No woman being delivered should see another delivery going on at the same time.
The delivery bedsteads stand in their compartments.
Each delivery bed should have window light on either side, and also ample passage room all round and on both sides the bed.
Care should be taken that no bed should stand exactly between door and window, on account of draughts.
The curtains, of washing material, are only just high enough to exclude sight, not high enough to exclude light or air, and are made so as to pull entirely back when not wanted. Each area enclosed by the curtains should of course be sufficiently ample for pupils, attendants, and patient; also for a low truck on broad wheels covered with india-rubber, to be brought in, on which the bedstead with the clean warm bedclothes is placed, and the newly-delivered woman conveyed to her own ward.
[A woman very much exhausted would be carried in the delivery bed to the bye-ward attached to each delivery ward.]
The reason why there must be two delivery wards for each floor of a lying-in institution, to be used alternately, one ‘off,’ one ‘on,’ is that one delivery ward on each floor must be always vacant for thorough cleansing, lime-washing and rest for a given period, say month and month about.
It is understood that newly-delivered women cannot be removed from one floor to another. And it is quite necessary to have the means of keeping a corridor, along which a newly-delivered woman is to be moved, at a proper temperature.
The position of the delivery wards should be as nearly as possible equidistant from the lying-in wards, and should be such that the women in labour, on their way to the delivery ward, need not to pass the doors of other wards.
A separate scullery to each delivery ward is indispensable; such scullery to be on at least an equal scale to that of ward sculleries. Hot and cold water to be constantly at hand, night and day. A sink-bath is desirable for immediately putting in water soiled linen from the beds and the like.