Barbara Twigg

In 1948, Barbara was 18 and a junior nurse at the Norfolk Norwich Hospital. She now lives in North Walsham.

It was a struggle for everybody to pay for healthcare in the country - if you wanted a doctor you paid with a brace of pheasants or whatever was going. Suddenly we were getting it free from the cradle to the grave and people became more aware of what could be done for them. It was a great relief.

As a nurse, I wasn't aware of the NHS making any difference to me. We were 18, green as grass and our object in life was to get through the next exam and to do what we set out to do - which was to care for people. We worked a 12-hour day with four hours off, which often included a lecture and mealtimes. So there were times when you felt that you were on duty all day long. We didn't get paid much: I remember taking home £5 a month at one time, but I don't suppose we were that worldly minded.

Times Archive 1948: Mr Bevan's 'burning hatred'

"No amount of cajolery can eradicate my burning hatred for the Tory Party. So far as I am concerned, they are lower than vermin"

You started as a junior and got all the dirty jobs, you learnt from the sisters in charge and slowly soaked up the different procedures. By the time your three years were up you were very competent. Night duty made you grow up quickly. We would have only two nurses on the ward and 36 or more patients. For two hours a night you were on your own because of meal breaks, which could be scary. It was hard work, we were extremely busy, but you accepted the responsibility and enjoyed it.

The etiquette in hospitals was fierce. You called doctors “sir” and opened doors for them. I can remember opening the door for a gentleman in white and he said, “Thanks, love, I'm the painter.” You bowed and you jumped when doctors told you to jump. You held them completely in awe. You didn't make decisions without referring to authority, even on night duty when things were a bit hairy. It was a lovely thing to be able to rely on, although at times we resented it.

There was also an etiquette about patient-nurse relationships - you were not supposed to get involved. When I started I got a homily from my dad: you don't flirt with patients.

Once a year matron had a ball, to which you wore a long dress. The men had to wear suits and ties - all demob. We weren't allowed to go without an escort. My friend and I were moaning that we wouldn't go and this bloke in the bed said “If you're ever short of anybody, let us know and I'll find somebody and come up”. Which he did, and my friend and I tossed a coin and I lost and got the ex-patient, and I moaned.

My father was horrified and said “What's this bloke like?” and I said I hadn't seen him in anything other than his pyjamas. So eventually Brian had to be taken home and looked over - and passed with flying colours. We've been married for 55 years.

Evelyn Croak

On July 4, 1948, aged 20, Evelyn was admitted to hospital with appendicitis. She lives in Darwen, Lancashire.

My appendix had been grumbling for months and the doctor wouldn't send me to have it done - he said it wasn't ready. On the night of July 3, a Saturday, I was in terrible pain all night and on Sunday I said: “Send for the doctor”. He'd gone playing golf. He came about quarter to eight at night and said he'd get the ambulance, which took me to the Royal Infirmary in Blackburn.

I saw the doctor and at quarter to 12 they put me on a trolley and took me down to theatre. The anaesthetist put me to sleep and I don't remember nothing until I woke up on Monday.

In the morning the doctor who did my op came round. He was a very nice man, very smart, grey suit, a lovely head of grey hair. He said: “My word, you look a lot better than you did last night. Do you want the good news or the bad news?” “Oh,” I said, “I'll have the bad news first.” He said, “You're a very lucky girl, you're lucky to be alive. When you were in theatre they gave you an hour to live, it was ready for bursting.

“The good news is you're the first patient to have an operation on the National Health in Blackburn Royal Infirmary. Don't ever forget that, because it's something to be proud of.”

This doctor, you could always tell when he was visiting because all the nurses would be straightening their caps and tidying their uniforms. He was quite dishy.

We were well looked after, though you didn't get breakfast, just one slice of bread and a cup of tea. My mother brought me a big jar of damson jam and two slices of bread and butter every night, well wrapped up, and put them in my locker. If your family brought eggs, the nurses would boil them for you.

Everybody was kind and good and friendly. I was on B2 ward and there were a lot of beds. We used to laugh and joke, relatives would bring a big bag of sweets and patients passed them round the whole ward. It was two visitors to a bed and visting was from seven till quarter to eight, that was all. Very strict on visiting. There was a matron, and she saw that everything was spick and span. You were in bed a week, in hospital for 12 days, eight weeks off work.

Even without the NHS I would have needed the operation or I'd have died. Whether my parents could have afforded to pay, I don't know. My dad was a boiler fireman at a yarn dyer's in Blackburn - he dropped down dead when I was 21 - and my mother was a part-time cleaner. I was a weaver in the cotton mill, and later I worked as a hospital domestic. Hospitals are more relaxed than they used to be but I think wards today could do with a proper matron to make sure that everything is right.

Professor Harry Keen

Now Professor Emeritus at Guy's Hospital campus of King's College London, Harry graduated from medical school in 1948. He later became a renowned diabetes specialist.

Shortly after I qualified in April 1948, I was asked by a medical student friend if I would do a couple of weeks as locum for his dad, who was a GP in Eltham. Like an idiot I agreed and found myself working single-handed. The dear old chap came back from holiday and promptly died, leaving me with the practice on my hands and the family broke, and I was there for three months. I saw in July 5, 1948 cycling the streets of Eltham, looking after the rapidly growing group of young people moving into a new estate. I was 22, wet behind the ears and scared stiff of all those sick kids, but their mums told me what was the matter with them and they were usually right.

A few days before, I was looking after a family - a little boy was coughing and Mum said: “I think he's got the measles” and I said I thought he had bronchitis.She said: “Kids round here all cough when they've got measles” and, sure enough, out came the rash, so I gave him the standard bottle of medicine and as I left Mum paid me the usual fee - I think it was 2s6d - which went into my bulging pocket. I wasn't taking for myself, it was for the old man. It was a very embarrassing business collecting money after you'd seen sick children, but it was expected. The husband who was employed would have been seen under national health insurance, but not his wife or his kids - they had to pay.

I went back two days later and said, “How's Johnny?” Mum said: “He's fine.” I heard a lot of coughing upstairs and said he didn't sound too good to me. She said: “That's not Johnny, that's Billy. He's got it, too, but I've given him some of the medicine.” I said, let me go up and see him. She said: “Well doctor, I'm sorry, we can't afford it.” I said: “Costs you nothing today - it's July 5.”

Can you imagine? It still moves me, brings me to tears. That seemed to me to be the transformation and it was.

Mary Fishwick

In 1948 Mary was a 20-year-old medical secretary in Sunderland, where she still lives.

I started at 16 in 1944 as a junior medical secretary to the Sunderland municipal medical superintendent and his staff, who were the matron, the almoner and the hospital secretary. On my first day the medical superintendent said: “You're here, dear, and while you're here I'm your father, then you go home to your own father.” It was like a family, a community, everyone knew everyone. I worked there for 50 years.

There weren't individual secretaries for each consultant, so when we were called upon we used to go to the different clinics and take letters from the surgeons and physicians. It was an insight into all the medical terminology - I was in tears about it at first, mind, but I managed.

One of the jobs was to go with matron to the wards each day with my little notebook, and the first thing she did was a prayer on each ward - wonderful, all the nurses at the bedside. They had a uniforms with bonnets.

My father was a manager-buyer and before the NHS we paid monthly for the GP, so I was in a better position than most. Where I did notice the NHS making a difference was that the older part of the hospital, the workhouse, was pulled down. It was no life for the people who lived there. I retrieved a punishment book which told you how they were put on bread and water if they spoke out of turn to the one in charge. The NHS put an end to that.

Our creaking ship: an alternative view of the NHS, by Nigel Hawkes

Before the NHS, darkness lay upon the land. Or so you would believe from some commentaries on the 60th birthday of an institution that we have all come to love, or loathe.

In fact, the pre-1948 health landscape was not quite so bleak as it is often painted. Lloyd George's National Insurance Act of 1911 had provided health insurance for workers, giving them access to family doctors, who generally worked from their own homes.

Between 1918 and 1948 hospitals were mainly funded by mass contributory schemes, usually through a deduction in workers' wages, at a rate of a few pennies a week. These might easily have evolved into a national health insurance scheme, but instead Lord Beveridge's report of 1942 opted for a tax-based system. Its greatest virtue was to provide free care for those not covered by existing schemes. Its misfortune was to be born in 1948, the high-water mark of central planning. Beveridge himself admitted that it would take Britain “halfway to Moscow”.

The naive belief of the founders of the NHS was that once a backlog of ill-health was dealt with, costs would fall. But a service free at the point of delivery cannot control demand except through queues. If one image sums up the NHS, it is lines of people waiting patiently. That's why they are called patients, I guess.

To doctors, the golden age of the NHS is always the day before yesterday. But in reality there were constant complaints. Possibly the 1960s and 1970s were its best days, when the hand of management was light and all pulled together to make the best of limited resources. Once general managers arrived, a “them-and-us” mentality took root.

Today's NHS is the product of 60 years of shifting reforms intended to make a steam engine fly like a jet. Inevitably, they have failed. It still chugs along, delivering an OK service to a public that has learnt to expect nothing better.