‘Britain’s Fight Against the Cruel Sea’: Disaster Nursing and the East Coast Floods of 1953

Claire Chatterton and Pauline Brand

 

Introduction

In 1953, the United Kingdom (UK) was preparing for the Coronation of Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II, an event which was eagerly anticipated by a nation still recovering following the six desolate years of the Second World War. Austerity remained; food rationing was still in place and the whole infrastructure of the UK was undergoing the slow process of rebuilding and regeneration. However, this year also saw what has been described as Britain’s ‘worst peace-time disaster’ⁱ, which claimed the lives of 307 people in England during a powerful storm surge from the North Sea which precipitated extensive flooding across the East coast. In the same disaster, nineteen individuals in Scotland and 1,800 across the sea in the Netherlands also lost their lives. In addition, more than 177 people were lost at sea, including fishermen and 130 passengers and crew of the car and passenger ferry, the Princess Victoria, which sank in the Irish Sea, en route from Scotland to Northern Ireland.ⁱⁱ

To add to this tale of misery, it is estimated that a total of 32,000 people were evacuated from their homes and thousands of farm and domestic animals died. The regional infrastructure, including power stations, gasworks, roads, railways, agricultural land, sewage and water services was severely affected. As Baxter notes,

this was the worst natural disaster to befall the British Isles during the twentieth century yet, surprisingly, the story of the Big Flood, with its tales of human courage and the heroic response to sudden catastrophe, was rapidly relegated to a footnote in the history of post-war Britain.ⁱⁱⁱ

The published accounts that do exist have unsurprisingly focused on the human tragedies and on heroic responses by the public and members of the emergency services.^iv While it is important to recognise their contributions and achievements, much less attention has been paid to the health care implications of, and the nursing response to, this disaster. Wall and Keeling have discussed the potential of nursing and health care workers to restore stability in the aftermath of a traumatic and chaotic natural disaster and the role they can play in supplying comfort and health care to distressed communities.^v This study therefore aims to remedy these lacunae in the literature by analysing the 1953 East Coast floods and the role played by nurses, volunteers and health and social care personnel in aiding those affected by this disaster.

Methodology

This paper aims to explore this topic in the context of the 1953 floods by examining a range of archival material including both national and local reports, oral histories and videos. Each of the sources may be viewed as problematic. In the case of the archival material, this consisted of reports from officials to government departments regarding the conditions in each area and plans for evacuation. There were limited materials dealing with any health activities. The nursing press was also surprisingly reticent with only a few pages related to the disaster. Oral histories were recorded with survivors some years after the event. These were mostly collected by local historians and although they were powerful accounts, historiographical issues related to oral history such as reliability, validity and the inconsistency of memory, may have affected the material.^vi There was little direct evidence from any of the nursing and health personnel involved in the disaster, a common issue for those researching the history of nursing, but one which makes it even more imperative to capture what is available. A thematic analysis was employed to examine the contribution made by nursing, health and social care personnel to the care and relief of those affected.

When researching this paper, it became clear that there were limitations in the evidence available to be able to distinguish, delineate and explore the contribution of those nurses believed to be professionally qualified. Therefore, any activity considered to be nursing across a range of UK organisations including the Red Cross, St. John Ambulance and Women’s Voluntary Service were also considered. While the floods primarily affected four English counties, a case study approach was adopted, focussing on Lincolnshire and Essex. These counties provide a contrast in term of population and demography.

Background

The disaster began to unfold late on the afternoon of 31 January 1953, just as darkness was falling. As noted by Baxter, storm surges are a particular feature aligned to flooding around the East Coast because of the shallowness of the North Sea.^vii The floods in 1953 were the product of a unique combination of high spring tides, storm surge, winds and exceptionally large waves which resulted in the fragile sea defences along the east coast of Great Britain being overwhelmed during that night and next day.^viii There were no warnings of the impending disaster. When daylight came, extensive flooding had occurred and the sea had left a trail of utter devastation along four hundred miles of coastline.^ix Most affected were four English counties; firstly Lincolnshire, then Norfolk, Suffolk and finally Essex, with damage also occurring in Kent. As previously noted, this study concentrates on Lincolnshire and Essex. Using both primary and secondary sources, it was possible to plot the course of events.

Lincolnshire

It was soon after dusk on 31 January 1953, when the first waves begun to crash through the sea defences along the Lincolnshire coast. Within an hour the seaside resorts of Mablethorpe and neighbouring Sutton on Sea and the area to the south of them, down to the coastal village of Ingoldmells, were underwater. The destruction did not stop that night however and the morning’s high tide, combined with the continuing storm saw the flooding worsen. It eventually extended more than two miles inland with the flood waters up to ten feet high in places.^x So much sand was washed in, the streets were feet deep and it blocked doors and windows^xi, with 860,000 tons of sand washed into Mablethorpe alone.^xii Evacuation of the area was imperative until the water receded, the sand could be removed and the sea defences repaired and rebuilt. This was to prove a mammoth task as thirty-four miles of sea defences along the Lincolnshire coast had been destroyed or severely damaged. Urgent repairs were needed as it was only a fortnight before the next spring tide was due. In what became known as the ‘battle of the breaches’, 4,000 troops and workers were brought in to complete this herculean task.^xiii

Essex

Having devastated the Lincolnshire coast, the wall of water continued its journey down the east coast of England through Norfolk and Suffolk to the county of Essex. Here Jaywick Sands and Canvey Island were to endure the most severe effects of its force. Jaywick Sands was a popular seaside resort accessible by only one road, with buildings consisting of rudimentary bungalows with verandas and stepladders, built on concrete piers and lacking any running water or sewerage. While the majority of the 1,800 bungalows were only used in the summer, the 250 permanent residents of Jaywick tended to be the young or those who had retired. When examining the casualties this explains the polarisation of the ages of those affected. As a holiday destination there were also established holiday camps which would be used after the disaster as a temporary refuge for those whose homes had been rendered uninhabitable.^xiv

However, the place most affected by the disaster was Canvey Island. Canvey had a long history of struggle against the forces of the sea as reflected in its motto, Ex Mare Dei Gratia (From the Sea by the Grace of God). As a reclaimed salt marsh situated at the entrance of the river Thames it was extremely vulnerable, being protected by sea defences in the form of walls originally built in the sixteenth century by the Dutch. Such was the influence of the Dutch in the area that in the early 20th century Flemish was still spoken by the older inhabitants of the island.^xv

Canvey Island’s high casualty rate of fifty-eight deaths was attributed to a range of issues.^xvi Firstly, the whole of this Thames Estuary Island lay below sea level and was inadequately protected by the sea walls against the North Sea surge (which was ten feet above the height of the predicted spring tide). Although recognised to be vulnerable to flooding, the sea defences were in a poor condition (as they were along the whole of the east coast) due to the austerity of the post war years. Its only link to the mainland was via a single road and bridge, thus making access for any organised rescue (for which no plans existed at the time) more difficult. As Pollard has pointed out, it is significant that the stretches along the coast where casualties were heaviest, including the Mablethorpe and Sutton on Sea areas of Lincolnshire and Jaywick Sands and Canvey Island in Essex, were all ‘largely seaside shanty towns consisting mainly of timber bungalows never intended for winter occupation’. ^xvii

Testimony

The events of that night are vividly recorded in oral histories and written testimonies of those who were there and offer a chilling insight into the conditions faced by the victims and those involved in rescue. Mrs Gertrude Trevethick recorded this in her diary of her experiences in Lincolnshire:

A night of horror and fear, in minutes the lights failed, and the sea flooded our home feet deep … Through the bedroom window we could see the sea surrounding us and the poor neighbour’s bungalows … We could do nothing for the old people; only hope they were up on their furniture. We stood at the top of the stairs until we knew that the tide had turned, and the water level had started to go down. We then got into bed to keep warm. We were awake all night and out of bed to see Herb Horton with his tractor start the rescuing (later we knew he had found his father drowned and sent his mother to hospital. He then worked on all night.) We saw three people carried from Mr Fricker’s, Mrs Clayton had died, Mrs Millward and Mr Frost also drowned.^xviii

As this extract reveals, the consequences of these floods were to be fatal for both local inhabitants and visitors to the area. Amongst the forty-two victims in Lincolnshire were a family of six (three local children, their parents and grandmother) and a group of four visiting from Leicester (including a six-month-old baby); all had been caught unaware by the huge tide of water that engulfed them.^xix In Sutton-on-Sea, a retired nurse, and a founder member of the College (now Royal College) of Nursing, Mrs M.E. Burden, was amongst the fatalities.^xx

Those caught outside as the floods hit were to endure both dangerous and frightening conditions. As Neller noted they were in a ‘dire situation. It was dark, bitingly cold, the surging water was full of debris crashing against legs, drain covers had been forced off and they had no way of knowing what they were stepping into’.^xxi The force of the water was to carry many away and others had to fight frantically to hold onto walls and gates, as the sea raged around them. Some, including off-duty Lincolnshire police officer, Constable F.J. Midgley, left their homes to help others. He was reputed to have saved seventeen people from the floods including a couple who were submerged up to their necks in a deep hole. Another Lincolnshire police officer, Sergeant J.G Bray, ‘worked without ceasing for 46 hours until the worst of the danger had passed’.^xxii

Further south, oral history testimony recorded sometime in the 1960s with former Canvey Island resident Peggy Morgan, offers a harrowing insight into the suffering endured by the residents as the sea flooded the island.^xxiii At the time of the disaster, Peggy was in her thirties; a wife to Reg. and mother to Dennis aged five. Peggy woke at one in the morning to find that their bedroom was flooded. The family managed to escape and waded through waist high water before climbing onto the roof of the chicken shed. Her mother in-law lived in the next house and on hearing her screams, Reg. managed to help her to the chicken shed but she was unable to reach the roof. The only option was for her to stand in the icy freezing water holding her daughter- in- law/s hand. The horrors of the night are captured in Peggy’s description as she recalled,

‘Me [sic] mother-in-law went first, she let go of my hand and floated away like and then I heard a terrible scream and when I looked round me husband had gone, I didn’t know where he was gone until after the hospital business … and then I sat there another 3 hours you know, kept on trying to get on peoples’ furniture as it floated by … trying to keep me and the baby up out the water … then this big search light came on me and er Micky Saunders ,that’s the man who rescued me, he said he had a rubber dinghy and he’d been trying to get the boats from Leigh but they couldn’t get them. So, he put us in the rubber dingy me and the baby and he took us up to the end of the road and put us in an old army lorry or some lorry and they put a tarpaulin over us because we had no clothes on you know.^xxiv

Peggy’s husband, mother-in-law and only child all lost their lives.

Rescue efforts

The number and type of organisations involved in the rescue efforts across all the affected English counties were complex, consisting of a mix of Government funded and voluntary agencies. In their report to Essex County Council drawn up ten days after the disaster, the Emergency Committee noted that any necessary task had been completed without any need to determine if that work was the function of the individual. The timing of the disaster at the weekend meant that offices were closed, and staff were unavailable. This was further compounded by the fact that there was no emergency plan in place, no warning of the tidal surge had reached the area and once the storm began phone and power lines were made unusable.^xxv Consequently, the official response was slow in terms of the mobilisation of aid.

Those in the locality, both official and voluntary, organised themselves into rudimentary rescue squads although the darkness and rapidity of the disaster made any rescue extremely difficult and the lack of communication with outside agencies further hindered their efforts.^xxvi Police, firefighters and volunteers searched for survivors in the flood using small rowing boats. When that was not possible, they waded through deep water. Many heroic deeds and rescues took place that night as shown later by the presentation of awards to individuals including to two Lincolnshire police officers who received the George Medal for bravery.^xxvii A British Empire Medal for Gallantry was awarded to Gilbert Paul, a joiner from Chapel St Leonards in Lincolnshire. In the citation for the award it describes how he, amongst other rescues, ‘made a most hazardous journey across the remains of the sea bank and sandhills’ to a house where he found seven people. They were all rescued safely.^xxviii Conditions were harrowing and one rescuer remarked that the experience ‘shook me more than anything I saw in the war on active service’.^xxix

Those who did survive endured long waits in freezing conditions for help to arrive. For example, in Jaywick in Essex, rescuers made use of two small boats usually used for summer excursions and started the retrieval of the six hundred people trapped in their homes. Mrs Louise Kemp, a retired Nursing Sister who had served at Dunkirk, was the last person to be rescued from her bungalow after thirty-one hours. She survived by climbing on top of a wardrobe and smashing her way through the ceiling with a wire coat hanger. On Monday morning she saw lights through the roof and in her words, ‘I started whooping and cooing like the haunted, then I saw a hatchet knock through the tiles and the very welcome face of a policeman’.^xxx

Once rescued, people along the east coast were transported in lorries and buses, or on trailers pulled by tractors, and taken to rest centres hastily assembled in a variety of settings including local schools, church halls, a holiday home for miners and a children’s home. They were, says Robinson ‘run like a military operation’.^xxxi It has been estimated that along the east coast 34,000 people were evacuated to over 2,000 rest centres.^xxxii Local inhabitants who lived further inland offered temporary accommodation and some evacuated residents later went to live with families and friends in the unaffected areas. Archival sources reveal, though, that many were keen to go back to their homes but had to wait until the authorities allowed them to do so.^xxxiii

Nursing and Healthcare Responses

Amongst the voluntary organisations offering succour and practical help were the Women’s Voluntary Service (WVS), Salvation Army and Women’s Institute (WI). Parker described their role in supplying sustenance both for those who had been rescued and those working to repair the sea defences. They came, he said, ‘with food and the never-failing cup of tea’.^xxxiv They also provided clothing and bedding.

Archival sources reveal the massive relief efforts in the aftermath of the floods. WVS members staffed government ‘food flying squads’ that operated until the 22 February 1953. At its peak they were serving and delivering 15,000 meals a day in Lincolnshire alone, both to the relief workers and emergency services and those flooded out of their homes.^xxxv Sometimes described as ‘the shock troops of emergency feeding’, on Canvey Island 217 WVS members, working in forty-four teams on both day and night shifts, served 60,000 snack meals and 6,000 main meals to the men labouring to repair the sea defences.^xxxvi They did this in taxing conditions, going out to deliver meals in lorries that broke down and got stuck, travelling through floods and wet sands and on roads that had collapsed or been severely damaged. The work was also hard and physically demanding including lifting large urns full of tea. The Convoys officer for the Midland region reported, ‘one cannot speak too highly of the magnificent effort performed by these voluntary workers, in spite of the bitter cold and snow conditions’.^xxxvii

Donations of clothing poured into WVS depots and members sorted, packed and distributed these to the flood victims and rescue workers (over three million garments in total).^xxxviii When the clean-up began, WVS cleaning teams went into action, alongside other voluntary groups including Scouts, to help make people’s homes habitable again. Furniture and household goods were also received and distributed by the WVS. They even collected plants and seedlings to help re-establish gardens ravaged by saltwater.^xxxix The work of the WVS and other volunteers that contributed to the relief efforts played a significant role in improving both the physical and mental health of the evacuees and rescue workers. Less, though, has been discussed about the role that nursing and medical staff and volunteers played in ameliorating health care needs and promoting public health, but primary sources can help to construct a picture.

Two voluntary organisations, the British Red Cross and St John’s Ambulance Brigade were to play a vital role in providing health care. A local paper in Lincolnshire described their work: ‘quietly Red Cross nurses and St John’s Ambulance Brigade members worked ceaselessly among the victims. Helping those who needed medical attention – giving a reassuring pat of the hand, and a smile to the distraught – calming those who were feeling the strain’.^xl In amongst their numbers were registered nurses and British Red Cross and St John’s Ambulance members with first aid skills and home nursing training. Some were local members who had themselves been flooded out of their homes, but both organisations also sent teams of volunteers and ambulances from across the country into the affected areas.^xli

They also collected and distributed bedding that was donated (having agreed with the WVS that the latter would take responsibility for clothing). Younger members functioned as runners and messengers in the affected areas and helped in collecting, sorting and packing donated goods in the rest of the country. They worked alongside the other voluntary organisations providing drinks and food. In addition, they aided the police in dealing with enquires about missing persons. Later they were to provide cleaning materials to help to clean the affected properties plus laundering clothes and bed linen, which had been left covered in mud and slime. They also organised and provide nurseries to care for children while their mothers were engaged in the onerous task of restoring their homes to a habitable condition.^xlii

In Essex, some evacuees were initially cared for by a local Commandant of the British Red Cross: ‘All those brought in had hardly any clothes on and were wet and cold’ she recalled, and ‘soon my home was full……From 1.45 we had to work by candlelight. The worst time of all I think was when you could hear calls for help all round and couldn’t do much, being cut off by water’.^xliii The Essex Branch of the British Red Cross mobilised within twenty four hours. Two hundred members distributed emergency supplies to the evacuees and set up rest centres providing shelter for 1,200 displaced individuals.^xliv Two Canvey Island District Nurses, Dorothy Cartwright and Vera Dunnage, were rescued from the flood water and it was feared they had lost all their possessions.^xlv However they were soon to be found as sisters-in-charge of two community clinics on the mainland, which had been converted into twelve bedded units where, helped by St John’s Ambulance volunteers, they cared for older men and women suffering with various ailments including pneumonia.^xlvi

A first aid post had also been set up in a local yacht club staffed by a doctor (the Assistant Medical Officer of Health) and two health visitors.^xlvii At the Long Road school in Essex, now adapted into a rest centre, the local doctor and district nurse, together with St John’s Ambulance personnel, established another first aid post. An eyewitness later described the scene: ‘There was a St John’s Nurse, in her arms a dying child, the mother having her cut legs dressed, the father had been drowned trying to save the grandmother’.^xlviii The mother was Peggy Morgan, who later recalled that she and her son were then taken to Rochford Hospital where ‘they laid us all on mattresses on the floor of the foyer like because they had no beds. And they put hot water bottles all round us’. Peggy’s five-year-old-child, Dennis, had survived the long night of being exposed to the cold and the freezing water. On arrival he was given artificial respiration, oxygen and stimulants but died from shock and exposure. Peggy later recalled that she was not informed of his death until one week later, being told in the interim by the nurses that he was doing well on the children’s ward.^xlix

Meanwhile in Lincolnshire, The Nursing Times noted that health visitors had been giving voluntary help in hostels and rest centres and that nurses, with the support of British Red Cross volunteers, were working long hours to help those in need.^l Local hospitals in Louth and Alford received flood victims suffering from exhaustion, ‘shock’ and exposure.^li One patient who was already in Louth hospital recovering from an appendicectomy recollected that she and other patients were ‘awoken by people coming in and the nurses and porters brought in extra beds, in-filling the wards with people, who had come in in lorries in just their nightclothes’.^lii

In Essex, Clacton Hospital began receiving casualties at half past four in the morning and such was the demand that extra beds were quickly created in the hospital boardroom, with bedding provided by local hotels. As news of the disaster spread, off-duty staff reported for work.^liii To give an idea of the number of casualties, Southend and Rochford General Hospitals, the main receiving hospitals for Canvey Island, dealt with 219 casualties, of whom 129 were admitted.^liv All hospitals in Essex were reported to have coped well with the influx of patients, although they had been struggling to find beds because of an influenza epidemic and nurses had already been working extra hours.^lv Staffing, it was reported, had ‘stood the strain with the assistance of many reserve nurses – those who had retired or married’ coming in to help, together with British Red Cross and St John’s Ambulance Brigade volunteers.^lvi Two wards at Westcliff Hospital were opened to prepare for casualties and nurses were sent from the Royal Victoria Hospital to staff them.^lvii Three State Registered Nurses, namely Miss M. Durrant, Mr J. Walker, and Mr E.A. Wells (all members of the St John’s Ambulance Brigade), travelled from their homes in London to assist with the work in Canvey Island.^lviiiMedicines were also collected, and an amateur film of the time shows nurses caring for babies caught in the flood.^lix

Uninjured evacuees billeted in a caravan park in Jaywick had the services of a St John’s nursing superintendent who ran a first aid post and a welfare centre. A wide range of conditions were treated including infectious diseases such as rubella and whooping cough, and the after effects of shock.^lx Additional staff were drafted into the area; clinic nurses, health visitors and nursery staff undertook intensive home visits to the many temporary billets to identify any vulnerable individuals, sick children and expectant mothers and to ensure that they received adequate care. As one nurse noted, ‘Dirty heads, high temps or suspicious symptoms transferred to Averley or the Nursery. This system prevented any serious outbreak of illness’.^lxi The clinic at Averley treated measles and whooping cough as well as caring for frail older people, many of whom were not expected to be able to return to their own homes. Other issues such as lost spectacles, dentures and even an artificial leg also required solutions. The Government response was to allow the special issue of replacement items without any prescription charge.^lxii

As well as dealing with the evacuees, health workers also had to contend with the potential public health issue. Water was contaminated and the processing of sewage also stopped for more than two weeks because of the damage to the infrastructure. In Canvey Island a mass evacuation was ordered and 10,000 of the population were moved onto the mainland on Sunday afternoon.^lxiii Food which had been left in the homes of the evacuees had to be destroyed and advice on food hygiene was issued urgently to householders. Similarly, strict measures were implemented in the rest centres to prevent food poisoning, with workers instructed to disinfect their hands thoroughly. Where these measures were in place, only two cases of diarrhoea were reported in one rest centre, compared to 200 in another which did not have input from this service.^lxiv Warm clothes, food and particularly advice to boil water were all vital to maintaining health as it was noted that although precautions were being taken to avoid outbreaks of typhoid or other water borne diseases, it ‘was never possible to exclude the odd individual cases’.^lxv The success in controlling epidemics in the aftermath of the flood was attributed to the dedicated work of the medical and nursing staff. Indeed, a local Member of Parliament noted that,

A general medical practitioner and a State registered nurse were attached to each rest centre. Nurseries were opened. Infant feeding was supervised. The ambulance services were working well. Health visitors had the arduous task of visiting homes in the flooded areas. It ought to be put on record that all this was a wonderful illustration of all branches of the National Health Service working together as a co-ordinated team.^lxvi

The relief effort was not without its injuries. Jean Hannath, a medical secretary at Louth Hospital in Lincolnshire, recounted how both her fellow secretarial staff and nursing colleagues were asked to stay on duty because a lorry carrying rescued flood victims to one of the rest centres had overturned in a ditch, injuring both the rescued and their rescuers. One young soldier had an open fracture of his elbow.^lxvii A report by the Lord Mayor’s Distress Fund noted that first aid efforts by St John’s volunteers had to continue for some time as, ‘men working in the very severe conditions on the breaches in the seawall and other constructions were continuously needing first aid both for injuries and for exhaustion’.^lxviii Others also suffered from ‘trench foot’ due to standing in water for prolonged periods.^lxix

The involvement of British Red Cross and St John’s Ambulance Brigade as an additional resource for the still relatively new National Health Service (NHS) is not particularly surprising as both organisations played a crucial role during the second world war, and as noted earlier, this remained still a fresh memory for those involved. It was later observed that the members of the Women’s Voluntary Service, St John’s Ambulance and Red Cross undertook the initial rescue work without waiting for any direction from the authorities and this response could be attributed to their history of working together in both world wars. As Baxter notes, some of the Canvey population, many of whom were from the East End of London, would have experienced the Blitz.^lxx Furedi concurs: ‘The cultural frame through which the public was encouraged to make sense of the floods of the 1950s was that of the experience of the Blitz.’^lxxi Resilience, resourcefulness, and response to adversity were identified as attributes displayed by those with this experience and did appear to be reflected in the behaviour of the victims and responders.

Aftermath: Morbidity and Mortality

As noted by Pollard, when examining the overall mortalities for the whole of the East coast, ‘the eventual death tolls showed that it was the elderly, who went to bed early and had meagre reserves of energy even if they had time to realise what was happening when the water hit them, who were most vulnerable’.^lxxii Deaths were not necessarily from drowning. Several of the older people rescued and taken to hospital died later of ‘exhaustion and shock’, including 97-year-old Thomas Wilkinson who succumbed on reaching Alford Hospital in Lincolnshire.^lxxiii Douglas Hill, aged seven, was carried through floodwater six-feet deep by his parents in Ingoldmells, Lincolnshire but died of asphyxia after inhaling food and choking on his vomit.^lxxiv Mary Cox, from the same village, was rescued from her flooded caravan but collapsed on reaching the road. A post mortem revealed that she died of ‘heart failure, from coronary insufficiency’^lxxv. Of the forty-one post mortems that were performed on casualties from Canvey Island, fourteen people were found to have died from other causes, including heart attacks and heart failure.^lxxvi That the death toll was not higher was due to the heroic efforts of a range of individuals and services.

So, what were the longer-term effects of the floods in health terms? Dr Lorraine, a Medical Officer of Health on Canvey Island at the time of the floods, found that there was an increased incidence of mortality in the year immediately following the floods suggesting that life expectancy was shortened for those individuals affected by the disaster.^lxxvii Bennet argued that ‘death can be hastened by the experience of having been flooded rather than somehow being caused by it’.^lxxviii Grieve has noted that there was an increase in respiratory diseases among older people.^lxxix Thus, it appears likely that there continued to be pressure on the local health services and staff during the following year.

The psychological trauma is much harder to quantify, and there is little evidence to date to demonstrate that at that time mental health issues, following such a significant psychological trauma, were addressed. Indeed, Whitcomb noted that as a child returning to school on Canvey Island, he had to deal with the death of some of his classmates but that in 1953 the thought of trauma counselling for victims of the floods was not even considered, rather those affected ‘just had to pick up the pieces and get on with their lives as best as possible’. However not everyone managed to cope with the aftermath and one neighbour, he said, later committed suicide, a death that ‘never appeared in the official statistics’ and certainly the effect and distress on his family was not quantifiable.^lxxx Since the events of 1953 there is now much greater appreciation of the mental health effects of disasters on both the victims and rescuers.

Of those evacuated, some went on to stay with members of their families who lived inland or with local volunteers, but others had to stay in the rest centres while council workers, the army, police and volunteers worked tirelessly to repair the sea defences and clean up after the receding waters. It was to be many weeks before access to the flooded zones was restored and people were able to return to their homes, although not all of those affected felt able to return. Peggy Morgan, for example, did not return to Canvey Island for forty years. It is significant that she destroyed all the photographs in her possession which recorded her meeting with the Queen Mother, Sir Winston Churchill and Bernard Brain MP to expunge the memory of the terrible events of that night.^lxxxi As noted by Baxter in 2005, ‘The harrowing memories of what befell in the dark and the cold on that January night, and at what human cost, are as fresh today for some survivors as 50 years ago, but there was then little articulation of the mental or psychological impact, which may have been considerable’.^lxxxii

Conclusion

The year 1953 will remain as a significant year in British history for a variety of reasons, but for many of those involved in the East Coast floods, life changed forever. The contribution of the voluntary services to the rescue efforts has been well documented, but the work undertaken by nurses and other health care workers and the impact on both the physical and mental health of those affected has seldom been discussed. Nurses in both their professional and voluntary roles played a significant part in the aftermath of the disaster, although their contributions have been hidden from view. The evidence indicates that they went about their work in the affected hospitals coping with the physical and mental trauma of the flood victims, while already under the increased pressure of dealing with an influenza epidemic. At the front line of the disaster, they organised care and support and both the professional and voluntary organisations’ nurses just accepted this as simply being part of their role and that ‘We done (sic) no more than we expected to do in the case of such great emergency’.^lxxxiii At an exhibition to commemorate the seventieth anniversary of the floods it was noted that, ‘What this exhibition shows us is how the communities affected by this terrible flooding came together and ultimately recovered. Amongst the humbling images of flooded streets and destruction you’ll also find moments of human kindness, resilience, and even smiles in the face of adversity’.^lxxxiv Nursing staff and volunteers played ‘a major although unspectacular role’^lxxxv but one which was vital in providing comfort, care and stability to those affected by the East Coast Floods of 1953. This article has aimed to explore and mark their contribution to what one commentator described as, ‘Britain’s Fight Against the Cruel Sea’.^lxxxvi