When the NHS came into being in 1948, Candy Baker was a 16-year-old junior nurse in Hertfordshire.
Now 77, Candy clearly remembers the day she first heard about the service that would revolutionise healthcare. “One of the domestic staff came running down the corridor. I knew it was something exciting because we weren’t allowed to run in those days, except when someone was having a haemorrhage or the place was on fire. She said: ‘Oh my goodness, Bevan has just announced that we’re going to have a national health service!’”
Candy remembers what healthcare was like before the NHS began, from being a nurse and also from being on the appeals committee for the local hospital from the age of 13.
“My father was a very charity-minded man,” she says. “As a little girl I used to go round with him collecting money to pay for district nurses. People had to pay for healthcare of course, right up until the year Nye Bevan founded the NHS.”
Candy Baker in 1948
When she was 22, Candy got married and was forced to give up nursing, as it was forbidden for married women to work in the profession in those days. Instead, she continued working as an active volunteer, and her work has always been connected to hospitals and welfare.
Soon after she stopped nursing, she came to rely on the NHS for personal reasons. “I have a very disabled daughter who is now 50. Even in those days, she had the most incredible care,” she says. More recently, Candy’s husband was diagnosed with brain cancer and she again has been impressed by the treatment and care the NHS has provided.
With her involvement in healthcare spanning nearly her whole life, Candy says: “We have an enormous amount to be grateful for with the National Health Service.”
Candy remains an active volunteer and is now chairman of the League of Friends for Stratton Hospital and vice-chairman of the Cornwall County League of Friends. In 2009 she was awarded the Order of Mercy in the presence of the Lord Mayor of London for years of service to her local community. She dismisses any suggestion that her efforts have been extraordinary. She says: “I’ll carry on as long as I’m humanly able. People say to me, ‘How do you do it, Candy?’ I say that when they’re screwing my coffin down, I shall be knocking on the lid and saying, ‘Excuse me, I’ve just got one last thing I need to do’.”
- The NHS 60 content, including this article, was written in 2008 to mark the 60th anniversary of the NHS.
