Carry On Matron

Sid Carter Sid James heads a cunning criminal gang that includes the longhaired Ernie Bragg Bernard Bresslaw and the cheeky Freddy Bill Maynard, along with Sid’s honest son Cyril Kenneth Cope. Cyril does not want a life of crime, but he is emotionally blackmailed by his father into helping with a scheme to rob Finisham Maternity Hospital of its stock of contraceptive pills and sell them abroad. To get inside the hospital, Cyril disguises himself as a new female nurse and is assigned to share a room with the shapely blonde nurse Susan Ball Barbara Windsor. The arrangement puts him in the orbit of the hospital’s lively, sometimes chaotic ward life.

The hospital’s routines are tangled with a parade of personalities. Sir Bernard Cutting Kenneth Williams the hypochondriac registrar worries about his own health and, in a farcical turn, consults the nutty Dr F. A. Goode Charles Hawtrey, whose psychiatric mumbo-jumbo suggests Cutting merely wants to prove his manhood. Matron Hattie Jacques tries to keep order on the wards, even as a gluttonous patient, Mrs Tidey, and her ever-present husband circle the waiting room. Cyril’s cover is complicated further when he returns to Dr Prodd’s room to grab a map; Prodd [Terry Scott] causes tension by attempting too much intimacy, and Cyril ends up knocking him out during a rush emergency.

The hospital hums with excitement when lovely film star Jane Darling Valerie Leon goes into labor, and Cyril, still in disguise, handles the crisis in the ambulance after Prodd is knocked aside. Jane Darling is thrilled by the mysterious “nurse” and hails him as a heroine, which brings unexpected fame to the hospital and complicates Cyril’s predicament. Susan uncovers Cyril’s masquerade, but her feelings for him prevent her from exposing the truth.

On the wards, the ever-so-patient Sister struggles to hold things together, while Miss Banks Patsy Rowlands keeps her employer—Sir Bernard Cutting—under control. The gang even improvises disguises of their own, with Sid dressing as a foreign “Dr Zhivago” and Ernie posing as a heavily expectant mum, but the real threat comes from the mothers-to-be who rally around the labor and birth. The tension peaks when the hospital fears scrutiny if the truth comes out, but Sid defuses the potential scandal by revealing that the “heroine” of the day is, in fact, a man in disguise.

In the end, Cyril’s deception is resolved through a personal turn of love and loyalty: he marries his shapely nurse Susan Ball, and Matron’s steady presence finally gets the outcome she’s been waiting for—a proper pairing with a doctor. The story threads together crime, comedy, and a touch of romance, leaving the hospital’s daily chaos tempered by a sense of earned closure and a reminder that even ambitious schemes can end in human connection rather than notoriety.

Last Updated: October 09, 2025 at 10:47