Chloe on the right, with her longtime colleague, Sally Inch. Bestfeeding 1990
Farewell to Chloe Fisher MBE. April 1932 – 5th October 2026.
Terry Pratchett said “No one is finally dead until the ripples they cause in the world die away”, in Chloe’s case the milk will ripple for generations. She was an inspiration. “The span of someone’s life is only the core of their actual existence.”
Extract from: The Resurgence of Breastfeeding, 1975–2000 The transcript of a Witness Seminar held by the Wellcome Trust Centre for the History of Medicine at UCL, London, on 24 April 2007 Edited by S M Crowther, L A Reynolds and E M Tansey
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Ms Ellena Salariya: I’m from Dundee and I am, perhaps, the oldest person in the room, so I go back quite a bit. I do remember very clearly what was being advised regarding breastfeeding regimes when I began nurse training in 1950. Mothers were instructed to put their babies to the breast after six to eight hours if they were awake, as mothers were given sleeping pills routinely at this time. All babies, breast and bottle-fed, were given dextrose 5 per cent to test the patency of the oesophagus at four to six hours post-delivery. The few mothers who had chosen to breastfeed were screened off in the Nightingale ward and left to get on with it.38 Midwives appeared to have lost interest in any skills in relation to this type of feeding. The mothers were advised, however, to ‘time’ the suckling and they all displayed their watches or clocks nearby; on the first day, one minute on both breasts was allowed at four-hourly intervals, this was increased to two minutes on day two, three minutes on day three and so on until ten minutes was allowed.(39) This prescribed time had been arrived at because a bottle-fed infant would consume formula milk from a bottle in 20 minutes.
Weaver: So, this was the standard practice in teaching in maternity units and lying-in wards in the 1970s. Let’s hear more about that.
Miss Chloe Fisher: This is modern: we move on to 1982, and this is a book written by Dr Miriam Stoppard, A Complete Guide to Baby Care. Introduce your breast gradually to the rigours of sucking. The first breastfeed should be no longer than one minute at each breast and the feed continued for this length of time throughout the first day. On the second day you can increase the length of the feed to two minutes on each breast, and on the third day to three minutes, so that by the end of the week your baby will be feeding for ten minutes at each breast.
Footnote 39: Miss Chloe Fisher wrote: ‘A quote I can’t help sending! “A clock is an essential piece of nursery furniture, and the baby should be ‘fed’ by it. If it is asleep it should be wakened; and if, in spite of thorough rousing, it refuses to suck, it should miss a meal.” From a lecture given by Frederick Langmead in 1915, published in NationalAssociation for the Prevention of Infant Mortality (1915).’ Note on draft transcript, 13 October 2008.
Chloe was a true help and inspiration to me from the moment my daughter Sally was born. She helped me to navigate the first few days of breastfeeding and without her help I would have been unsure and faced uncertainty about how to continue. Chloe was also on hand to help a friend who was struggling, my friend had called me – I then spoke to Chloe who offered immediate help. My friend had to double check who I was guiding her to and said “Oh I have her book! “ Chloe was a wonderful, gentle, knowledgeable and insightful person who always had a beautiful smile and calm, supportive, steadying hand on my shoulder when I needed any advice. I will always be so very thankful that I knew her as a person and a guide.
Sending my deepest condolences.
Terry Pratchett said “No one is finally dead until the ripples they cause in the world die away”, in Chloe’s case the milk will ripple for generations. She was an inspiration.
“The span of someone’s life is only the core of their actual existence.”