Wilhelmina Lockwood obituary The Guardian Other Lives Wed June 14 2017

My mother, Wilhelmina Lockwood, who has died aged 92, was a doctor who survived Japanese internment and then made a life for herself in rural England.

She was born a twin in Indonesia to a Dutch father, Cornelius Pieter Mom, a water engineer, and his wife, Johanna (nee Breyer). A happy childhood came to an end when, aged 18, with her mother and sister, Margareta, she was sent to a concentration camp, and interned from 1942 to 1945; her father was sent to a different camp. Their Red Cross parcels were not delivered, the guards abused them, and she almost died from malnutrition and infections. Later, she said that the atomic bomb, and consequent Japanese surrender, saved her life.  

After the second world war ended she studied medicine at Leiden University, in the Netherlands. She met my father, David Lockwood, who trained in theology in Birmingham, in a youth hostel in Heidelberg in 1950; she was hitchhiking through Germany and he was cycling to Oberammergau – that evening he skipped his prayers to chat her up.

They married in 1954 and moved to Britain, where her medical degree was not recognised, so she did her final year again Birmingham University and qualified through conjoint exams. After junior doctor jobs in hospitals in Kidderminster and Worcester, she became a GP.

For many years she combined the roles of vicar’s wife and doctor, doing rural visits, treating people and delivering babies while also raising four children. She worked in rural general practice until she retired in 1990.

She made sure her family retained close links with the Netherlands, with regular trips back on the night boat from Harwich to the Hague. Her Dutch accent became stronger as she aged.

My parents retired to the village of Llowes, on the Welsh borders, in 1982. They created a beautiful house and garden, entertained many people and supported the Hay festival from its beginning.

My mother was a keen photographer and wrote a daily diary for 35 years. She was stylish, and proud of sharing her hat-maker with the Queen. She took the Guardian every day and enjoyed the theatre and Welsh National Opera.

Her experience in the concentration camp moulded her outlook and she dealt with that trauma by not talking about it initially and only briefly in later life. Being a Christian and active church member helped her cope with the sadness of losing two daughters, my sisters Henny and Laura, in 1972 and 2009.

Her brave spirit enabled her to rise above adversity, engaging with people and bringing out the best in them.

David died in 2005. She is survived by her children, Peter and me, and two grandchildren. Margareta died in 2001.

Deeds not Words Recreating the suffragette surgeons of World War One

DIGITAL DRAMA

www.digitaldrama.org

I played the suffragette pathologist Helen Chambers in an immersive drama  recreating the all female hospital that cared for wounded soldiers during the First World War.  Endell Street hospital was set up in 1915 and lead by Louisa Garret Anderson and had female doctors, nurses, porters and laboratory staff. We recreated this hospital in The Swiss church, Covent Garden, London.  The audience experienced 40 minutes of the life of the hospital and were walked round the different parts of the hospital.  In 1915 The War Office saw that eminent women doctors were going to France to work in hospitals so to keep these skills in the UK they asked Louisa Anderson to lead an all women’s hospital. This unique experiment demonstrated that women could run a hospital.

Being part of a creative process was fascinating for me.  In our first sessions we identified characters and I imagined being a young nurse working but also being in love.  I talked about the daily rhythms of a hospital with the patients having ward rounds in the mornings and medicines being given in the afternoon.  Visitors came in the afternoon. When we practised stretcher carrying I emphasised that these are heavy and the team needed a leader to give instructions.  I talked about the smells of being in hospital, blood, vomit, people and showed people how to bandage and inspect limbs.

The play imagined a War office inspection in different locations, the entrance, the linen room, a pathology laboratory in a corridor, the office and the ward.  My lab was in the corridor of the hospital because they were so short of space.  I had three young nurse assistants. Infection was a major problem then, so I looked down an old microscope looking for bacteria on the slides.  My assistants recorded the results and washed the slides. I had glass tubes with colorful urine specimens and I discussed the pathologies that these might represent.  The play then moved to the ward, here the soldiers were sitting in different groups. I joined one group who were playing cards and trying to avoid having their bandages changed.  When the nurses were giving out the medicines on the ward round I showed them the correct way to do this, giving tablets to the soldiers.  The ward scene captured the different experiences of the soldiers and the audience heard different versions, depending on which bed they were around. One young man was very depressed and nihilistic, another was discovered to be two timing his girlfriend in a rather dramatic revelation.

We ended the play standing under the wall on which were projected scenes for the hospital capturing the letters that the women wrote from there, the recollections of the male patients and photos.  We marched out singing the suffragette anthem.  The space of the Swiss church was perfectly suited to our play. The church has been stripped down to a large space with light pouring in from high windows. The past provenance of the church can be guessed from the plaques that are still on the walls. 

I enjoyed the team work with young actors most of whom left drama school recently. The five older established actors brought their expertise and different styles to the production. There are many other people who support the production, the costumes team were keen to get details right. The research work included a film being made about the suffragette hospital and this also deepened the experience.  We were photographed by a professional photographer during the rehearsals.  I was surprised at how much I identified with Helen Chambers, my character and found it moving to read her obituary in the British Medical Journal.   She does not speak in the play and her obituary mentions how she disliked speaking. She did important work on the treatment of infections and then cervical cancer. As a woman doctor she wa s clearly picking up on topical female problems in her career. It was also moving to be recreating the work that the suffragette surgeons had done.  

So my first venture into acting was close to home, recreating a hospital pathologist and for a piece of history relating to both the first world war and the development of women’s rights.

Obituary Helen Chambers 1953 234-5

Deeds Not Words.  Writer Liz Rigby, Director Kate Valentine ,Producer Alison Ramsey.

http://www.digitaldrama.org/deeds-not-words-history/

Art, Demonitisation, Life and Death in India Jan 2017

In India I enjoyed the work of Jitish Kallat and experienced Hindu and Christian death ceremonies for friends.

Delhi was chilly and foggy and I had to keep my fleece on most of the time. I stayed with jasjit in Haus Khaz. The house is now up for sale so this might have been my last visit there.  On Saturday evening I went with Kris and her son Arnav to the opening of a major exhibition at the Gallery of Modern Art. The exhibition was of work by Niitsh Killat a Mumbai based artist. He is interested in natural cycles of life and death, Indian food and environment. One of the most impressive works was a depiction of his father’s lunar calendar from birth to death with the moons represented with chapattis that were either full of half eaten to symbolize the waxing and waning of the moon done as photos. In other pics he captured the Indian environment and made an auto-rickshaw skeleton out of animal bones. He also had two stories about 1 rupees, one in black font about a desperately poor girl in West Bengal committing suicide because her mother did not have one rupee to give her for school food, in white font was a parallel tale by a telecoms company linking callers in different states for just one rupee. In another piece he used a series of 20 figures to capture the experience of going through a security check. There was a wonderful uninhibited energy and reinterpreting of the environment. Kris is a sculptor and was greeted warmly by several artists and by the many Delhi gallery owners at the exhibition. However her time for art is severely affected because she has a full time teaching job and a frail mother with dementia living at home; so she just promised pieces for future joint shows. Her son Arnav came to stay in Bevan st  about 10 yrs. ago , he is now 17 and young giant who wants to do geophysics. He was bright and interested in the art, which we all enjoyed.  The next day I went to a fascinating exhibition called past Time in Bikaner House which explored themes around memory, loss and partition. There were some fascinating sculptures, one of a twisting series of old film looped between two points, the top about 15 feet above the bottom.  it twisted like a knot of hair One of the most striking pieces was an ipad that had been loaded with text and digital images of people and places in either india or Pakistan. It conveyed the horrors of partition and one saw people aging in the process. There is no museum of partition even through the event involved 14 million people relocating and maybe 500000 dying.   It captured the sense of loss very eloquently.

I spent 3 days at the ENLIST meeting. We are making good progress with the protocol needed for the two trials on using Methotrexate to treat patients with ENL.  Our consortium has 8 partners of whom probably 7 will be involved in the trial, so our meeting included people from Ethiopia, Indonesia, Bangladesh and Nepal.  The meeting was hosted by the Indians and TLMI. Joydeepa was an excellent host and we stayed in a hotel close to the airport. The hotel had a grand marble staircase and beds with elaborate wooden headboards. But one could not charge electronic items overnight and we nearly had a disaster with over loaded plugs in our meeting room. We also had a trip out to the local mall called Ambience which was full of foreign brands, I could have stocked up in Marks and Spencer here in Delhi! I enjoyed browsing though a large Fab India outlet there. But Joy commented that the prices were too high for ordinary `Indians.  We had a fine Keralan meal for the group in the mall with excellent spicy prawns and fish curry.

I then went on to Hyderabad to visit the Blue peter clinic because we have a new head, Aparna who took over a few months ago.  Here I joined another consortium meeting but this time for Indian NGOs working on leprosy.  A group of research active Indian centres are joining together to do some joint work. Good to see. I stayed in another nice hotel and I had a good view out over the old part of Hyderabad.  However in this hotel the lift was not working one day and so i went down the fire staircase I found it locked between the 3 and 4 floors as a “security precaution”.  When I raised this with the managers they only dimmed perceived that it might be a problem in a fire or that they might be breaking the law. To my amazement the lock was put back on the next day.

When I was in Delhi I went to Indira Naths house to celebrate the first anniversary of her husband death.  This took place at home with a local pandit.  He lit a small fire in the living room with small pieces of sandal wood. We sat around and put herbs on the fire, the flames then shot up when he poured oil on the fire.  We passed a brass plate with an oil light and marigolds on it round and chanted.  About 20 people were there, mainly friends, their daughter is in Oxford. After the ceremony we eat typical Delhi food of okra, potatoes, dahl and fresh poori. I felt privileged to be there and to be part of the ceremony.  Death arrived again in Hyderabad; I had arranged to have supper with my friend Sujai with whom I have cooperated over 25 yrs. I knew that he was nursing his very frail elderly mother at home. I arrived to find that she had died and her corpse was in the centre of the room in a glass-lidded coffin. Decorated with wreaths.  Sujai’s sisters had come down and many friends and relatives from their Christian Church were there. He and I went upstairs and chatted whilst various funeral arrangements were put into place. it was strange to have different deaths at the beginiing and end of my stay. I had been supposed to fly back to London on Sunday but had to defer by a day, There must have been something in the air that made me stay an extra day. I was v touched to be part of the family that evening.     

I also experienced the effects of demonization. This measure was introduced by the modi governemt last November.  They made the old Rs 500 and 1000 illegal. People were able to bring notes in and change them. The aim of demonitisation is to move Indian towards being a cashless economy, reduce corruption, black money, counterfeiting and terrorism finance.  However there has been a severe shortage of the new Rs 2000 and RS 500 notes. People were also only able to take RS 2000 per day out of their bank accounts.  There has also been a sever shortage of notes. SO people queued for hours at ATMs and often came away empty handed.  The NGO who were hosting us offered to change money for us.  My friends have problems running their households.  The people who have been hits worst are the cash labourers and there has been a 40-50 job loss in small and medium enterprises.  People were able to pay larger amounts using etransactions.  But using pay tM which is the governments favoured operator attracts a transaction fee of 2.5%.  Just before New year the amount of money that one could take out was increased to RS 4200 per day. I think the economy will take a hit for the last two quarters, I suspect that people such as women and daily labourers will be most effected since they have no cushions for actions like these. It might have some good effects, it might reduce the lavish weddings that have become the normal in India. The government is already claiming that It has already reduced violence in Kashmir.  Tourists are also suffering, Steve tried several cashpoints all empty. 

I used uber cabs to travel round Delhi, there are now 5000 drivers and one feels much safer with details about the driver and being able to monitor travel. They are also much cheaper, but  they are also contributing to the congestion on the Delhi roads. And the drivers have to drive long hours to earn enough in the day.