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A historical drama based on the life of a one-time sex worker who plied her trade in two of Finland’s sea ports has concluded a much-praised season in the small town of Reposaari, a former fishing village on the Gulf of Bothnia, writes James Brewer.
Entitled Ratsu-Olga, the one and a half hour-long play chronicles the experiences of a fiery woman named Olga, and was researched, written, and acted by Sini Tuomisalo, a versatile performer with star-quality musical talent who overlays the demanding role with a gamut of gritty emotions and with some raunchy touches.
The story includes an intriguing reference to Olga’s first husband, who died in October 1942 in the Seamen’s Hospital, Greenwich.
Olga was born in 1901 in Reposaari, an island connected by causeway to the mainland. Her father was an important figure on the ‘Red’ side in the Finnish civil war and was shot in the port city of Vyborg (which was from 1918-40 governed by Finland, but today is part of Russia) among several other Reposaari men. Sini tells in the story about Olga’s education in her native town during the years she and her two little brothers went to school.
Like some other young girls in the town, she went out to meet seamen in the international harbour in Reposaari and the larger port of Mäntyluoto nearby (both in the region of Pori). In Finnish, ‘ratsu’ means horse, and her clients crudely referred to her this way because of the ‘ride’ they paid for.
“Olga was a drama queen in Reposaari!” says Sini. Although from 1919 to 1932 it was prohibited to sell and drink alcohol in Finland, “she drank a lot with the foreign seamen, she had been in the police station very many times. She was said to be beautiful with long, dark hair.”
The headstrong Olga was caught several times by local policemen and taken to the lockups in Reposaari and Mäntyluoto police stations. She spent six months in the provincial jail in the city of Turku twice where she was put to prison work.
Olga gave a birth to a child who lived for only a couple of months. She frequently suffered from syphilis and was treated in Pori General Hospital, but her violent behaviour resulted in her being sent home.
She then met a Swedish seaman, August Sanfried Carlsson who was born in 1893, and they were married in 1936 in the Reposaari church. In 1938 Olga moved to August’s apartment in Gothenburg. In October 1942 After August passed away at the Seamen’s Hospital in London, an urn containing his ashes was sent with a letter to inform Olga that her husband had died there, but without giving the cause of his death.
Olga married again in 1944 – to the uncle of August – and lived in Sweden until her death in 1989.
The 90-minute play Olga-Ratsu was staged on 30 evenings during summer 2022 in a private old wooden house in the main street, Strand, of Reposaari, which was turned temporarily into a kind of home theatre. Maximum seating was 15 but often a few more people squeezed in.
It was a monologue with songs and some choreography in which Sini had several roles: a Swedish priest, Olga’s mother, a teacher and finally Olga.
During her research, Sini collected information about Olga from many sources. “Luckily here in Reposaari there still lives a wonderful old lady, who turns 98 years of age this autumn. She lives on her own in her house, she has a great memory and is a very good storyteller. She knew Olga and talked with her several times.”
Sini, accompanied by her frequent collaborator, the acoustic guitarist Jaska Aalto with whom she has recorded in many genres, travelled to Sweden in October 2021, as Olga and both her Swedish husbands lived in Angered, a parish near Gothenburg. She met the nephew of Olga’s second husband and located the burial plot of Olga and her second husband.
Sini found the location of the grave by contacting the Angered parish registrar. An organist and a priest of the parish asked the oldest residents if anyone knew Olga and her husband but there was no luck on that score, so Sini contacted the taxation office to find out the address where the couple lived.
The Seamen’s Hospital, Greenwich, where August died, was situated in the old infirmary of Greenwich Hospital from 1870 until it closed in 1986. It was also known as the Dreadnought Hospital because it was originally a floating hospital ship, HMS Dreadnought, moored on the Thames at Greenwich from 1821-1870. The National Maritime Museum has patient records from the Dreadnought, but they cover only up to 1930.
The hospital gave rise to a charity officially called the King George’s Fund for Sailors, which in 2005 changed its working name to Seafarers UK, and even more recently to the Seafarers’ Charity to reflect its global outlook. Conceived by shipowners and others, it was initially championed by King George V.
The only period in the 200-year history of the Seamen’s Hospital Society for which there is scant information is that of the Second World War, when August was a patient. Many of the hospital records were destroyed when the hospital was bombed.
The black-and-white images illustrating this article give a flavour of the history of the Dreadnought Hospital in the 1920s-1940s. Included is a photo of a ward in the New Albert Dock Hospital, which the Society also ran, as there are no photos surviving of the Dreadnought in the 1940s. These photos are reproduced by kind permission of the Seafarers Hospital Society.
A fascinating history of the Society and the Dreadnought, entitled Welcome Aboard: The Story of the Seamen’s Hospital Society and the Dreadnought written by journalist Jane Matthews was published in limited edition in 1992.
In the poster for the play, Sini is seen in her make-up as Olga (in a wig –Sini is a natural blonde!) Among her many accomplishments, Sini is the author of a book on diet, and a book of her experiences of living and studying in St Petersburg. She paints landscapes and is a tour guide in her beloved Reposaari.
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