Maternity care in Nelson - Te Rangi Hospital

Aerial photo of Collingwood Street showing Te Rangi hospital and Midwife Leahy's home, 1920's. Nelson Provincial Museum. Click image to enlarge

Overflow from Te Rangi in the 1930s was taken by trained Karitane nurse Anne Leahy, at her home across the road in Collingwood Street, whose front room was converted to a maternity suite. Anne was 70 when she reluctantly gave up being a midwife.  In 1941 Te Rangi Trust opted to make Te Rangi Hospital solely for maternity care and reserved Manuka Street, another hospital the Trust owned, for surgical cases. 

Te Rangi hospital covered a large part of the block of land bordered by Halstead, Halifax, Collingwood and New streets. During the 1940s Nelson Hospital found Te Rangi handy to take the ‘overflow’ during the post war baby boom. It had 18 maternity beds.  In 1950, there were 602 Nelson babies delivered at either Nelson Public or Te Rangi hospitals.  In 1956, the property was leased to the Nelson Hospital Board.¹ Changes in maternity care in the 1970s-1990s saw small maternity hospitals closed and maternity services moved to large general hospitals. Te Rangi closed in 1966. Before the 1970s women went to hospital and had up to two weeks rest after delivery of their babies. With the closure of small maternity hospitals the time women stay in hospital has reduced. Today some women are discharged as early as 24 hours after birth, particularly if home visits and support are available.

Hospital Birth

Between 1900 and 1925 most births occurred in private homes, Māori pah and private nursing homes.  Only if a problem occurred did women deliver in a hospital. In 1925 this changed with the Nurses and Midwives Registration Act 1925 and then the Social Security Act 1938, which made free maternity care available at public hospitals from 1939. In 1926, 98 of the 236 total births in Nelson occurred in hospitals, and 65 of these were at Te Rangi. Thirty seven midwives attended to the 137 homebirths.  By 1940, 300 of the 344 total births in Nelson and only seven practising midwives remained to manage the few women who still chose to have a home birth.

May Allport’s midwife's kit, 1940's fitted in little brown case. Image supplied by author
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The Midwife 

Around 1904 the government decreed that midwives should be registered. In 1907 Mabel Atkinson was the only Class A midwife in Nelson.² She had taken a full course in midwifery in England, and had faced challenging experiences alone, delivering babies in the London slums. Class B midwives were certified by doctors in a somewhat random fashion. The women needed to be of “good character” and assist and observe births for three years which was hard to verify.

After 1971 midwives were not permitted to deliver babies without a doctor on hand.  Changes to the Nurses Act in 1990 allowed Registered Midwives to deliver babies without the help of a medical practitioner.  Midwives today need a three year specialised degree and annual certification to practice. In 2014 there were 90 registered midwives in the Nelson Marlborough region.

Andrea Vincent midwife's kit, 2104, fills the boot of the car. Image supplied by author
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Nurse Aide Zena Wells left on steps beside garden at Te rangi Hospital late 1930’s. Private album photo provided by Jenny Eade
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The Te Rangi experience

Those wishing to deliver their baby at Te Rangi needed to book in by visiting the hospital, with a letter from their doctor confirming their due dates. If Te Rangi had room when you went into labour you were admitted, otherwise you were referred onto Nelson Hospital.  General entry was via a door on Collingwood Street; the Halifax Street entry through the garden was not used. Beyond a small lobby where bookings were done,  there was a large kitchen (with attached dining area). Mothers were directed across this into the corridor to the prep room. Here, on a board across the bath, mothers were made ready to go into the delivery theatre across the hall. This included washing, shaving and administration of an enema.

Staff made an estimation of the likely time of baby’s arrival. Some babies couldn’t wait and arrived on the board. This happened to Ruth Frost, who had to bike to the hospital in 1958, with no other transport available, which brought the baby on very quickly. Some mothers would be placed in a waiting area, or sent home if delivery was not imminent. Sometimes mothers took a mix of castor oil, orange juice and baking soda, a powerful enema, to hurry along an overdue baby, but most were happy to wait a little longer to allow nature to take its course.

Sister Jesse Snow recalls that there was a step into every room at Te Rangi, making wheeling beds around very difficult. Mothers usually walked to the delivery room. After the baby was delivered the mothers were put into either one of three four bedded rooms, or  into a single room named after a colour, if you were lucky. The blue room was near the theatre, the pink, apricot and yellow rooms had varying views to a beautiful private garden with lovely roses and trees. Light exercise could take place here after the mandatory one week bedrest, or mothers could enjoy the glassed in sun porches. 

A list of requirements to be brought in by mothers included nappies, marked with the babies name, and binding cloths for the mother's stomach to give support after delivery. On the day of departure mothers were instructed in bathing their baby.

Mothers really enjoyed the meals which were all prepared on the premises.  Thin bread and butter with a welcome cup of tea arrived for mothers, before baby came to feed at 6am. Breakfast of eggs at 8am, was followed by cheese puffs or scones for morning tea after the 10am feed. (The pumpkin scones were by all accounts legendary.) Lunch was the main meal and included dessert. Afternoon tea followed the 2pm feed and a light dinner at 5.30pm preceded the 6pm feed, then a milky drink such as cocoa for supper to coincide with the 10pm feed.

In the 1920s visiting hours were strictly adhered to. Until the 1960s husbands were not welcome at deliveries, but public demand changed that and fathers enjoyed seeing their children born and more relaxed visiting hours. 

Te Rangi also managed the deliveries of single mothers who were kept segregated from married mothers. The single mothers often kept their pregnancy secret and told their families they were apple picking in Nelson. Their babies were then adopted. One mother recalls that a lady, whose baby died after delivery, went home with an adopted baby born during her confinement.

Sister Hall and Sister Marjorie Daniell, with Mrs Cathy Rozenweig and her baby Joanne (the last baby born at the hospital), and Mrs Ngyla Allport, Graham Allport and baby Dianne, make ready to leave the hospital. Nelson PhotoNews, 30/4/1966
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Staff

Mothers were cared for by six midwives plus ten nurse aides, of which three to four were on duty at any given time. Matron Rena Hall’s niece said her aunt , who never married, had a permanent room in the nurses home at Te Rangi, but on her days off would stay at her married sister’s home in Brook street.

Jesse Chamberlain, who was an aide from 1933-34, recalls that some new born babies who were frail were kept in baskets on the top of the coal range, to be kept constantly warm, under the supervision of Matron, to help them survive.  She recalls a number of deaths of mothers and children. Infant and mother mortality has improved dramatically since 1935, when nearly 60 in 1000 of babies in New Zealand would be stillborn or die within their first 10 days.³

Staff did all the care of the babies during their stay, bathing and changing them and feeding bottled water, between taking them out to their mothers for their four hourly breast feeds.

In the 1950s, while doing cleaning duties in the sluice room, nurses could enjoy watching dancers in the Morrie Abrahams dance studio on the corner of New and Collingwood street.

Nurses on early morning duty stayed the night in the Nurses home, which had one wall on New Street, but no entry was allowed from here. Access was strictly from Collingwood St, via the kitchen where you did not linger, or aides would be given extra work to do.  Nurses also enjoyed the Te Rangi  food.  A long-time cook in the 1950s was Polly Clark, of the Salvation army, who married Mr Bushell and together they cooked the food all week, with other cooks covering weekend duties

Hygiene was very important and Matrons tended to be strict. If staff were ill they could not work and Moana Toetoe recalls sweeping the floor in 1958-60 with tea leaves, which acted as an excellent cleaning aid.

Te Rangi now

The maternity hospital closed in 1966 and the building subsequently demolished. The site is now filled with a car sales yard and Anchor Press, but a heritage panel  marks where the building was located. The heritage panel, courtesy Janet Bathgate, can be downloaded here [PDF] and contains additional information about the hospital.

The hospital also lives on in the memories of its staff and patients, some of which will be available on the Prow.

Written by Debbie Daniell-Smith with thanks to Andrea Vincent, and participants of Te Rangi ‘reunion” December 2014 (updated 2024)

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