Maternity : a film of Queen Charlotte's Hospital.

This film is of much historical interest in its depiction of both antenatal and postnatal care. The first written caption of the film tells us 'we begin where most films end' after which they show a young couple on a park bench together, the young man placing a wedding ring on the young woman's finger. We then go on to see a variety of aspects of maternal care, from district midwives on their bicycles attending a problematic birth, through a scene of a labour ward 'as seen through the patient's eyes', to nurses being trained in the correct way to handle a baby. Queen Charlotte's Hospital states, in the captions, that no single mother is refused, and they are keen to promote proper antenatal care. In one of their final captions they relate how 'In Britain every 2 hours a woman dies in childbirth', puerperal sepsis being named as the main cause.