AS a new dawn for patient care gets under way in Blackburn, we turn the clock back to the pre-war days at Queen's Park Hospital.

These photographs belong to Looking Back reader Mrs Irene Richardson, whose father John Foulds was a male nurse there for 27 years.

He worked on ward E1, which has long since been demolished and her pictures show life on the ward in the late 1930s and a formal group of the nurses and doctors, in front of the hospital building.

Irene's father is sixth from the left on the middle row and stands in his white coat in the foreground of the two ward pictures.

Life on the wards was certainly different than today, with children and adults all looked after together and the ward, with its water jug and bowl on a centre table, looking austere, with its bare white tiling.

Said Irene : "My father loved his job, he was absolutely devoted to it and the family have always been so proud of what he achieved.

"He worked above and beyond his duty, sometimes sitting with patients after he went off duty and in all his years there, he only ever had one Christmas Day off with his children."

John lived in Daisy Street in Cob Wall and usually took the tram to work, but didn't think twice about walking when bad weather stopped them running.

"I've heard my mother say he would walk through thick snow drifts to get to the hospital and then spend his day working in wet clothes. He always insisted on getting into work."

As a father of nine, John's skills were often called into play at home and Irene remembers him taking infinite care with all their childhood ailments.

She recalls, too, the day the ward sister called him into her office to inquire how he was feeling.

Added Irene: "Despite his protests, she said she had been watching him and there was something amiss.

"It turned out he had blood poisoning, from a cut, and it could have been tragic if the sister hadn't been so vigilant."