The Vickers Corridor
Poems and Thoughts from the Anxious Poet
The Vickers Corridor
I was sent to the Northern General Hospital
for a bone density scan.
I had to be there early and I had no idea where to go
in that great maze.
I found myself on the long, long Vickers Corridor
with health on my mind.
I passed the diabetic unit where my son
was diagnosed at sixteen.
I saw signs for A&E where I was once a frequent flyer,
with raging anxiety.
My friend had her eyes “seen to” on this corridor,
only to be sent to the Hallamshire,
that other Sheffield Hospital where the split-off
counterpart of Ophthalmology sees you.
I wheeled my wife right up this arterial cloister
with her de-bunioned foot;
she wasn’t ready, but beds were in short supply,
so she fainted on our stairs instead.
My wandering continued up and down the corridor like a
dream that goes wrong.
Then I gave in and looked for an information kiosk
which of course I had passed when I entered!
‘Not on the corridor,’ she answered, smiling in Sheffield
then pointed me out over the car park.
Passing the Palliative Care Unit where John Speddings
died so well, blessing his wife and daughters.
Running and tripping now on my potentially brittle bones
and huffing into the reception.
The density of skeletons being the purview of this place
I pondered as I regained my breath.
What is the ability of these hospitals to hold us up,
to scaffold our health and well-being?
We have these fading jewels in our city’s crown, though the
bootleggers are gathering.
We look to these places with our Sheffield pains and ailments,
but bone density comes from nourishment.
A Musical version of The Vickers Corridor - Music Andy Selman
A few weeks ago I had to get up early and head over to one of Sheffield’s major hospitals for my five yearly Bone Density scan. Ever since being diagnosed with Hyperparathyroidism in 2015, once every five years I have to undergo a bone density scan at the Metabolic Bone Clinic in the Northern General Hospital in Sheffield. By the way I think I should get an award for having a condition with the most syllables known to humankind! This is to make sure my two remaining parathyroid glands are adequately maintaining a healthy calcium level in my bones.
When the letter dropped through the door asking me for my 2025 scan I headed off to be there for 8.30am. As I walked up the road to the unit I recalled my poem of 10 years ago when I had my first bone density scan. That is the poem you can read and hear above.The opening of it came to me, because like many men my age, I assumed I knew where I was going! So off I set down the Vickers Corridor and wandered until I finally had to admit defeat and ask someone.
The corridor is a place very familiar to everyone in Sheffield. When I read this piece at a gig anywhere in the city there is an audible groan when it is mentioned. It is marked on the map above. What it doesn’t say on the map is that it is also reputed to be haunted. Having recently recorded our Grim Up North? Episode on the Haunted North this caught my attention.
Here is what The Sheffielder has to say.
The Vickers Corridor, in a Victorian part of the Northern General Hospital in Sheffield is named after Edward Vickers (1804-1897), a successful miller who invested his money in the railway industry.
In 1828 he gained control of his father-in-law’s steel foundry business, formerly Naylor & Sanderson, and renamed it Naylor Vickers & Co. He went on to be Alderman and the Mayor of Sheffield and was the first President of the Sheffield Chamber of Commerce before he died in 1897. The company went on to become Vickers Ltd.
These days, the Vickers Corridor has a reputation of being haunted, with stories being passed down amongst doctors and nurses.
“The cardiac arrest call had been called over the bleeper system. A young doctor was rushing down the corridor and met an old woman who wanted his help. He said that he couldn’t as he was going to an emergency. When he arrived on the ward, he found the patient was the old woman he had just met in the corridor.”
Stories like this are common, with many reports of ghostly patients walking up to doctors and nurses asking them for something to help them sleep. When the staff reach out to them, they disappear.
But they don’t always ask for help.
“I was once walking down the corridor with a few other workers when an old woman came towards us. We moved aside to let her pass and noticed that she was wearing a lovely perfume. When we turned around, she had completely vanished.”
There are also stories of nurses catching up on sleep and reporting the same dream. When they wake, they see the apparition of an angry matron-like figure trying to strangle a ghostly patient. No sooner does the vision appear, than it quickly vanishes.
And there are tales of cutlery and trays being thrown by a poltergeist while staff are working the night shift.
If these stories are designed to unnerve our dedicated night-time medical staff then I’ll end with the story of the smartly-dressed elderly gentleman, resplendent with a long white beard, “looking incredibly proud” as he wanders the corridor seemingly inspecting the hospital… and then he disappears through a wall.
Of course, if you walk down Vickers Corridor during the daytime everything seems perfectly normal.
Well I walked the corridor in my poem reasonably resplendent in my own white beard, but I wasn’t visited by an apparition. I was however lost!
The memories of previous visits populate my poem. When I finally found my way, I mention passing the Palliative Care unit, that another subject of one of my Sheffield poems passed from this life in.
He is one of the people, in my life, whose deaths made me far less troubled by the prospect of my own. He died with his eyes open, he blessed his daughters and his wife with an ordinary and yet extraordinary grace.
This hospital and The Royal Hallamshire are places where you will still meet many people like John. Ordinary Sheffield souls who carry the city in their veins - whether they were born and bred here or have come here from many different parts of the world to make the city their home.
The face he sets to the world
falls short of the man he used to be,
and yet the steel he worked
is still visible, assayed and tensile,
in his stainless-steel stare.
From John Speddings – Steel Worker 1947– 2017
When, a few weeks ago, I reached the Metabolic Bone Unit, at first attempt this time, I pondered the same questions that I end the poem with .
The density of skeletons being the purview of this place
I pondered as I regained my breath.
What is the ability of these hospitals to hold us up,
to scaffold our health and well-being?
We have these fading jewels in our city’s crown, though the
bootleggers are gathering.
We look to these places with our Sheffield pains and ailments,
but bone density comes from nourishment.
It also happened to be the anniversary of the last general election and I also found myself pondering how quickly the previous government and all the right leaning ones since 1979 have sought to dismantle the fundamental principles of the welfare state - especially the idea of mutual care and the cooperative generosity of strangers. Another longer poem I am going to publish this year was my final reflection. It is called From The Cradle to the Grave and I posted it on this page last year on the eve of the election. It quoted Beveridge’s great report on the fight we had in 1945 with the five giant evils of squalor, ignorance, want, idleness and disease. It evoked the spirit of Aneurin Bevan - Nye.
Then this Aneurin, Wales’s class war prophet,
bringing all his fire in, rails off so eloquent,
took up the common purse, things can’t get worse,
looked up, cooked up the national health service.
Stuffed the doctor’s mouths with gold
bluffed objectors, soothed young and old
miner bold, Ebbw Vale polled, socialism’s chokehold,
until on the appointed day, no tory could gainsay,
the fifth of July, health on full supply,
regardless of their pocket’s ability, for no society,
legitimately, can appeal to civility if disability
causes deniability of medical aid,
because their means forbade, an appeal to be weighed
in the scales of the prepaid, waylaid by their poverty.
From The Cradle to the Grave - Atlee’s Legacy
I evoke that same spirit now. A year in, I hope that this Labour government can do more than just try and restore the terrible damage that the Tories and their press barons have done.
I am not blind to the failings of this new government, believe me. I just hope they can hear all the voices of the spirits of past and the present. The ghosts of the suited, booted, spectacled, Labourite club: Bevan, Bevin, Morrison, Cripps, and Greenwood. Of William, Lord Beveridge, filled with Liberal leverage. Of all the many, many ghosts of the Vickers corridor, nurses, porters, doctors and cleaners, patients and visitors. Of all those like Janice and John Speddings and all of us whose living and dying is intimately caught up with the fate of this incredible and fragile institution called the NHS. All this because : ‘We look to these places with our Sheffield pains and ailments, but bone density comes from nourishment.’
