An end to a labour of love As Glasgow's famous Rottenrow maternity hospital closes after 141 years, Judith Fryer meets veterans from both sides of the bed

Ellie was born at Rottenrow maternity hospital, as were her

nine brothers and sisters. In the

run-up to baby's birth, Eileen's journey from her home in Govan to the university stopped at Rottenrow instead of continuing on down North Portland Street (known to generations of pregnant women who had to climb the steep incline as ''induction hill'') as the delivery room took precedence over the

lecture theatre.

But all of that will be a thing of the past with yesterday's announcement that Rottenrow is to be become part of Strathclyde University's campus. It means that, in a few months, Eileen will graduate from the university that has acquired the hospital that delivered her 10 children. And that will put a figurative as well as a literal cap on the proceedings.

Eileen, now 41, sees nothing remarkable in her achievements, although she concedes that life has been far from easy. ''The first year was especially tough. I was studying every day from 9am to 4pm and then coming home to be a mother.

''Trying to get into a routine that worked was difficult and, even though I had the support of my husband, Kevin, and a lot of help from the children, I was spinning plates all the time.''

Eileen, who plans to take a postgraduate qualification in public health, is in no doubt it has been worthwhile. ''I wanted to be able to provide more for the children than I could cleaning someone else's house. But I also wanted to encourage them to think of going to university themselves, so I thought that if they saw their mother managing it they'd be more confident.''

The family's Rottenrow connection stretches back 22 years to the birth of Eileen's first child, Kieran (now a Paisley University undergraduate). Rottenrow is an institution its own right with which hundreds of thousands of Glaswegians have family connections.

The hospital has made Glasgow synonymous worldwide with major developments in obstetrics, including Murdoch Cameron's pioneering work in caesarean sections, Munro Kerr's research into maternal mortality, and Ian Donald's development of ultrasound scanning. Rottenrow also became internationally renowned as a leading training centre in midwifery.

Its history stretches back to 1834, when the Glasgow Lying-In Hospital was established in the Greyfriars Wynd in the city. The men widely credited with the project included James Anderson, manager of the Glasgow Union Bank and nephew of Professor John Anderson, who had bequeathed his estate to establish Anderson's College, now Strathclyde University.

Within three months of the founding group's first meeting, the hospital admitted its first patient, the fortuitously named Mrs Virtue. The rent was #30 a year, which, with all other running costs, had to be raised from public contributions.

What made the Glasgow Lying-In Hospital unusual for its time was its brave and progressive commitment to caring, not just for married women, but also for the destitute. Many respectable prospective benefactors were unwilling to give money to an institution they viewed as encouraging immorality by delivering the babies of unmarried women. But the founders of the Glasgow Lying-In Hospital argued that the preservation of human life was more important.

Many patients were deserted wives. Some arrived already in labour, carried in off the streets, while others were brought in by police officers appalled at their

living conditions. The Lying-In Hospital's second annual report in 1836 described the home of one of its patients, saying: ''She was confined in an apartment lately used as a coal cellar, with the damp rising to a height of four feet. There was no fireplace, no bed or mattress.''

There were frequent outbreaks of infection at the hospital, so that sometimes it had to be closed, but even so it delivered 53 babies in its first 10 months, all but two of whom survived.

The move to Rottenrow, the street which gave the hospital its everyday name, came in 1860. The hospital building which now stands at the crest of North Portland Street, on the corner of Rottenrow, was built after poisonous gas from sewers began seeping into the old building. That building was demolished, the sewers were fixed, and the new hospital was opened in 1881 at a cost of #6500, two-thirds of which came from the public.

That same year, physicians at Rottenrow - by then known as the Glasgow Maternity Hospital - took the first steps towards making caesarean sections safe when complications ruled out a traditional delivery. Until then, it was rare for mother and baby to survive a caesarean. The common practice was to conduct a craniotomy - crushing the baby's head - so that the

mother's life could be saved.

But social attitudes were changing and doctors were growing more ambitious, so when a 27-year-old woman was admitted (a rachitic dwarf only 4ft tall) whose deformed pelvis had an opening of just an inch-and-a-half, Dr Murdoch Cameron decided to operate.

This was the first known successful caesarean in Glasgow, causing champagne corks to pop on the ward - much to the disgust of the mother, who asked instead for a cup of buttermilk - and Dr Cameron quickly performed two more, also on dwarfs. After realising that one of them was unmarried, he arranged a wedding in hospital, with the other two patients acting as bridesmaids.

At the beginning of the 1880s there were some 260 admissions annually, but a decade later this had risen to more than 450. The hospital was always short of money, but by 1908 it had been extended to include a gynaecology department.

Funding was a constant problem. Bazaars were held when the going got particularly tough, including one in November 1913 that raised more than #16,000. By the time Rottenrow was taken into the NHS in 1948, its work had been extended to providing comprehensive ante-natal and post-natal care.

Jean McShane started training at Rottenrow in 1948. Her experiences sound light years from the era of labouring in the bath and on beanbags. ''We would wash the women every four hours to try to prevent puerperal sepsis, a post-natal infection they were prone

to at the time. Three-quarters of

our patients were weak through anaemia, so if they lost a lot of blood they were more likely to get an infection.''

Back in 1948 mothers were expected to stay in hospital at least a week. After a forceps delivery the expected stay was a fortnight, and after a caesarean it was three weeks. Miss McShane recalls: ''When mothers had a caesarean they weren't allowed out of bed until the eighteenth day. But some mothers signed themselves out early. If they weren't home to get the husband's wages on Friday the money would be spent on drink or gambling.

''Rottenrow was a grim place

but the patients were well looked after. Professor Donald - who developed sonar for monitoring - always said every patient must be treated like a duchess.''

Miss McShane started her career when home confinements were still the norm, and as a student midwife travelled around Glasgow's Townhead area and the south side accompanied by her trusty bus timetable and a pocketful of tokens.

The midwife's uniform was very distinctive. A double-breasted navy-blue coat, very full at the back since it was designed in the days of bustles, with six buttons down the front. This was topped off by a navy-blue straw hat with a little

velvet trim and a white chinstrap.

Its distinctiveness came in handy. Miss McShane recalls: ''I always felt safe in Glasgow - you could go anywhere in that uniform. If I was called out in the middle of the night I was allowed to take a taxi. If I was going to a less salubrious part of the city, the taxi driver would say, 'I'll put you off here, nurse. I can't go in there but you'll be perfectly safe' - and I always was.'' Sometimes Miss McShane would come out shaking fleas from her coat.

By the time Myra Crawford arrived at Rottenrow as a student in 1967, home confinements were on the way out. Accelerated labour was the coming thing as obstetricians began to realise the power they had to minimise the danger of late deliveries. But the sintocinon drip, which induces labour, brought its own problems, as Miss Crawford remembers. ''My great fear was

that the patients all came in the morning and were put on the drip, so that by the early afternoon they were all in labour. Late on we would be running around madly finding places to deliver the babies.''

Margaret Kitson trained as a midwife teacher in Rottenrow and later became principal tutor. She remembers the growing popularity of high-intervention delivery, but is convinced it was done with the best intentions. ''The pressure came from the medical staff because they knew that if the pregnancy went on too long, or if labour was prolonged, there was a danger to the infant. There was a lot of wrong thinking about this - that it was all to do with convenience, getting babies delivered between 9 and 5 - but it was really to avoid damage.

''But it went too far, too fast, and became the norm - if a woman was a week late she would automatically be taken in and induced. The women started to fight against that.''

Many other practices have come and gone as a consequence of changes of opinion. In the 1940s all the babies were trundled away at night so that their mothers could get a good night's sleep. By the early 1980s bonding was the thing and the babies were left with the mothers, to the dismay of many.

When Jean McShane started her career, all unmarried mothers were expected to give their babies up for adoption. ''When the child was born the young girl sometimes begged us to ask their ma if they could keep the baby. Sometimes their mothers relented, but more often they had to give them up.''

Margaret Kitson remembers how her attitude changed over her working life. ''When I started I think the unmarried mothers had a very hard time. Our attitude was often, 'I've managed to avoid getting into the mess you're in - why couldn't you?'. We tried not to let it show, but it probably did. The big change came with the pill. The number of unmarried mothers went right down. Then there was the legalisation of abortion. I

didn't approve of abortion, but I realised it wasn't up to me. People in that situation had to make up their own minds.''

Then there are the fathers: nowhere in evidence in Jean McShane's day (though they were the only visitors allowed after delivery); the exception rather than the rule in the 1970s delivery room; now present at most deliveries.

Margaret Leonard has worked at Rottenrow since she started training in 1975. Midwifery was only meant to be a second string to her nursing bow, but she thought a bit of post-training experience on the labour ward would be useful - and stayed there 15 years. She remembers being told in not to get too used to Rottenrow, because 'we're moving soon'. Twenty-six years on, she's having trouble believing the move is about to take place.

Now sister at the ante-natal

clinic, she remembers the advent of fathers in the delivery room. ''It used to be partners were allowed in if it was just the midwife there, but as soon as a doctor arrived they were thrown out. The compromise was often that the man was allowed in once the baby's head was delivered. The dads would be sitting in a row on the landing and we'd

hustle them in so they'd be there for the actual birth. Now everything's a lot more flexible and midwives have had a huge role to play in that. Midwife means 'with woman'. We're there to be advocates for women in childbirth, to speak up for them. And that's really happened more over the past 30 years.''