QUADRUPLETS BORN TO HOMELESS COUPLE

Rotorua Morning Post, Issue 5297, 9 January 1947, Page 5

QUADRUPLETS BORN TO HOMELESS COUPLE

Only Fifst-Born Survives First Day LONDON, Jan. 8. Mrs. Peg-gy Thomas, aged 29, wife of a painter,'gave birth at the MidGlamorgan County Hospital, Glamorganshire, to quadruplets — two boys and two girls. Later, three died, the survivor being the first-born, a girl. No doctcr was present at the birth because quadruplets were not expected. There were in attendance on the mother only two State-reg-istered midwives, aged 23. Another young midwife relieved her colieagues and toolc charge of the babies immediately they were born. The babies, which weighed about 2 pounds each, were two months premature. They were bcrn 50 minutes after small, slight Mrs. Thomas walked into the hospital. "We had the shoclc of our lives," said the nurses. Four oxygen tents were rushed by air from a hospital at Bristol, to try to keep the quadruplets alive. They are being fed on sterilised water and glucose. A medical officer, reporting that the quads were gaining strength, said : "There is every chance of their survival." The father cf the quadruplets said that during the whole 11 years of married life, he and his wife had not had a home of their own. He is at present living with a sister-in-law in a small cottage, where there are already six adults and four young children. There is only one other set of surviving quadi*uplets in Britain.