The Fathers' Room

Richard Alan Rothschild was born at 7:15 am at Calvary Hospital on Augusta Road in Lenah Valley, the second child of James Leonard Rothschild, a history teacher at a Hobart secondary school, and Helena Margaret Rothschild née Blackwell, who had worked as a librarian until the birth of their first child. He weighed seven pounds eleven ounces. He was delivered by Sister Mary Catherine Doyle, the midwife in charge of the maternity ward, and the family's doctor, Dr Hugh Pennefather, examined mother and child later in the morning and found both well.

Helena's labour began in the evening at the family's house in Sandy Bay. Their daughter, Catherine Louise Rothschild, aged three, was left with Helena's mother, Nora Blackwell, who had come to stay for the last weeks of the pregnancy. James drove his wife across the city to Augusta Road on a clear, freezing night two days after the midwinter solstice. Helena was a practising Catholic, and Calvary had been her choice. James's family had been Jewish by descent two generations back and nothing in particular since, and he had raised no objection.

Helena was admitted to the labour ward. James, as fathers then were, was shown to the fathers' room at the end of the maternity corridor, a small room with four hard chairs, an electric radiator and a window over the dark valley. He spent the night there alone. A junior nurse brought him tea twice. He had brought a book and did not read it.

The labour was long but uncomplicated, and the baby was born a little after first light. Sister Mary Catherine came to the fathers' room herself to tell James he had a son. He was taken down the corridor and shown the baby through the glass of the nursery window, washed and wrapped, and was allowed to see his wife for a few minutes before she slept.

Later in the morning, writing up the birth, Sister Mary Catherine asked James about the history of the Rothschild name and how his family had come to Tasmania. He told her what he knew, which was less than he would have liked. She knew more of the colony's early history than he had expected from anyone outside his own profession, and the conversation went on for most of an hour in the corridor. James wrote an account of it that evening in a letter to his brother. The name Richard Alan had been agreed months before, and it was entered in the ward register before James drove home to Sandy Bay to tell his daughter.