Black and white photograph of a young boy in uniform sitting at a table across from an adult male in a suit. The photograph is taken from behind the adult and so his face isn't shown. In front of the boy is a bowl of medical supplies. In the background there is a sign on the wall which reads St John Building Fund Appeal

Judith Morris (née Whitehouse)

Joined 1959

Halesowen Nursing Cadet Division, Dudley

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Black and white photograph of a group of uniformed Cadets sitting on the floor in a field. Stood around them are three adults. Next to the group is a pile of bags. They are smiling and looking at something which is off camera.
Halesowen Cadets weekend camp in Wales, Judith Whitehouse front row wearing beret, April 1966 Image courtesy of Judith Morris
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Transcript

Prior to me taking over the Cadets we’d only ever had one person who was a Grand Prior Cadet, which was the girl that her father became Commissioner. But nobody else had been a Grand Prior Cadet, I mean it was something quite rare I suppose for a long, long time. Because some of the subjects you could do like at school and things like that they took it, and there was all sorts of strange things like book binding. And in those days you couldn’t do the training yourself, you sort of had to get people in to do the course and then you had to have a different person, and this happened up until probably about, I don’t know, fifteen or twenty years ago where you had to have someone come and assess the Cadets for – and their signature was on their certificate. But you had to have somebody in. And I remember things like book binding, canoeing, and all these weird – they were on little tiny cards, a great pack of little tiny cards, and all sorts of weird and wonderful things. I mean who knows anybody who does book binding? So, you know, it was quite difficult to do, and there was lots to do with musicians, I mean if you did whatever it was, a grade something in piano, you could have that, they’d sign it off as a subject for your Grand Prior. So it was a bit, you know, it wasn’t all done within the unit, where of course nowadays we do our own training, we’ve got resources, we do all our own assessments if there’s a need to have assessments and things like that, so all, you know, but you didn’t then, you had to get somebody in. And there was like childcare and things like that, well that had to be assessed by a midwife, you know, and you used to have to get all these people, quite often they were perhaps St John people from somewhere else.

Excerpt courtesy of Judith Morris