers Production Manager Timothy Burrill Producer Anne Balfour-Fraser Director Ben Ardeid Genre: Sponsored Subject: Working Life |
Summary A short promotional film produced by Samaritan Film for the Royal Victoria Infirmary in Newcastle showing a 'day in the life' of those behind-the-scenes members of staff, mainly women, who help to keep the hospital running alongside the doctors and nurses including cleaners, laundry, kitchen and maintenance staff as well as pharmacologists and pathologists. |
Description
A short promotional film produced by Samaritan Film for the Royal Victoria Infirmary in Newcastle showing a 'day in the life' of those behind-the-scenes members of staff, mainly women, who help to keep the hospital running alongside the doctors and nurses including cleaners, laundry, kitchen and maintenance staff as well as pharmacologists and pathologists.
Over the opening titles views of the exterior of Peacock Hall, part of the Royal Victoria Infirmary in Newcastle and the...
A short promotional film produced by Samaritan Film for the Royal Victoria Infirmary in Newcastle showing a 'day in the life' of those behind-the-scenes members of staff, mainly women, who help to keep the hospital running alongside the doctors and nurses including cleaners, laundry, kitchen and maintenance staff as well as pharmacologists and pathologists.
Over the opening titles views of the exterior of Peacock Hall, part of the Royal Victoria Infirmary in Newcastle and the statue of Queen Victoria which stands in front of it.
Title: “Just Another Day”
Credit: A Samaritan Film for the Royal Victoria Infirmary Newcastle upon Tyne
Credit: Commissioned by the Board of Governors of the United Newcastle upon Tyne Hospitals
Credit: Cameraman Michael Barnett. Editor Douglas Myers. Production Manager Timothy Burrill
Credit: Producer Anne Balfour-Fraser. Director Ben Arbeid
An ambulance drives through the gates of the hospital and passes doctors and nurses walking along the driveway.
From his desk inside the hospital the house governor, Dr Alexander W. Sanderson, introduces the subject of the film.
A clock on a wall reads 5.57am. A nurse is serving a cup of tea on a tray to a young girl sitting up in a hospital bed.
At 7am a number of female cleaners clock in for their shift at the hospital. On one of the wards, a cleaner polishes the wooden floor using a machine while on another ward a second cleaner uses a large cloth on a pole to polish the floor. A third cleaner is on her knees washing the floor with a cloth.
At 8.30am porters in the post room sort the daily mail, dropping letters in various cubicles. In the boiler room, a man in a boiler suit pokes the fires burning inside the large furnaces, a necessity for hot water for the hospital.
Women in the hospital laundry wash and iron large piles of linen. Two women load a washing machine with dirty sheets. A third worker unloads it from another machine. In another part of the laundry, four women work in unison to pass linen and blankets through rollers of a large steam press. On the other side of the room, three other women carefully folded and stack the sheets coming along the conveyor.
In the sewing room women working at sewing machines emboss the hospitals linen with the ‘RVI’ initials.
In an operating room, a nurse in gown and gloves threads a needle passing it to the surgeon using a pair of scissors. A patient lies on the table in front of them. In another room nearby a technician uses a machine to cut thin strips for laboratory examination dropping the strips into a bowl of liquid. A woman in a white coat comes into a laboratory and passes a slide to a man using a microscope. He looks at the slide and the image he sees appears on the screen.
In the outpatient department, an orderly pushes a hospital gurney along a corridor while other patients collect their medicines from the dispensary. Inside the dispensary a chemist mixes a medicine for a patient in a glass vial pouring the content into a small glass bottle. In another part of the dispensary a woman removes a trolley of glass bottles from a steamer followed by her helping to mix a white dough-like substance which dribbles out of the bottom of the machine.
In the hospital kitchen, women prepare food for patients mixing a broth in large vats. A nurse places a covered plate onto a tray while in the background other female catering staff work preparing meals. Along a long table two women fill bread baps with a spread while at another table a man prepares a fish.
From a large oven, a man takes out a number of trays of steaming food placing them on a trolley. In the special diet kitchen four women prepare meals for specific patients. An electric wagon pulls a heated trolley carrying all the patient meals along a corridor.
In a hospital workshop, an engineer repairs the wheel on a trolley.
A laboratory technician groups samples of blood in readiness for a transfusions. Vials are placed into centrifuge by another female technician. A third technician tests a number of petri dishes to find the correct antibiotic to combat an infection. The film changes to show a machine which is preparing sections for a microscope. A female technician looks at an X-ray.
In the blood bank, a female technician removes a bottle from a refrigerator. Three hospital electricians are working on various pieces of equipment. In a workshop, another engineer works to create a piece of specialist equipment needed for a patient. In another part of the workshop joiners work to repair or create various pieces of furniture and chairs.
In the staff canteen male and female hospital workers sit around tables relaxing and eating.
Outside, three men unload a lorry by passing boxes from one to the other, loading them onto a trolley.
In the basement, a man throws the hospital rubbish into the incinerator.
The hospital chaplain escorts a small boy in a wheelchair through the hospital.
The Joint Consultant Staff Committee meets in a boardroom.
In the finance department two women count out the cash to pay staff salaries which are handed out by two other women from a window hatch.
At the main entrance of the hospital three female receptionists take patient' details as they arrive. These details are filed and stored in the records office where a women searches for information using an extensive card index system. Nearby, another woman works a punch-machine recording patient details on cards which are sorted by a third woman. A number of telephonists work the hospital's telephone exchange.
At night on a ward a nurse attends to a young girl in her bed. She offers her a pill, which the patient takes with a sip of water, tucks her back in and turns out the overhead light before returning to her station.
A wall clock reads 12.03am and a night porter walks along a quiet corridor carrying a torchlight.
The film returns to the office of the house governor who once again speaks to the camera bringing the film to an end. [Film cuts off before the end of speech.]
Context
24 hours a day, every day. 6 in the morning with the first cup of tea for patients. 40 cooks, 5,000 meals daily, fresh fish boned. 400 women arrive to wash and polish the corridor miles. An army of women are in the laundry room too, with mountains of bed sheets and gowns, steam and raw hands. Germs are the enemy. Directed by Ben Arbeid, who later produced The Hireling (1973), this documentary is a paean to the workers and round-the-clock industrial-scale labour behind the scenes at the Royal...
24 hours a day, every day. 6 in the morning with the first cup of tea for patients. 40 cooks, 5,000 meals daily, fresh fish boned. 400 women arrive to wash and polish the corridor miles. An army of women are in the laundry room too, with mountains of bed sheets and gowns, steam and raw hands. Germs are the enemy. Directed by Ben Arbeid, who later produced The Hireling (1973), this documentary is a paean to the workers and round-the-clock industrial-scale labour behind the scenes at the Royal Victoria Infirmary (RVI) in Newcastle at a time of significant social change in Britain.
Medical treatment had come a long way by the time this film was made about the city’s modern teaching hospital, just a decade or so after the creation on 5 July 1948 of the National Health Service (NHS). The RVI was founded as the Newcastle Infirmary, which opened at Forth Banks in 1753 with donations from wealthy individuals and public subscriptions. Health care at the time was only available for those that could pay. Conditions were appalling in the hospital, infectious disease endemic, and medicine still mired in the pseudo-science of the Middle Ages. Bleeding and purging are still used as treatment. By 1865 only 11 nurses were employed there and convalescing patients helped with care. Dr Charles John Gibb (1824-1916) was one eminent doctor, surgeon and humanitarian who worked as House Surgeon at Newcastle Infirmary from 1848 until 1854 before setting up a practice in the city. During this time he dealt with two outbreaks of cholera (mostly affecting the poor lower classes) and the Newcastle and Gateshead Fire in October 1854. He was celebrated in the famous Geordie folk song Blaydon Races, which was written in 1862 by George Ridley, a local mining/engineering worker seriously injured in an industrial accident. The song references doctor and hospital and is used in tribute as a soundtrack during the laundry sequence in Just Another Day: When we gat the wheel put on away we went agyen, But them that had their noses broke they cam back ower hyem; Sum went to the Dispensary an' uthers to Doctor Gibbs, An' sum sought out the Infirmary to mend their broken ribs. The modern RVI built on part of the Town Moor was opened by Edward VII and Queen Alexandria on July 11, 1906, the design of the wards based on Florence Nightingale’s advanced ideas about nursing and the hospital environment. An RVI report of 1910 recorded ‘abuse of the hospital facilities by poor people who really needed nourishing food rather than medical treatment’. The Beveridge report of 1942, ordered by the wartime coalition government, was a radical blueprint for a post-war British welfare state, from ‘cradle to grave’. Its call for an end to the five ‘giants’ of illness, ignorance, disease, squalor, and want, was welcomed by a population clamouring for change after suffering through the Great Depression and the Second World War. Health services for every man, woman and child, regardless of income, was at its core. Beveridge wrote: ‘Now, when the war is abolishing landmarks of every kind, is the opportunity for using experience in a clear field. A revolutionary moment in the world’s history is a time for revolutions.’ Labour’s victory in the first post war election in June 1945 was overwhelming. Within a few years, the Labour Minister of Health, Aneurin Bevan, had steered the National Health Service Act through Parliament. In the early 21st century Britain health and social inequality are shockingly on the rise, and the Covid-19 pandemic has further spotlighted a politically-instituted slow decline of the NHS, the political consensus on welfare spending and social policy perhaps already eroded during the Thatcher years of government as she rolled back the state. The immense pride in the RVI and its endless roll call of staff recorded in this 1950s documentary is a startling reminder of the need and respect we expressed as a society for the new National Health Service, ‘the biggest single experiment in social service that the world has ever seen undertaken’. Whilst the welfare state strove towards the goal of social care for all, the roles for women in the working world at the time was far from equal. This was no less true in the film world. Women were marginalized in the British feature film industry after the introduction of sound, but some battled against the odds to secure creative and business roles in post war sponsored nonfiction filmmaking between 1945 and 1970. Those who did succeed in getting a foothold in the industry have been overlooked, or simply erased from film histories until recently. This neglect of women’s past achievements was articulated in an incisive article for Sight and Sound back in 1980 by Cecile Starr (1921–2014), American writer, educator, scholar, film distributor and producer. ‘With footnotes, parentheses, half-sentences, or no mention at all, many talented, hard-working women of the past have become virtually invisible in recorded film history. Does this mean that women who are now making films are already fading into oblivion, like smiling Cheshire cats, before our very eyes?’ The producer of Just Another Day, Anne Balfour-Fraser (1923-2016) was one of the ‘invisible women’ of the post war period. A former opera singer in the theatre chorus at La Scala, Milan, she forged her own career path in the lucrative post war era of corporate, state and voluntary sector documentary sponsorship. She produced over 100 documentaries between the mid-50s and mid-80s, setting up production companies Inca (Independent Cine Art set up in 1954), Balfour Films (formed in 1970) and Samaritan Films, a name which signalled her sympathetic humanist approach to film production along with a belief in the medium as a potential vehicle for social change. As Samaritan Films, Balfour-Fraser specialised in social issue films and medical films, some commissioned by the Central Office of Information (COI), a peacetime successor to the wartime Ministry of Information (MOI). Forming her own production company was a ballsy move. The number of women producers in the British film industry did not rise above 10 percent between 1949 and 1979. Balfour-Fraser was born into a family of strong-willed women who included her moderate suffragist grandmother, Lady Betty (nee Bulwer-Lytton), and her great aunt, Lady Constance Lytton, who was a more militant presence. A member of the Women’s Social and Political Union who believed in direct action and supported the controversial birth control pioneer Marie Stopes, she suffered the brutal practice of force-feeding whilst in prison and on hunger strike. Anne’s mother, Lady Ruth Balfour, was one of the first women to study at Cambridge, worked as a doctor in the First World War and led the Scottish Women’s Voluntary Service during World War Two. Their socio-political and intellectual influence endured in Anne Balfour-Fraser’s film production work. When interviewed by The Scotsman in 2003 about ‘Scotland’s forgotten sisters’ in the historical struggle for women’s suffrage, Balfour-Fraser said: ‘Women can achieve everything, but it’s appallingly hard work and shouldn’t be as difficult as it is. You need a cultural change, but I don’t quite know how to achieve it.’ Women in the film industry today still face the same challenge. Anne Balfour-Fraser films at NEFA: http://www.yorkshirefilmarchive.com/film/river-speaks References: Henderson, Tony. “The story of Newcastle's hospitals from Forth Banks to Keelman's” Chronicle Live, 25 July 2017 https://www.chroniclelive.co.uk/news/history/story-newcastles-hospitals-forth-banks-13380640 Brown, Derek “1945-51: Labour and the creation of the welfare state.” The Guardian, 14 March 2001 https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2001/mar/14/past.education Whiteside, Noel. “The Beveridge Report and Its Implementation: a Revolutionary Project?” Histoire@Politique, vol. 24, no. 3, 2014, pp. 24-37 https://www.cairn.info/revue-histoire-politique-2014-3-page-24.htm “Citizenship: The Welfare State” National Archives http://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/pathways/citizenship/brave_new_world/welfare.htm Starr, Cecile. “Invisible Women.” Sight and Sound, Autumn 1980 https://www.bfi.org.uk/news-opinion/sight-sound-magazine/comment/invisible-women-how-film-history-erases-female-filmmakers Starr, Cecile. “Restoring Women to Film History.” Women Artists Newsletter, Volume 7, Issue 2, Summer 1981 https://voices.revealdigital.org/?a=d&d=DFDEGHA19810601.1.9&e=-------en-20--1--txt-txIN---------------1 Cecile Starr Interview, Media Murmers, Deane Williams Interviewed Cecile Starr in Burlington, Vermont 16 August 2011 https://www.frameworknow.com/single-post/2015/07/17/Cecile-Starr-Interview “No guide to the future: the BFI Filmography reveals the thin wedge of female British filmmaking past” BFI 30 September 2017 https://www.bfi.org.uk/news-opinion/sight-sound-magazine/comment/bfi-filmography-past-female-british-filmmaking-no-guide-future Bell, Melanie. “Rebuilding Britain: Women, Work, and Nonfiction Film, 1945–1970” https://fmh.ucpress.edu/content/ucpfmh/4/4/33.full.pdf “Nye Bevan's dream: a history of the NHS” The Guardian 18 Jan 2016 https://www.theguardian.com/society/2016/jan/18/nye-bevan-history-of-nhs-national-health-service Follows, Stephen. “What percentage of film producers are women?” Film Data and Education 15 April 2019 https://stephenfollows.com/what-percentage-of-film-producers-are-women/ “RVI was milestone” The Journal 6 July 2006 http://www.thejournal.co.uk/news/north-east-news/rvi-was-milestone-4561888 |