Playing bingo in Robinson ward, Mile End Hospital c1972-79 (Royal London Hospital Archives: ME/P/8)

Most of the Caribbean recruits had good relationships with the patients, although sometimes there could be difficulties. Neslyn Watson-Druée remembers “being invited into homes and primarily patients’ relatives’ homes. I remember patients used to say things about me and relatives used to invite me home and I would be invited out for tea and so on. I was a very caring person. There was one staff nurse who took a particular liking to me and she also invited me to her home. I think she was rather pleased with me because I was fresh.”

Sherlene Rudder recalls that “some of the patients were very nice. I can remember two at that time. There was a lady with a lot of children and she used to talk to me and say, ‘I don’t know how your mother could let you go so far from home.’ On the other side, I was on a ward, I was making and helping someone pass the teas out and this man said, ‘You have to watch these darkies you know, they’ll steal the milk out of your coffee.’ I froze. I was glad my father was not around to hear. In our district stealing is considered a disgrace. I felt really cold. I withdrew within myself from these people if this is how they would think. Years later I realised that man was very insecure, nobody had asked him anything, he needed to be noticed. What I found then and compared it, the people who are most ignorant are the ones who have never been abroad.”