1st Meeting - Charity Talk - The Cardiac Care & Research Fund, St Mary's
Our charity this year is going to be the Cardiac Care & Research Fund at St Mary's Hospital and Dr Watkins, one of the doctors involved with this came to talk to us about the work done there.
He said the biggest cause of heart disease is smoking, the next being a high cholesterol level, and some people unfortunately inherit heart problems; he has known someone as young as 19 to have a heart attack. In the fairly near future patients will be able to have by-pass operations in Portsmouth instead of having to go out of the area.
There is a long list of people waiting for heart surgery and there is now a way of monitoring a patient's condition whilst he is at home.
This machine is called a cardio memo and is a battery operated ECG recorder which is approximately 4" x 6" and has four metal fittings which when pressed against the heart will monitor it during an attack.
The patient then telephones the special number at the hospital placing the recorder against the earpiece and the sounds emitted are registered on a monitor in the heart unit.
There are 30 of these machines at present available locally for people who really need them but many more are required.
However, they are expensive, costing from £450 - £1,000, and the Ladies Group are going to raise money during the year to put towards one of these machines.
2nd Meeting - History of Commercial Rd
Our speaker, Mr Rogers, came to give a talk with slides about the history of Commercial Road. We saw photographs and drawings dating back to the latter part of the last century and these showed that this road has changed beyond all recognition.
At one time there used to be a market down this street on certain days of the week. Marks and Spencer opened a shop at the turn of the century advertising everything for one penny and a later photograph taken in 1910 showed everything from one penny up to sixpence. We saw hansom cabs waiting by the railway station where taxi cabs now park and at one time the railway line actually went across the road. When a bridge was built over the road to take the track the road was lowered to enable double decker buses to go under it and when heavy rain fell this caused flooding under the bridge. Before the last war Portsmouth had both buses and trams, the trams coming out of service in 1936.
The old Guildhall had minarets on it but these were not replaced after the war. To celebrate historic occasions the Guildhall was festooned with hundreds of lights and on one occasion a large model of a ship was built out of plywood and erected in front of the Guildhall making it very difficult for traffic to manoeuvre past it.
Many buildings in the area around Commercial Road were destroyed by bombs during the war but many other attractive buildings, some designed by Alfred Codswell, the leading architect of the day, were demolished to make way for the high rise office blocks and motorways we see today.
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