AN academic with an interest in where women have given birth throughout the ages is collecting stories about today’s birth places.
Architectural historian and designer Dr Emma Cheatle is setting up a recording booth in the maternity unit of the Royal Victoria Infirmary in Newcastle to gather experiences of having children, before moving it to the Laing Gallery, along with an old chest of drawers charting the history of childbirth.
The Laing location is opposite a small ‘lying-in’ hospital building, built by John Dobson, set up for poor women in the region and which paved the way for later maternity units.
In the chest of medical drawers, Dr Cheatle has out together visual and audio accounts about birth spanning from early midwives in the 17th and 18th centuries, through to the role of the man-midwife and midwifery becoming a professional career.
Maternity Tales will be on display in the Laing Gallery on November 25 between 10.30am until noon and 2pm until 4pm for people to explore the archive as well as share their own stories.
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