A couple entwined in love caught with an unwanted baby

Furious Fifties!  Leeds, England… Kenneth Barlow, aged 36 worked as a male nurse in the crowded City Council Hospital. He lived in a modest apartment with his second wife Betty. Betty was sexually exciting and no wonder Barlow could not keep his hands away from her. He was deeply in love with her, he told her every time he caressed her. She too was in love with him and never resisted his advances, meaningful smiles, and such. He had his own private code of billing and cooing and bundling in bed.  After all, they were a loving couple,  a lovey-dovey pair legally married.

But Betty, who had just crossed the twenty-ninth milestone of her life, feared  pregnancy. Motherhood! She felt that would wreck her health and that fear haunted her most while Barlow groaned and grunted his way with her to the lilac-hued heights of flaming passion. He was against the use of contraceptives on the grounds of aesthetic pleasure!

With all the sound, fury, and fervour of caresses and constant coupling, no wonder Mother Nature had her way and Betty found herself pregnant and her fears began to thicken just like her waist would in due course. She was dead against having a child, a decision she had made clear to Barlow even during the first time he made love  to her. After all, her man, oh man was a nurse in such a big hospital knowing all those smart doctors, female nurses and such who could be relied upon  to shed the unwanted burden inside Betty.

Barlow too felt likewise and the loving couple decided to end it all and began to work earnestly on the expedition. Barlow had long discussions with his friendly colleagues and others in confidence to find out the methods and medicines. With Betty, a willing participant in the operation, especially that she was pregnant and coil of fear inside her was turning tighter and tighter. Mother Nature has a strange sense of humour and loves to play tricks on mere mortals.  She loved to play her own games and tricks with Barlow and Betty, and all the Queen's Men and women in the Hospital and the unborn baby seemed all set to stay put, and not be pushed out before its time.

Now Barlow was getting more desperate than Betty. He was not keen on having a child either and looked around for more effective methods to limit the size of his family to Betty and Barlow and no babies of either sex be allowed coming out to the wild wicked world. As a male nurse who had pounded, and polished hospital  wards, corridors and floors and dust filled dispensaries, he knew his way around and had heard   of drugs called, ‘Ergometrine’ used for procuring abortion.  Ergometrine was a powerful drug usually injected and made of ‘Ergot’ a kind of fungus found normally brewing with rye. Injected it causes contractions of the female uterus.  And is mainly used to prevent haemorrhage during childbirth.

Barlow made up his mind to give Betty the 'Ergometrine' injections and she too readily agreed. How to get it without a prescription was no problem for a male nurse! Easy does it, as they say, and the treatment began at once. Once more Mother Nature won the game and the treatment proved totally ineffective. Obviously, the foetus inside Betty was made of sterner stuff.  Betty was most disappointed and went into a blue mood. Barlow too deeply disturbed and agitated while in bed, he lay awake beside a fast asleep Betty, had a new idea. The seeds of a plan took root in his fertile febrile mind... MURDER!   ...to be continued

(The writer is an eminent film historian)