Peoples Stories - Bevendean History Project
Douglas Victor Brown's Life Story
Further Memories of the Brighton Ambulance Service - continued
When on duty at weekends we used the staff restaurant at the Brighton General Hospital as they always served up a very nice roast dinner. One of the women who served the meals was quite attractive but always a bit over weight; she would always tell us that she was trying to lose weight. This was great, we found that we could get her going every time, all you had to say to her was something like, “wow you have lost some weight since I last saw you, you are looking gorgeous”. She would be so pleased that you had your plate stacked with meat and roast potatoes.
We received a call to a large block of flats. It was the middle of winter and the large area of grass and the path in front of the flats were covered in snow. I walked at an angle from the ambulance to the main entrance and about half way across I got a big surprise when I found a hidden fish pond. I went through the cover of snow, through the layer of ice and up to my knees in the ice cold water. I said to myself, “Oh bother”. It was a great joke for my shift mates, for some time after I was known as, “the gold fish crusher”.
We would get a lot of patients who would pretend to be unconscious when you started to examine them, most of these were young females, funny lot.
We did not carry smelling salts as part of ambulance equipment but most of us had a bottle in our pocket, it was a wonderful cure in most cases.
We had another cure for these females. You would say to your mate, making sure that she could hear, “we had better get all her clothes off so that we can examine her better”. It worked a treat.
One evening we had to take a young man and his girlfriend into casualty. He had deep cuts on his penis and she had cuts and bruises on her head. It was a great story. She had been giving him some oral sex, during which she had an epileptic fit. As you may know, during a fit of this nature the jaw clamps tight and is very difficult to open, Panic, Panic, sort of makes your eyes water. To try to get her to release her hold on him, he was hitting her over the head with the bedside lamp.
We went to a lot of fire calls, one of these was to a house fire in which a person had been burnt to death due to having been smoking in bed. This is not a very nice job, the sight and the smell is most unpleasant. It was all very sad, but to add to that was the fact that behind the front door we found a cat and her three kittens all dead, having been overcome by smoke.
One evening Pat, who was the wife of one of our ambulance men, kept phoning as she wished to speak to him. I had to keep telling her that he was out; we were having a busy evening. She must have phoned three or four times, the phone rang again. I picked it up and said, “Hello Pat”. It was Pearl on the phone. Get out of that one Doug. I was in the smelly stuff again.
When I went onto amber shift the shift officer was Alan Bunny. He was a very nice chap and we became good friends. One day when I had just finished washing my ambulance we were having a joke and I pointed the turned off hose at him.
Then my “friend” Norman crept up behind me and turned the water on. The jet hit Alan in the chest, Norman and I really had to move to get out of the way of the same treatment.
There was a traffic accident on Marine Parade, we arrived at the same time as the police. A woman driver had demolished a centre traffic island but she was not injured. The police officer asked her how fast she had been driving. She replied, “Forty”. He said that he did not think that she could have been moving at that speed, more like thirty. “No I was doing forty” she replied. He put the same question to her several times and got the same reply. He then said, “Sorry then I will have to book you for exceeding the thirty mile per hour speed limit”. She just could not see that he was trying to help her.
One night when I was duty station officer I was sitting in my office, the time was about twelve thirty. There was a knock on the window; I pulled up the blind to find a young woman standing outside.
She was wearing only a very thin nightdress, she told me that she had a row with her husband and he had locked her out of the house. She then went on to say that she was very cold and would I let her into the station, as she had nowhere else to spend the night.
Both crews were out, I was on my own on the station, so no way was I going to have this near naked woman in my office. I let her into the well-lit glass fronted mess room, found a blanket to put round her and made her a cup of tea. After a while when I was considering contacting the police or the duty social worker her husband appeared. He told her he was sorry, they made it up and went back home. Was I pleased, if the crews had returned to base and found us together, with her wearing only a see through nightdress I would have never lived it down. They would never have believed my story, would you?
I took Tina into casualty one morning as she had a pea or bead stuck in her ear. Sister Woods was on duty and soon removed it, she then said to me, “I’m sorry but we have run out of sweets”. At most times a jar of sweets is kept in casualty for children “who have been brave”. As a joke I started carrying on about how bad this was, why did they not have any sweets, they should never run out, I will put in a complaint etc. Two old ladies waiting for treatment overheard all of this and said “what a horrible man, what do these people expect; he should be ashamed of himself”. The sister and I had a good laugh about that one.
We were running empty in the seven dials area one day, when we received an emergency call over the radio to a person collapsed at an address which was just round the corner from us, you can’t get better service than that. Were they surprised to see us so soon; they had only just put down the phone. It turned out to be should we say, a house of ill repute.
The person we took to be the boss man was looking very agitated, a young woman was running around topless and in a bit of a panic and a middle aged man was laid out on a bed and naked. He had received a heart attack from over excitement. (I expect from the topless female).
The boss said that he did not want the police to get involved so could we keep the details of the collapse quiet. If we did this for him then we could go back later for a free visit with one of the girls. Wow, what an offer. We got the patient into hospital alive and as is normal handed over all the details. We never did get our free sample.
We had a call to a traffic accident outside the entrance to the cemetery in Bear Road. When we arrived we found that some bystanders had taken the unconscious motor cyclist into the cemetery grounds and placed him on the grass verge near to the grave stones. No prizes for what happened next. As I started to examine him he came round, he looked about him, saw the grave stones, let out a yell and shouted out, “Oh my god, I’m dead”.
We took a young man into casualty, he was unconscious and he was fully dressed as a female. Now this was before the days when there were many transvestites about. We did not tell the sister about the cross dressing, he was placed in a side room and the sister started to undress him/her.
We waited outside to see what would happen and after a while there was a scream and the sister appeared. She looked at us with a grin on her face and said, “You buggers, you knew that didn’t you”. We made a hasty retreat.
Another time we received a call to a traffic accident stating that a tanker had overturned on the Lewes Road. We thought this could be nasty, petrol or acid spilling all over the road. Half way there we received a call to stand down as there were no casualties and the tanker was the type that empties cess pits. Were we pleased, had we arrived at the accident we could have been dropped right in it as they say. No one would have wanted to get within a mile of us.
We took a young woman into casualty one evening, she was in a very distressed state, and we handed her over to the nurses. A short time later while we were booking in the details at the reception desk, the sister shouted out, “stop her, stop her”. The patient came running down the treatment area with not a stitch on, we gave chase, along the passage, through the treatment rooms and then into the waiting room. You should have seen the look on the faces of the people in that waiting room. Two ambulance men chasing and trying to grab hold of a naked well-endowed young lady. Having got hold of her and handed her over to the sister, a young man who had been in the waiting room at the time came up to me and said, “cor mate you’ve got a good job, how do I go about joining the ambulance service”.
One night during the winter we went on duty at 23.00, it was a very clear but cold night. After about midnight, if it was quiet we would get our heads down on one of the ambulance stretchers. That night we never received one call and did not wake up until about six in the morning, one of us looked out of the window to find that we had deep snow.
Panic, Panic, if it snowed while you were on duty your top priority was to keep the forecourt clear for the emergency vehicles. Did we have to work like mad to get it clear by seven when our relief shift was due to come in.
We had a call to an emergency in West Street. Sometimes the police officer at the scene wishes to record the names of the ambulance crew. We were dealing with a new W.P.C. She asked for our names, my crew mate was Peter White, when I said to her, “Brown and White”. She said, “Oh don’t be rotten. I’m new to this; please tell me your real names”.
On another occasion we had a call one night to the Grand Hotel and found a naked man dead on a bed having had a heart attack. It was not his room, he was a member of a coach party and was in the room of a female member of that coach party. The lady in question was most embarrassed and said, “He only came into my room to say goodnight”. His clothes were folded all neat and tidy on a chair and he had a smile on his face. He died happy, that’s the way to go.
On duty one evening and sitting in my office, a person from our control kept phoning me every ten minutes or so about something very unimportant, just wasting his time.
I got fed up with this so when the phone rang again a short time later I picked it up and said,” what do you want this time”. The reply was, “Mr Grainger here, chief ambulance officer, who am I speaking to?” Good old Douglas, right in the smelly stuff again.
I was on duty at the Brighton races just behind the start. We had a very bad thunder storm, the police officer on duty with his horse dismounted and got into the back of the ambulance out of the rain. What made us laugh was the fact that the horse not to be outdone placed his front legs on the back step and put his head inside.
We received a call to a person who had collapse in a garden, the man had been digging a hole for a fish pond, and while doing this he had a heart attack and fell into the hole. He must have died as he fell; we confirmed that there was no hope. In a case like that you move as little as possible and the police have to be called.
We were sitting in the kitchen when a young policeman arrived, he said, and “Where is the body”. I replied, “Oh it’s in a hole in the garden”. His face was a picture, I think he thought that he was about to deal with a murder case and could not believe that we were sitting in the kitchen drinking tea with the wife.
Well he was young and he would learn in time. In a case like that you always get tea going for the relatives, it’s very good treatment for shock.
The ambulance station, as you might expect, was full of first aid equipment, but by law we still had to have a staff accident book and a first aid box on display. This box for some stupid reason was kept on a shelf over the door to the control room. One day when reaching up to get the box down it fell on the head of the officer removing it. He had to be taken to hospital in one of his own ambulances to have stitches. The box was removed to somewhere better after that.
In one of the nursing homes that we went to on a regular basis was an attractive nurse by the name of Brenda. She had a thing about ambulance men. She was a very friendly girl, and I mean very friendly, the sort of girl who would do anything for you. When you entered the nursing home she would manoeuvre you into a corner, rub her body against you and say things like. “When are you going to take me out’? “Wouldn’t you like to see more of me”, or “you have never seen me out of uniform, have you?”
Now this was all very nice, I did not complain, I just thought to myself. What a strange girl, I wonder what she can be after? I guess someone had been seeing a bit more of her as one evening we received an urgent journey call to a bedsitter in town. The patient turned out to be our little sexpot. She was having a miscarriage. My mate Ken and I made a lot of fuss of her and got her into hospital safe and sound.
Some weeks later Ken and I were again crewed together and had to call at the nursing home. Who did we find back on duty again? Yes that’s right, a repaired and happy Brenda. Her first words to us were. “I’m all right again now”. She was back to her old tricks, but who was going to protest. Let’s be honest it’s not every day that you have an attractive young woman molesting your hands with her body.
You will now be able to understand some of the things that we poor ambulance men had to put up with in the course of our duties. The job was difficult enough at times without someone trying to make things hard for you.
There was a nurse in casualty at one time, a very sweet and pleasant West Country girl; we always had a laugh and a joke with her when she was on duty. Her name would you believe it was Mary Christmas.
One day just before Christmas I was shopping in Woolworth with Pearl, Mary happened to be in the store at the same time. She saw me, came running over, gave me a kiss on the cheek and said, “hello Doug, happy Christmas”. Now that was all nice and innocent from a friend. Pearl said, “Who is that woman”?
Now this is when I made my big mistake. Instead of saying something like, “I have never seen this woman before in my life”. Or maybe “she is a total stranger to me”. My reply was, “Its O.K. she is Merry Christmas”.
We had a new man on the service who was afraid of dogs, we went out on a regular treatment call where there was a very large dog, as soon as you entered the garden he would come rushing around the side of the house barking and looking very dangerous. Having an evil mind I did not tell him about this. I let him enter the garden first to see what would happen, it did. He ran back to the ambulance and shut himself in the cab.
I was very brave; I stood my ground and waited for the dog to reach me. When he did he rolled over onto his back and waited to have his belly rubbed. This is what he had done every time we went to the house. He was a soppy old thing. My mate did find a few words to call me afterwards.
We used to laugh at some of the remarks made by the old ladies we carried on routine treatment work. One would say, “I have a broken leg”.
Another would reply, “Mine is much worse than that, the doctor told me I have a fracture”.
Then again one would say, “I have high blood pressure”.
Another would reply, “My blood pressure is all right, the doctor said it is very low”.
We had a regular drug addict name of Abdul, otherwise known as “the terrible Turk”. He was big and he was violent. I had no doubt that he could tear you apart. He hated the police; they in turn did not like getting too close to him. They knew his strength. We would be called and he would glare at us as at that time we had the same coloured shirts as the police. We would then say, “We are not the police, we are the ambulance men Abdul, you know us”.
What a change. He would smile and come with us to the ambulance and the hospital just like a baby. He trusted the ambulance service. We were so pleased that he did, I had to take him in on several occasions. The police used to look on in amazement.
I was on night duty as part of a crew; I had a very painful whitlow on my finger. During the night having just taken a patient into casualty I decided to ask the doctor if he could do something for the pain. He had a look, his eyes lit up and he said, “I just love cutting whitlows open” I had freezer spray applied to my painful digit, the doctor then produced a scalpel and started to cut into my finger and press out the puss.
Now this was bad enough but I had my crew mate, two nurses and the sister looking over my shoulder and really enjoying every minute of it with remarks like, “Oh dear look at all that blood and puss” and “cor, I bet that really hurts”
The sister on duty that night was the one that we were always playing jokes on. She was thoroughly enjoying her revenge.
Fitting farewell for paramedic Douglas
Douglas Brown died in January 2014 and his funeral was reported in the Argus Newspaper on the 24 January as follows: -
“An ambulance Land Rover headed the funeral cortege of one of Europe's first paramedics.
Douglas Brown was among the first six ambulance workers to be specially trained in life-saving resuscitation skills by pioneering consultant cardiologist Douglas Chamberlain in 1970.
Former colleagues joined friends and family for his funeral at Downs Crematorium in Brighton yesterday.
His coffin was draped in ambulance colours and his cap placed on top.
Mr Brown, 83, who lived in Higher Bevendean, Brighton, died on January 10 after a short illness. He spent all his ambulance career in Brighton up until his retirement in 1990, and was the station officer in charge on the night of The Grand hotel bombing in 1984.
His daughter, Pat Welfare, said:
Douglas, Brown spent his career working In Brighton
"Everyone has said how much of a nice person he was and he was always full of jokes. He was always able to make you smile."
The family have asked for donations to be sent to the Brighton-based Sussex Heart Charity, which raises money for equipment, education, rehabilitation and resuscitation training.
Mr Brown leaves a wife, Pearl, three children and six grandchildren”.
© Douglas Brown 2014
When on duty at weekends we used the staff restaurant at the Brighton General Hospital as they always served up a very nice roast dinner. One of the women who served the meals was quite attractive but always a bit over weight; she would always tell us that she was trying to lose weight. This was great, we found that we could get her going every time, all you had to say to her was something like, “wow you have lost some weight since I last saw you, you are looking gorgeous”. She would be so pleased that you had your plate stacked with meat and roast potatoes.
We received a call to a large block of flats. It was the middle of winter and the large area of grass and the path in front of the flats were covered in snow. I walked at an angle from the ambulance to the main entrance and about half way across I got a big surprise when I found a hidden fish pond. I went through the cover of snow, through the layer of ice and up to my knees in the ice cold water. I said to myself, “Oh bother”. It was a great joke for my shift mates, for some time after I was known as, “the gold fish crusher”.
We would get a lot of patients who would pretend to be unconscious when you started to examine them, most of these were young females, funny lot.
We did not carry smelling salts as part of ambulance equipment but most of us had a bottle in our pocket, it was a wonderful cure in most cases.
We had another cure for these females. You would say to your mate, making sure that she could hear, “we had better get all her clothes off so that we can examine her better”. It worked a treat.
One evening we had to take a young man and his girlfriend into casualty. He had deep cuts on his penis and she had cuts and bruises on her head. It was a great story. She had been giving him some oral sex, during which she had an epileptic fit. As you may know, during a fit of this nature the jaw clamps tight and is very difficult to open, Panic, Panic, sort of makes your eyes water. To try to get her to release her hold on him, he was hitting her over the head with the bedside lamp.
We went to a lot of fire calls, one of these was to a house fire in which a person had been burnt to death due to having been smoking in bed. This is not a very nice job, the sight and the smell is most unpleasant. It was all very sad, but to add to that was the fact that behind the front door we found a cat and her three kittens all dead, having been overcome by smoke.
One evening Pat, who was the wife of one of our ambulance men, kept phoning as she wished to speak to him. I had to keep telling her that he was out; we were having a busy evening. She must have phoned three or four times, the phone rang again. I picked it up and said, “Hello Pat”. It was Pearl on the phone. Get out of that one Doug. I was in the smelly stuff again.
When I went onto amber shift the shift officer was Alan Bunny. He was a very nice chap and we became good friends. One day when I had just finished washing my ambulance we were having a joke and I pointed the turned off hose at him.
Then my “friend” Norman crept up behind me and turned the water on. The jet hit Alan in the chest, Norman and I really had to move to get out of the way of the same treatment.
There was a traffic accident on Marine Parade, we arrived at the same time as the police. A woman driver had demolished a centre traffic island but she was not injured. The police officer asked her how fast she had been driving. She replied, “Forty”. He said that he did not think that she could have been moving at that speed, more like thirty. “No I was doing forty” she replied. He put the same question to her several times and got the same reply. He then said, “Sorry then I will have to book you for exceeding the thirty mile per hour speed limit”. She just could not see that he was trying to help her.
One night when I was duty station officer I was sitting in my office, the time was about twelve thirty. There was a knock on the window; I pulled up the blind to find a young woman standing outside.
She was wearing only a very thin nightdress, she told me that she had a row with her husband and he had locked her out of the house. She then went on to say that she was very cold and would I let her into the station, as she had nowhere else to spend the night.
Both crews were out, I was on my own on the station, so no way was I going to have this near naked woman in my office. I let her into the well-lit glass fronted mess room, found a blanket to put round her and made her a cup of tea. After a while when I was considering contacting the police or the duty social worker her husband appeared. He told her he was sorry, they made it up and went back home. Was I pleased, if the crews had returned to base and found us together, with her wearing only a see through nightdress I would have never lived it down. They would never have believed my story, would you?
I took Tina into casualty one morning as she had a pea or bead stuck in her ear. Sister Woods was on duty and soon removed it, she then said to me, “I’m sorry but we have run out of sweets”. At most times a jar of sweets is kept in casualty for children “who have been brave”. As a joke I started carrying on about how bad this was, why did they not have any sweets, they should never run out, I will put in a complaint etc. Two old ladies waiting for treatment overheard all of this and said “what a horrible man, what do these people expect; he should be ashamed of himself”. The sister and I had a good laugh about that one.
We were running empty in the seven dials area one day, when we received an emergency call over the radio to a person collapsed at an address which was just round the corner from us, you can’t get better service than that. Were they surprised to see us so soon; they had only just put down the phone. It turned out to be should we say, a house of ill repute.
The person we took to be the boss man was looking very agitated, a young woman was running around topless and in a bit of a panic and a middle aged man was laid out on a bed and naked. He had received a heart attack from over excitement. (I expect from the topless female).
The boss said that he did not want the police to get involved so could we keep the details of the collapse quiet. If we did this for him then we could go back later for a free visit with one of the girls. Wow, what an offer. We got the patient into hospital alive and as is normal handed over all the details. We never did get our free sample.
We had a call to a traffic accident outside the entrance to the cemetery in Bear Road. When we arrived we found that some bystanders had taken the unconscious motor cyclist into the cemetery grounds and placed him on the grass verge near to the grave stones. No prizes for what happened next. As I started to examine him he came round, he looked about him, saw the grave stones, let out a yell and shouted out, “Oh my god, I’m dead”.
We took a young man into casualty, he was unconscious and he was fully dressed as a female. Now this was before the days when there were many transvestites about. We did not tell the sister about the cross dressing, he was placed in a side room and the sister started to undress him/her.
We waited outside to see what would happen and after a while there was a scream and the sister appeared. She looked at us with a grin on her face and said, “You buggers, you knew that didn’t you”. We made a hasty retreat.
Another time we received a call to a traffic accident stating that a tanker had overturned on the Lewes Road. We thought this could be nasty, petrol or acid spilling all over the road. Half way there we received a call to stand down as there were no casualties and the tanker was the type that empties cess pits. Were we pleased, had we arrived at the accident we could have been dropped right in it as they say. No one would have wanted to get within a mile of us.
We took a young woman into casualty one evening, she was in a very distressed state, and we handed her over to the nurses. A short time later while we were booking in the details at the reception desk, the sister shouted out, “stop her, stop her”. The patient came running down the treatment area with not a stitch on, we gave chase, along the passage, through the treatment rooms and then into the waiting room. You should have seen the look on the faces of the people in that waiting room. Two ambulance men chasing and trying to grab hold of a naked well-endowed young lady. Having got hold of her and handed her over to the sister, a young man who had been in the waiting room at the time came up to me and said, “cor mate you’ve got a good job, how do I go about joining the ambulance service”.
One night during the winter we went on duty at 23.00, it was a very clear but cold night. After about midnight, if it was quiet we would get our heads down on one of the ambulance stretchers. That night we never received one call and did not wake up until about six in the morning, one of us looked out of the window to find that we had deep snow.
Panic, Panic, if it snowed while you were on duty your top priority was to keep the forecourt clear for the emergency vehicles. Did we have to work like mad to get it clear by seven when our relief shift was due to come in.
We had a call to an emergency in West Street. Sometimes the police officer at the scene wishes to record the names of the ambulance crew. We were dealing with a new W.P.C. She asked for our names, my crew mate was Peter White, when I said to her, “Brown and White”. She said, “Oh don’t be rotten. I’m new to this; please tell me your real names”.
On another occasion we had a call one night to the Grand Hotel and found a naked man dead on a bed having had a heart attack. It was not his room, he was a member of a coach party and was in the room of a female member of that coach party. The lady in question was most embarrassed and said, “He only came into my room to say goodnight”. His clothes were folded all neat and tidy on a chair and he had a smile on his face. He died happy, that’s the way to go.
On duty one evening and sitting in my office, a person from our control kept phoning me every ten minutes or so about something very unimportant, just wasting his time.
I got fed up with this so when the phone rang again a short time later I picked it up and said,” what do you want this time”. The reply was, “Mr Grainger here, chief ambulance officer, who am I speaking to?” Good old Douglas, right in the smelly stuff again.
I was on duty at the Brighton races just behind the start. We had a very bad thunder storm, the police officer on duty with his horse dismounted and got into the back of the ambulance out of the rain. What made us laugh was the fact that the horse not to be outdone placed his front legs on the back step and put his head inside.
We received a call to a person who had collapse in a garden, the man had been digging a hole for a fish pond, and while doing this he had a heart attack and fell into the hole. He must have died as he fell; we confirmed that there was no hope. In a case like that you move as little as possible and the police have to be called.
We were sitting in the kitchen when a young policeman arrived, he said, and “Where is the body”. I replied, “Oh it’s in a hole in the garden”. His face was a picture, I think he thought that he was about to deal with a murder case and could not believe that we were sitting in the kitchen drinking tea with the wife.
Well he was young and he would learn in time. In a case like that you always get tea going for the relatives, it’s very good treatment for shock.
The ambulance station, as you might expect, was full of first aid equipment, but by law we still had to have a staff accident book and a first aid box on display. This box for some stupid reason was kept on a shelf over the door to the control room. One day when reaching up to get the box down it fell on the head of the officer removing it. He had to be taken to hospital in one of his own ambulances to have stitches. The box was removed to somewhere better after that.
In one of the nursing homes that we went to on a regular basis was an attractive nurse by the name of Brenda. She had a thing about ambulance men. She was a very friendly girl, and I mean very friendly, the sort of girl who would do anything for you. When you entered the nursing home she would manoeuvre you into a corner, rub her body against you and say things like. “When are you going to take me out’? “Wouldn’t you like to see more of me”, or “you have never seen me out of uniform, have you?”
Now this was all very nice, I did not complain, I just thought to myself. What a strange girl, I wonder what she can be after? I guess someone had been seeing a bit more of her as one evening we received an urgent journey call to a bedsitter in town. The patient turned out to be our little sexpot. She was having a miscarriage. My mate Ken and I made a lot of fuss of her and got her into hospital safe and sound.
Some weeks later Ken and I were again crewed together and had to call at the nursing home. Who did we find back on duty again? Yes that’s right, a repaired and happy Brenda. Her first words to us were. “I’m all right again now”. She was back to her old tricks, but who was going to protest. Let’s be honest it’s not every day that you have an attractive young woman molesting your hands with her body.
You will now be able to understand some of the things that we poor ambulance men had to put up with in the course of our duties. The job was difficult enough at times without someone trying to make things hard for you.
There was a nurse in casualty at one time, a very sweet and pleasant West Country girl; we always had a laugh and a joke with her when she was on duty. Her name would you believe it was Mary Christmas.
One day just before Christmas I was shopping in Woolworth with Pearl, Mary happened to be in the store at the same time. She saw me, came running over, gave me a kiss on the cheek and said, “hello Doug, happy Christmas”. Now that was all nice and innocent from a friend. Pearl said, “Who is that woman”?
Now this is when I made my big mistake. Instead of saying something like, “I have never seen this woman before in my life”. Or maybe “she is a total stranger to me”. My reply was, “Its O.K. she is Merry Christmas”.
We had a new man on the service who was afraid of dogs, we went out on a regular treatment call where there was a very large dog, as soon as you entered the garden he would come rushing around the side of the house barking and looking very dangerous. Having an evil mind I did not tell him about this. I let him enter the garden first to see what would happen, it did. He ran back to the ambulance and shut himself in the cab.
I was very brave; I stood my ground and waited for the dog to reach me. When he did he rolled over onto his back and waited to have his belly rubbed. This is what he had done every time we went to the house. He was a soppy old thing. My mate did find a few words to call me afterwards.
We used to laugh at some of the remarks made by the old ladies we carried on routine treatment work. One would say, “I have a broken leg”.
Another would reply, “Mine is much worse than that, the doctor told me I have a fracture”.
Then again one would say, “I have high blood pressure”.
Another would reply, “My blood pressure is all right, the doctor said it is very low”.
We had a regular drug addict name of Abdul, otherwise known as “the terrible Turk”. He was big and he was violent. I had no doubt that he could tear you apart. He hated the police; they in turn did not like getting too close to him. They knew his strength. We would be called and he would glare at us as at that time we had the same coloured shirts as the police. We would then say, “We are not the police, we are the ambulance men Abdul, you know us”.
What a change. He would smile and come with us to the ambulance and the hospital just like a baby. He trusted the ambulance service. We were so pleased that he did, I had to take him in on several occasions. The police used to look on in amazement.
I was on night duty as part of a crew; I had a very painful whitlow on my finger. During the night having just taken a patient into casualty I decided to ask the doctor if he could do something for the pain. He had a look, his eyes lit up and he said, “I just love cutting whitlows open” I had freezer spray applied to my painful digit, the doctor then produced a scalpel and started to cut into my finger and press out the puss.
Now this was bad enough but I had my crew mate, two nurses and the sister looking over my shoulder and really enjoying every minute of it with remarks like, “Oh dear look at all that blood and puss” and “cor, I bet that really hurts”
The sister on duty that night was the one that we were always playing jokes on. She was thoroughly enjoying her revenge.
Fitting farewell for paramedic Douglas
Douglas Brown died in January 2014 and his funeral was reported in the Argus Newspaper on the 24 January as follows: -
“An ambulance Land Rover headed the funeral cortege of one of Europe's first paramedics.
Douglas Brown was among the first six ambulance workers to be specially trained in life-saving resuscitation skills by pioneering consultant cardiologist Douglas Chamberlain in 1970.
Former colleagues joined friends and family for his funeral at Downs Crematorium in Brighton yesterday.
His coffin was draped in ambulance colours and his cap placed on top.
Mr Brown, 83, who lived in Higher Bevendean, Brighton, died on January 10 after a short illness. He spent all his ambulance career in Brighton up until his retirement in 1990, and was the station officer in charge on the night of The Grand hotel bombing in 1984.
His daughter, Pat Welfare, said:
Douglas, Brown spent his career working In Brighton
"Everyone has said how much of a nice person he was and he was always full of jokes. He was always able to make you smile."
The family have asked for donations to be sent to the Brighton-based Sussex Heart Charity, which raises money for equipment, education, rehabilitation and resuscitation training.
Mr Brown leaves a wife, Pearl, three children and six grandchildren”.
© Douglas Brown 2014
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