A Rural Medical Practice

by Ken Abraham

In February 2020, Dr Arthur Mitchell and his wife, Dr Wilma Hanna, were interviewed for their memories as doctors in the Kilkeel area by Dr Ken Abraham. Dr Mitchell sadly passed away in November 2021 and this article is based on the original interview.

Arthur Mitchell, originally from Coleraine, and Wilma Hanna, who is from the Mourne area, met when they were first year medical students at Queen’s University Belfast in the late 1950s. They were trained in medicine before specialist training for General Practitioners was introduced and as students they studied Surgery, Medicine, Gynaecology and Obstetrics. After graduating, they both worked at the Ards Hospital in Newtownards for three years and were married in July 1963.

Both Arthur and Wilma had decided to study medicine when they were still at school: Arthur at primary school and Wilma when she was attending Manor House School in Armagh. Two of Arthur’s uncles had been doctors and one, Alfred McKeown, served in Burma during the Second World War and was Medical Officer in charge of the Gurkas. He subsequently practiced in England.

Wilma is the daughter of Dr William Hanna who was originally from Kilkeel and a GP in the area up until his retirement in the mid1970s. After training and working for a time as a doctor in the coal mines in England, he began to practice in Kilkeel in 1921 with

Dr Fergus Floyd who was then the dispensary doctor in Kilkeel. Dr Floyd was responsible for setting William Hanna, or Willie John, as he was known, on the road to a medical career while he was still at school.

One of Dr Floyd’s roles was to inspect children in the local schools for signs of sickness, including TB. When visiting Ballymageogh Primary School, he asked the teacher if he had any ‘bright boys’ at the school. Willie John Hanna was mentioned, and Dr Floyd encouraged Willie John’s mother to have him educated. He attended Methodist College in Belfast and studied Medicine at Queen’s University.

During the 1920s and 1930s, Dr Floyd would have carried out routine operations in the patient’s own home. Dr Hanna remembered assisting him with an appendectomy on a kitchen table in a cottage: the table was well scrubbed, the fire was damped down as ether and chloroform were explosive and Dr Hanna was the anaesthetist. On that particular occasion a number of passers-by watched the operation through the kitchen window! Other operations performed by Dr Floyd in the home included obstructive hernias.

Dr Floyd had been the first Medical Officer of the Mourne Hospital (originally the Fever Hospital of Kilkeel Workhouse), when it opened in 1927, and later received an MBE for his services to medicine. He died in his 90s c.1965.

Dr Hanna’s surgery was in the Hanna family home on Newcastle Street in Kilkeel. The surgery was in the front room and there was also a waiting room. In addition to the Kilkeel area, he had patients in Warrenpoint, Newcastle, Hilltown and the mountain areas. Before the introduction of the NHS in 1948, Dr Hanna also did a weekly session in the old dispensary building.

After leaving the Ards Hospital, Arthur Mitchell came to Kilkeel and his first job was a junior partner in the Well Woman Clinic in the Old Health Centre on Knockchree Avenue. He later joined Dr Hanna’s practice. Although his wife, Wilma, was bringing up a young family, she became a doctor at the Mourne Hospital which had originally been part of the Workhouse on Newry Street in Kilkeel and was Medical Officer there from 1970 until 1997. She worked there five days week while the local GPs, including her husband, covered nights and weekends. The local GPs also ran the busy maternity unit in the hospital in which 250 – 300 babies were delivered each year.

Arthur’s practice was very much a rural practice and many of his patients were farmers farming the land between the Mourne Mountains and the north shore of Carlingford Lough. In many ways too, he was an ‘honorary vet’ often being consulted on the illnesses of cows, pigs and horses as well as those of their owners. He had also patients as far away as Warrenpoint and Newcastle and remembers long drives in the days before car radios.

Up until the mid-1970s home deliveries were also an important part of Arthur’s work. He had done an extra degree at the Royal College of Midwives in London and other GPs in the area would have called on him to assist with deliveries which were causing problems. The degree had given him training in all forms of forceps delivery and also in performing Caesarean sections. As well as home deliveries for his own patients, Arthur also delivered babies for members of the Travelling Community from the Irish Republic. They often camped in tents in the Mill Bay area and along the Mountain Road which led out of Kilkeel into the Mournes, arriving about two weeks before the baby was due.

Another unusual aspect of Arthur’s practice was looking after the medical needs of the Kilkeel fishing fleet. On one occasion Arthur was flown out to a trawler in a military helicopter on which a crew member had been injured in a fall. He was airlifted in the helicopter to Daisy Hill Hospital in Newry and, during the journey his blood pressure dropped, necessitating Arthur to set up a drip. The vibrations of the helicopter in flight prevented him from doing this, so the pilot suddenly landed in a field at Killowen, near Rostrevor. After the drip was in place, they continued on their journey to Daisy Hill. After the trawlerman had been admitted to hospital, Arthur was left to hitch a lift back to Kilkeel in an ambulance!

For many years both Arthur and Wilma were very enthusiastic supporters of the Camphill Community at Mourne Grange, near Kilkeel, which provides opportunities for adults with different abilities and support needs. Arthur was a committee member while Wilma ran the charity shop.