Prison Nurse

By William Neubauer, ©1962
Cover illustration by Robert Maguire

Young Nurse Vivian’s heart went out to the inmates at Clairmount County Correctional Facility. She knew that a good nurse had to be unemotional, but she also knew that behind those forbidding walls young girls were being treated like animals! In the hospital recuperating from a near fatal clubbing she had received at the hands of some would-be-escapees, Vivian found herself the center of city-wide attention. Newspaper editorials lauded her heroism; the Mayor himself came to her bedside to bestow civic awards. But when Vivian argued that the Facility ought to rehabilitate its inmates instead of brutalizing them, the young nurse made a powerful enemy of the Mayor whose plans called for closing the Facility and shipping the girls off to adult prisons. It would take every bit of Vivian’s courage and determination and the dedicated help of her fiancé—a young lawyer who represented a group in opposition to the Mayor’s program—to save, and help the inmates who knew Vivian Hartwell as their Prison Nurse.

GRADE: A-

BEST QUOTES:
“A degree or a badge simply announces to the world that you have received a certain measure of education and training.” 

“Too bad you have a heart. It does get you into trouble.”

“The best years of almost any woman’s life are those between fifteen and twenty-one. It’s the time for dates, for conquests at dances.”

“I’m strictly cornball. Daddy, you’ll have to let me buy some shorts. All the kids are wearing them. I won’t be embarrassed like this!”

“Does it matter if a rattlesnake bites you because he’s bored or because he’s mean or because he don’t know better?”

“We must examine this brain. We eliminate the consciousness, the resistance. We address ourselves to the subconscious mind. We record. We study. We untangle the tangled. Then into the world one day there walks the finest of creations, a sane woman.”

“I read somewhere that a successful man always has a woman behind him. I’ve simply got to get me some woman behind me.”

REVIEW:
As part of her regular hospital duty, Nurse Vivian Hartwell spends two days a week at the Clairmount County Correctional Facility for Girls in Washington state. It’s a harsh place, complete with solitary confinement, ugly gray uniforms and lockstep marching to chow, “grinding discipline for those who have not grown accustomed to the disciplines of study and work.” Vivian, however, has other ideas, that the kids should have “punishment, yes; discipline, yes; but as a mother punishes her child—with understanding, not vindictiveness. They are at the Facility to be rehabilitated, not to pay grim penalties for heinous crimes.” When Vivian is assaulted while stopping a prison break long enough for the escapees to be caught, she doesn’t decide that maybe the bitches deserve what they get; rather, the fame of her heroism gives her a platform to express her unchanged philosophy. “When you treat children like criminals you convince them they’re criminals. And when you demonstrate to children that society is harsh, even brutal, you don’t create women who will love society,” she explains. “I just hate to see anyone denied a fair chance to become an average woman. Very emotional, I know, but there it is.” Unfortunately her opinions are not well-supported by the town mayor, who blackmails the hospital chief by threatening to veto the city’s funding for the hospital if Vivian isn’t fired for speaking out. 

When told of the chief’s awkward position, Vivian nobly quits her job. Hospital staff who will be assigned to the Facility now that she is no longer there to do it become concerned about their own safety at the Facility and refuse to work there, so Vivian is hired as full-time nurse at the prison. There she interacts a lot with 15-year-old Alicia Malone, who is in for assault and who appears to be constantly plotting her escape, which pretty much everyone should realize.

The mayor, meanwhile, is plotting to close the Facility because he believes that having a prison in town stunts business interest and community growth; he wants to sell the facility’s land to an electronics corporation for a factory that would create new jobs. He’s thwarted at every turn, though, by Vivian’s crusading, which results in, among other things, the mayor’s daughter Hazel being elected president of the Friendly Sisters club, which collects dresses for the prisoners so they can look nice—the first step toward better living through fashion—as well as funds to send the inmates to professional school upon their release. “The world is tough enough even for a well-dressed gal,” notes the mayor’s own secretary, who goes on to deliver a lovely speech to him about how Vivian, who has heart and the courage of her convictions, will triumph in the end because she has ideals and he does not. You kind of have to feel sorry for the poor guy.

Alicia Malone continues to bide her time, meanwhile, watching the relaxing guard. Vivian knows this, but is unable to convince Alicia that an escape attempt would just buy her more time in confinement. “But they had to break it up. The Friendly Sisters came to the infirmary, the last stop on their protracted tour. Candy for the patients! Cologne for the patients! And Alicia smiling sweetly upon one and all saying, ‘Honest to God, I sincerely mean this is just the nicest afternoon of my life.’ Meanwhile the mind of Alicia was going clank, clank, clank in a never-ending, relentless sort of way.” And Alicia does escape, in an ingenious way—but Vivian is just as ingenious, and saves the day—and the kid, which you knew would happen. She even plays her war with the mayor, brilliantly tidying up the mess. Then it’s “back to the jute mill! Walk the million miles, soothe the uncomfortable, close the eyes of the dead. Wonderful life.”

The most bizarre thing about Vivian as a character is that throughout the book she keeps insisting that she’s really not that interested in nursing. “I’m not the dedicated type, I’m afraid,” she lies. “I enjoy being a nurse. I enjoy being useful. I enjoy the prestige of being in a profession. But I want more than a glorious life of service. I long to have a husband, children, a middle-class home, a nice car, fine clothes, even a jewel or two.” And of course she scores a diamond from her lawyer beau, Bill, at the end, when he graciously agrees, “you won’t have to quit until you want to.” Thanks!

The book also includes a paragraph that I have to wonder is autobiographical: “She bummed a ride from a crippled man who’d come to the clinic to be measured for a new leg brace. The man had obviously contracted polio when just a child. His torso was abnormally burly, but he had an abdominal sag and looked pathetically shrunken from the waist down. He lived at peace with his handicap, however. ‘Always glad to give a little nurse a helping hand. Makes up for the bad times I used to give them when I was a kid. In this boys’ ward I was in, we were always playing tricks on the nurses. Like once for a nurse’s birthday, we packed a white rat in a box and wrapped the box real pretty.’” (Remember that author William Neubauer contracted polio as a child and walked with braces and crutches his whole life; read more about this fascinating man here.)

This is a truly fun book. The characters are well-drawn, compelling and complex. The nursing supervisor—author Neubauer has a real soft spot for nursing supervisors—is a crisp but lovable woman who is always delivering maxims with a twinge of humor such as, “Hartwell, do you know why I constantly remind you a nurse is never emotional? Emotionalism is a lack of discipline. An undisciplined mind rarely copes effectively with emergencies of any type. Tears in your eyes? Tell me, Hartwell, could you assist at surgery right now? Of course not.” The plot has a few twists at the end that you actually could not have predicted, but it’s not too confusing—which admittedly can happen in a Neubauer book—to follow. I am a big fan of William Neubauer, who was a truly interesting individual and a great writer, and in Prison Nurse he has completely lived up to my confidence in his abilities.

Police Nurse

By William Neubauer, ©1964

Cover illustration by Rudy Nappi

They warned her—you’re asking for trouble! But Nurse Elaine wouldn’t give up. As a police nurse it was her job to help people, and Ed Morley, accused of murder, needed her help. His youth, good looks, and wealth had turned the whole town against him. Elaine was sure he wouldn’t get a fair trial unless Lydia Shelton helped. Lydia was the owner of the town’s paper—and Elaine’s rival for reporter Mike Jones’ heart. And Lydia promised to help, but her price was high—Nurse Elaine must leave town and never see Mike Jones again.

GRADE: A-

BEST QUOTES:

“The purple eyes glared. Elaine didn’t die.”

“Girls, you know, have the oddest minds.”

“If it wasn’t for men, us girls wouldn’t have no trouble. I say a girl which marries a guy can’t blame anybody but herself. Don’t ask me to say more.”

“True feminine beauty, Warburton, is compounded of appearance and serenity. Always be serene.”

REVIEW:

Elaine Warburton is both a police sergeant and a prison nurse, which makes her one exceptionally tough cookie. And this proves very helpful to her, for at book’s open, she is embroiled in a political situation that I never quite got a handle on—one of the book’s few weaknesses. As far as I can tell, the hospital director, Dr. O. Walter Thorpe, is tussling for control of the prison hospital with Police Commissioner Hendricks; the mayor, too, is involved in the fray, and the upcoming election is going to decide the fate of the prison ward. Elaine, who is head of the prison ward, is being thrown under the bus as a means of demonstrating that the police are not suited to run a hospital. The problem here is that by pretty much everyone’s standards, Elaine is absolute tops at her job. As various factions push to get her fired, she ups the ante by threatening to quit, and is quickly begged not to leave, which gives her more power than ever. It’s a real pleasure to watch Elaine Warburton successfully wrangle numerous politicos and doctors with a hard-boiled aplomb that would do Sam Spade proud—she even knocks out with a punch to the face someone attempting to abduct her. Doing her one better than even Mr. Spade, however, is the fact that she’s a damned good nurse, knowing even before her surgeons what they will need next.

Complicating the situation is the fact that one of Elaine’s nemeses is Miss Lydia Sheldon, who is publisher of the Pacific City Times, 400 pounds, and angling to steal Elaine’s boyfriend, newspaper reporter Mike Jones. Lydia’s scheme is to set Mike up as editor of the paper if he will marry her. Interestingly, though Mike is, of course, an excellent reporter, he understands that he is not a very good editor, which conflicts with his desire to hold the top spot. In a way, this inner discord helps him choose the right woman in the end (you knew he would), but it adds a bit of unexpected complexity to the story.

Lydia’s father is planning to run for mayor, so it all loops back again to the prison vs. hospital control of Elaine’s ward. I never exactly understood why the prison ward was so important to everyone, and all the machinations of all the characters were hard to follow, but overall this is a very enjoyable book. It’s funny, written in a succinct style, entertaining, energetic, and remarkably appreciative of its heroine in a way few VNRNs are—Elaine is not just talented and smart, but powerful. Elaine’s female coworkers are supportive and strong, which I must confess I didn’t expect from a male writer (curious that William abbreviates to just the initial; usually it’s women writers who do this, depending on basic sexism that readers will assume the writer is male and correspondingly give the book more weight; was Mr. Neubauer hoping his readers would assume he is female?). I confess a fondness for William Neubauer beyond his apparently egalitarian views as suggested in this book, as he penned the fabulously titled Scandalous Career Girl under the pen name Gordon Semple—“She would do anything for success,” breathes the cover lines. Neubauer wrote many other nurse novels as well as sluttier nurse books (including Playboy Nurse) that I will look forward to after the romp—or alley fistfight—that is Police Nurse. 

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Prison Nurse

By Dr. Louis Berg, ©1934

 

Young Dr. Evan Dale was in prison, paying society’s just price for transgressing its commandments. This courageous outlaw was the man Judy Grayson loved, but when his life hung in the balance, the only person she could turn to was powerful, ambitious Dr. Hartmann, who wanted Judy for himself. Dr. Louis Berg, out of his years of experience as a prison psychiatrist, has written this frank and shocking story of actual life in the twilight world of men stripped of everything but their primitive desires—and of the lovely girl who came to live among them.

 

GRADE: C+

 

BEST QUOTES:

“Between fighting off internes who made passes at her in the ward kitchen, evading the attentions of elderly patients with Romeo complexes and parrying the advances of the attending staff, Judy became a nurse and a woman of the world at one and the same time.”

 

REVIEW:

Judy Grayson’s first job out of nursing school is at the local prison, where she works with Dr. Jack Stewart, the overseeing surgeon, whom she knows from the hospital where she trained. Jack is in love with Judy and wants to marry her, of course, but Judy does not reciprocate Jack’s feelings, even if Jack is a handy guy to have around to take Judy to dinner and out dancing. She is a bit horrified by Jack’s reason for wanting to practice medicine in the prison: “That place is a surgeon’s paradise,” he tells her. “I can get more surgical experience there in one month than I could in six at Medical Center.” She calls this attitude “cold-blooded,” but I find it more practical and, in fact, true; just because you are interested in acquiring experience and seeing unusual cases doesn’t preclude you from providing good healthcare, as Jack is demonstrated to do at the prison on more than one occasion.

 

In fact, the resident who is supposed to be on call to the prison, Dr. Gustav Hartmann, is really the abomination. He shows up drunk at the clinic, never comes when paged, fails to order life-saving medications despite repeated requests, and is skimming pain medication out of the clinic to sell to Red Mike, the inmate with the warden’s ear. (Dr. Hartmann does not, however, demonstrate any designs on Judy, despite the promises made by the back cover blurb, above.)

 

Red Mike and his gang have occupied the dormitory that gives onto the hospital ward and is supposed to be reserved for young patients, to protect them from the “wolves” in the general population before they are transferred to the “farm.” There they sleep between linen sheets, dine on steak and wine, and stroll through the hospital—indeed, even the entire prison—at will. If you can believe it, Judy even encounters Red Mike in the city hospital one day, where he has gone on leave to visit a sick friend. Red Mike is so thoroughly in charge of the prison that he even has a hand in Judy’s hiring, telling the warden, “It ain’t often that we get a nifty piece of fluff like that around here, and I’m sorta sizin’ her up for myself. I need a relief from ‘fags.’ You understand now, don’t you? She’s my stuff.” He pays for his luxurious life by selling drugs and whiskey to inmates, and by skimming off prison supplies for the warden’s own fencing business, so there’s no use complaining about the shocking goings-on to the warden, as Judy quickly finds out!

 

Her ally in all of this is Dr. Evan Dale, who is six months into a three-year sentence for having performed an illegal abortion on a family friend who was going to kill herself if she had to carry the baby to term. So while the book wants us to feel horrified by the concept of abortion, Judy firmly believes that Dr. Dale was justified in performing this one and should not be imprisoned for a “pardonable mistake.” Frequently people who are opposed to something in theory don’t have such a hard time with it when it applies to them personally. Dr. Dale is the “inmate nurse,” and spends his days doing the work that Dr. Hartmann should be doing if he weren’t sleeping off his latest bender. So Dr. Dale spends a lot of time with Judy, and proves his worth early on when she swoons after delivering morphine injections to the prison’s addicts (don’t ask), and he catches her before she drops to the cold, stone floor.

 

The bulk of the book follows the fates of various inmates, Dr. Dale and Judy’s blossoming romance, and Red Mike’s “sizin’ up” of Judy. It ends fairly predictably, though the prison is allowed to plod along in its corrupt and sinful ways at book’s end. I was quite surprised to find the copyright date of 1934 on this book, which makes it one of the oldest VNRNs I’ve met. It certainly is dated, with its cute slang—can, fish, scratch, wise—all hung with apostrophes like ornaments on a Christmas tree. The nicknames are adorable too: Wouldn’t you like to hang out with Cabaret Lou, Broadway Rose, Frankie the Dope, Tough Tony, Three Ball Johnny, and Ice Wagon Reilly? The book is not badly written, but I think most of its excitement is supposed to be in the drug use and homosexuality, which we are supposed to find “shocking” and even, to quote our heroine Judy Grayson, “disgusting.” At this point in time, however, it all seems fairly straightforward, so unless you’re particularly interested at a look at prisons as they were 80 years ago, this book doesn’t have much to offer.