"We didn’t get paid 'til Dr. Thomas come." Highvolume Play Pause Stop

Jack Fletcher at Lancaster Auction Mart. 1989

Nigel Ingham

Potato picking at the Royal Albert Institution c. 1920s? The men in the photograph lived in the institution. It would have been common for many residents to work on the institution’s farm in the first half of the 20th century.

Lancashire County Museums Service

Dr. Thomas was the Medical Superintendent when the Royal Albert became part of the National Health Service in 1948. Jack Fletcher, along with other men who were residents at that time, remembers him as a man who made good changes:

“We didn’t get paid ’til Dr. Thomas come. He started money off and then we got about sixpence a week. Then it went up, went up.” Before that at the end of a working week, “We used to have to go to Chief’s* room on a Saturday afternoon and sometimes we got sweets and sometimes we might get a little pie. We used to get sweets and all sorts like. Not so good, no. Then we started getting paid when Dr. Thomas come.”

*Chief Male Nurse