Item - Manuscript: I Wanted to Be A Nurse by Miriam Saville

Miriam Saville was a diabetic patient treated by Dr. Charles Best in late 1929 when she was about fourteen years old.

Biographical note provided by Catherine Caufield (Miriam’s niece):

Miriam Saville was born November 10, 1916 in the White Horse Inn, Foxton, Cambridgeshire, England. The White Horse was owned by the family of her mother (Miriam Saville [1895-1986], née Smith).

Miriam Smith Saville married Harry Saville on October 26, 1915. Baby Miriam, born in November 1916, lived above the White Horse with the large extended family until her father came home from the war (WWI) injured in body and spirit. In 1920, they immigrated to Toronto, Ontario, where four more children were born. The family faced great hardship. Harry’s war injuries made steady work difficult, and the Great Depression deepened their poverty. During this period, Miriam’s mother took on housecleaning jobs to help support the family, a form of employment that was often socially stigmatized for married women at the time.

Miriam grew up on St. Germain Avenue in Toronto. As a child, Miriam was among the early recipients of insulin, receiving treatment after falling into a diabetic coma in late 1929, when she was around fourteen years old. The coma got her the medical attention she had needed for some time.

Miriam married Richard Chalk in 1942 at St Timothy's Anglican Church, located just around the corner from her childhood home. The couple settled in Mimico (now part of Etobicoke), and had one daughter, Barbara, born on January 5, 1944.

In her later years, Miriam gradually lost her sight, likely due to diabetes. Her mother would take travel every Thursday by streetcar from St. Germain Avenue to Mimico to help her daughter with housework. Miriam’s nieces, Catherine and Janet, recall going to the hospital so their mother could visit her.  

Miriam Saville Chalk died on October 21, 1969, at Mount Sinai Hospital in Toronto.