Elite Rescue Service - ERS"

06/06/2025

Wishing you peace, joy, and countless blessings this Eid.”

“May the beauty of Eid bring warmth to your home and light to your path.”

“Celebrate faith, love, and unity.

Happy Eid-ul-Adha 2025!”

21/04/2025

05/07/2024

Violet Jessop; The woman who survived three shipwrecks

In 1911, Jessop began working as a stewardess for the White Star liner RMS Olympic. Olympic was a luxury ship that was the largest civilian liner at that time.

Jessop was on board on 20 September 1911, when Olympic left from Southampton and collided with the British warship HMS Hawke.

There were no fatalities and, despite damage, the ship was able to make it back to port without sinking. Jessop chose not to discuss this collision in her memoirs.

She continued to work on Olympic until April 1912, when she was transferred to sister ship Titanic.

Jessop boarded RMS Titanic as a stewardess on 10 April 1912, at age 24. Four days later, on 14 April, it struck an iceberg in the North Atlantic and sank about two hours and forty minutes after the collision.

Jessop described in her memoirs how she was ordered up on deck to serve as an example of how to behave for the non-English speakers who could not follow the instructions given to them. She watched as the crew loaded the lifeboats.

She was later ordered into lifeboat 16, and as the boat was being lowered, one of Titanic's officers gave her a baby to look after. The next morning, Jessop and the rest of the survivors were rescued by the RMS Carpathia and taken to New York City on April 18.

According to Jessop, while on board Carpathia, a woman, presumably the baby's mother, grabbed the baby she was holding and ran off crying, without saying a word. After arriving in New York City, she later returned to Southampton.

In the First World War, Jessop was a stewardess for the British Red Cross. On the morning of 21 November 1916, she was aboard HMHS Britannic, the younger sister ship of Olympic and Titanic that had been converted into a hospital ship, when it sank in the Aegean Sea after detonating a German naval mine.

Britannic sank within 55 minutes, killing 30 of the 1,066 people on board.

While Britannic was sinking, Jessop and other passengers were nearly killed by the ship's propellers that were shredding lifeboats that collided with the propellers.

Jessop had to jump out of her lifeboat, resulting in a traumatic head injury which she survived.

In her memoirs, she described the scene she witnessed as Britannic went under: "The white pride of the ocean's medical world ... dipped her head a little, then a little lower and still lower.

All the deck machinery fell into the sea like a child's toys.

Then she took a fearful plunge, her stern rearing hundreds of feet into the air until with a final roar, she disappeared into the depths." Arthur John Priest and Archie Jewell, two other survivors of the Titanic, were also onboard and both survived.

Jessop returned to work for White Star Line in 1920, before joining Red Star Line and then Royal Mail Line again.

During her tenure with Red Star, Jessop went on two cruises around the World on the company's largest ship, Belgenland. When Jessop was 36, she married John James Lewis, a fellow White Star Line steward.

Lewis had served aboard the Olympic and the RMS Majestic. They divorced around a year later. In 1950, she retired to Great Ashfield, Suffolk.

Years after her retirement, Jessop claimed to have received a telephone call, on a stormy night, from a woman who asked Jessop if she had saved a baby on the night that Titanic sank. "Yes," Jessop replied.

The voice then said "I was that baby," laughed, and hung up. Her friend and biographer John Maxtone-Graham said it was most likely some children in the village playing a joke on her.

She replied, "No, John, I had never told that story to anyone before I told you now." Records indicate that the only baby on lifeboat 16 was Assad Thomas, who was handed to Edwina Troutt, and later reunited with his mother on Carpathia.

However, Assad Thomas died on 12th June 1931 so would not have been the person making the telephone call.

But reports also failed to mention that there was another baby called Milvina Dean who was 2 months old during the sinking of RMS Titanic so she also could have been the one who made the call.

Jessop died of congestive heart failure in 1971 at the age of 83.

11/06/2024

https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/difference-between-safety-inspection-audit-johnpaul-ndiso-narkf

10/06/2024

Most women give birth lying down - and that's nothing to do with biology or medicine.

In fact, the real reason is actually a little creepy and it's all to do with one man's very weird fe**sh.

Back in the 17th century, King Louis XIV of France was obsessed with seeing his children being born. "Prior to this time, the recorded history of birthing indicates upright birth postures were used extensively" Professor Lauren Dundes writes in the American Journal of Public Health.

There was nothing wrong with the common birthing practices from that for one thing: the king didn't have as good a view of the "action" as he liked to have, if his wives and mistresses were giving birth in an upright position.

According to the American Journal of Public Health, the reclining childbirth position is all his fault and, as such, a relatively new way of giving birth (he ruled between 1643 and 1715).

King Louis XIV, the man responsible for the modern childbirth position.

King Louis XIV fathered 22 children and changed the way women give birth because he wanted a better view of his children being born.

"Since Louis XIV reportedly enjoyed watching women giving birth, he became frustrated by the obscured view of birth when it occurred on birthing stool, and promoted the new reclining position," the journal states.

His weird fe**sh meant that women began lying on "birthing tables" with their feet in stirrups and, in the case of the birth of his children, he'd be peeping behind a screen to watch the action unfold.

Once the lower classes found out his method, it began to spread.

"The influence of the King's policy is unknown, although the behavior of royalty must have affected the populace to some degree.

Louis pregnancy XIV's purported demand for change did coincide with the changing of the position and may well have been a contributing influence!"

Some experts claim the reclining birthing position, still the most common position used today, can prolong labour and even increase the need for a C-section.

Before this, women squatted or used a birthing chair to sit up right and push until someone is caught the baby.

17/05/2024

Human Chimney Sweeps

Did you know that there’s a terrible chapter in the history of chimney sweeps? Children were widely used as human chimney sweeps in England for about 200 years, and the lives of these little ones who were forced to climb chimneys were the stuff of nightmares.

The prominence of using small children as chimney sweeps began after the Great Fire of London, which occurred September 2nd through 5th, 1666. The medieval City of London was gutted in the fire; and afterwards, new building regulations designed to keep the city safer were put in place. Fireplaces had to be built a certain way, with narrower chimneys; and it became more important to ensure that the chimneys were free of obstruction after a liberal amount of usage. This is when the shocking use and abuse of children as chimney sweeps became widespread.

A young boy was traditionally purchased from his poverty-stricken parents by a master sweep, who would so-called “apprentice” the child; but what actually occurred was that the child became, in essence, a slave who did not have a realistic opportunity to advance in life. Children who worked as sweeps rarely lived past middle age.

Child chimney sweeps were required to crawl through chimneys which were only about 18 inches wide. Sometimes their cold-hearted masters would light fires to spur the sweeps on to climb more quickly.

The ideal age for a chimney sweep to begin working was said to be 6 years old, but sometimes they were used beginning at age 4. The child would shimmy up the flue using hisback, elbows, and knees. He would use a brush overhead to knock soot loose; the soot would fall down over him. Once the child reached the top, he would slide down and collect the soot pile for his master, who would sell it. The children received no wages.

The health effects of doing this work were devastating. The children often became stunted in their growth and disfigured because of the unnatural position they were frequently in before their bones had fully developed. Their knees and ankle joints were affected most often. The children’s lungs would become diseased, and their eyelids were often sore and inflamed.

The first recorded form of industrial cancer was unique to chimney sweeps. The boys would often develop Chimney Sweep Cancer, which was cancer of the sc***um which usually struck the boys in their adolescence. It was a painful and fatal cancer. In addition to these health hazards, the boys would sometimes get stuck and die in chimneys for various reasons.

10/10/2023

Happy 2023