RE: the pseudonym
I just assumed it was done for privacy purposes but googled and found that the nuns asked her to change the name and some of the nuns' names. Taken from this link, http://www.radiotimes.com/news/2012-02-19/did-call-the-midwifes-chummy-exist

When Worth wrote her memoirs of East End life a decade ago, she wanted to be sure that they met with the Sistersâ approval. âÂÂShe sent us the original manuscript of Call the Midwife and we gave it over to Sister Marie-Claire [a nun who knew about WorthâÂÂs work with the community] to go over with a fine-tooth comb.âÂÂ

Eventually the Sisters recommended that nearly all of the names of the characters, as well as St JohnâÂÂs itself, should be changed. âÂÂShe was telling the story but it was mixed up with some fiction,â explains Sister Christine âÂÂAnd so at the time we felt that it better to use pseudonyms.âÂÂ

Frieda, you are approaching this book from an academic viewpoint, so I can understand your being underwhelmed. I am ignorant of the linguistics and the sociology of that period and place, so found it extremely interesting. Plus, unlike so many memoirs, most of the stories were positive. This was all about a group of people making a difference during hard times.

Carolyn - When I gave birth, I was in the hospital for two days and couldn't wait to get home. It was noisy and I felt fine. Midwives here are starting to become fashionable again, with new training centres. Thankfully, breastfeeding as become the norm for the past few decades but when my mom had us, we were all bottle fed. I gather there was some kind of negative stigma if you dared to breastfeed then.

Almost forgot...do you think the late fifties just seemed to pale in comparison to the forties (WW2 etc) and the 60's (flower power). I mean, a lot has been written about those two decades. That is all I can think of.

This post was edited by janalyn on Mon, Feb 3, 14 at 17:45

I am disappointed that Chummy wasn't a "real" person, however the character was delightful, however much of her was real or invented.

From the website Janalyn provided above:

And what about Chummy (Miranda Hart)? Among the nuns is 93-year-old Sister Teresa French, who was a nurse in Poplar at the same time as Jennifer Worth.
A small, alert woman who looks 20 years younger than her age, Sister Teresa canâÂÂt recall anyone who might have inspired Chummy.

There is another nun who shares Sister TeresaâÂÂs doubts. âÂÂI think she was completely fictitious,â says Sister Margaret, who was based in Poplar ten years after Chummy would have been there. Like Sister Teresa, she knew many of the nuns who had been there in WorthâÂÂs time. âÂÂThere might have been somebody vaguely like her, but I donâÂÂt think so.âÂÂ

Sadly, the one woman who knows for sure cannot provide any answers. Worth died of cancer before filming began last May. âÂÂI saw her last in February last year, and then she rang up to tell me that she had been diagnosed with cancerâÂÂ, says Sister Christine. âÂÂShe asked me to go down and see her and that is when she said to me that the BBC were going to televise the books.âÂÂ

Suzannah Hart, WorthâÂÂs daughter, can shed a little light. âÂÂMy mother was shown a photograph of the midwives at St JohnâÂÂs when she was ill. It belonged to another of her former colleagues. One was head and shoulders above the others, and this is who my mother identified as Chummy.â That photo, and the album it came from, was passed to director Philippa Lowthorpe, who used it as inspiration for the TV series.

It's a bit of a mystery. I know Jennifer was the one who approached Miranda Hart to play that character. And I did read somewhere that Jennifer considered Cynthia and Chummy to be her closest friends from there...and kept in contact with them afterwards though I think it was more of an exchange of Christmas cards with Chummy that eventually died out. Here is something for you Sheri:

I am the President of the Old Roedeanians' Association (ORA) and have been reading all the articles about the Chummy and watching the series Call the Midwife with interest as Chummy allegedly attended Roedean.

We have looked in our database of Old Roedeanians and cannot find anyone with a similar name in there. However, there is a chance that Chummy could be based on Dame Cicely Saunders (Founder of the Hospice Movement and Old Roedeanian) who also trained as a nurse at the Nightingale School, St Thomas's. Here is a link to her obituary for your reference. Quite a few of the facts seem to tie in with the description of Chummy in the books. Her education, the distant mother, only daughter with brothers and the fact she was reportedly very tall resonated with me in particular.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/news/2005/jul/16/guardianobituaries.health

If Chummy was based on Dame Cicely, the fact that she was so well known and respected could be one of the reasons why Jennifer Worth kept her real identity secret.

What an intriguing mystery - it would be wonderful to solve this if we can! We would be happy to help in any way we can.

Sasha
President ORA

I figure you're right, Janalyn; it doesn't really do any good to try to analyze an emotive subject academically. I should just enjoy the characters and stories as any other fiction based on real life.

Worth's Chummy sounds like Betty MacDonald's Pa and Ma Kettle, shades of The Egg and I, possibly inspired by a real person (as the Kettles apparently were) but embroidered up to suit the purposes of the memoirist.

Carolyn, your explanation of the popularity of the TV series makes sense. I think sometimes I have been cheated by not having mainstream taste. I would be a lot more satisfied reader/TV viewer if I did. ;-)

This post was edited by friedag on Mon, Feb 3, 14 at 21:24

Janalyn and Sheri, I am surprised that you are surprised at the living conditions in the East End (and in many other UK cities at that time); perhaps it is because US/Canadians had moved to suburban living and inner cities were not places you would have had much contact with . . . just throwing out ideas.
Re illness and disease. By the '50's most of the terrible epidemics of Victorian times had been controlled. Probably polio was the thing causing the most fear right across society.
My DH was a late victim and hospitalised for many months as a child and then had to wear a 'collar'. As so often happens in older age the symptoms, though painless, are now returning.
TB and rickets are once again making an appearance in the immigrant community and among the rough sleepers.
Sheri, Miranda Hart makes a wonderful Chummy; the part could have been made for her!
Frieda, I know what you mean about the 'Kettles' . . . they would have made good EE characters themselves . .. but, of course, Chummy is very upper crust and totally unlike the everyday image of a nurse/midwife. She is what we call a jolly hockey sticks young woman and seems less phased by the sights/situations she has to deal with than the other girls.
Frieda, I think the tone of the book being flat is because Worth was not a writer, she was more of a 'doer'. In fact I find the TV series better because the characters are nicely rounded . .(I can hear DH saying "Like you!") . .. By using four girls with totally different looks and characters and equally interesting women to play the nuns, again 'well-padded', the book is brought to life. Actually I would say the character of Jennifer is the least 'interesting' one as she is portrayed as slightly straight-laced, lacking in humour and what we call 'goody-goody' but perhaps this made for a quiet 'observer'.
I don't want to labour the point about workhouses and I haven't read her book on that subject, but the tale of Mrs Jenkins seems to relate to an earlier age. Of course if the poor old woman was going batty she may have mixed up events. Certainly they were not pleasant places, but not quite the Hell someone described up thread. Mrs J says she never saw her children again and they soon(?) died of disease. Parents did see their children, not everyday, but on Sundays, which I suppose was better than nothing. Maybe if they were so ill they were in quarantine? By the 1900's many workhouses had quite separate establishments for the young, partly to give them fresh air and an education and partly to get them away from the 'criminal element' of the casual wards. The Poplar Workhouse built such places out in the Essex countryside, which is where the Jenkins children could have been sent . . . if they hadn't died first. Obviously Worth changed Mrs J's name, otherwise we would be able to check the record. The ledgers saved by the old LCC are available on line and births, baptisms and causes of death are all recorded.

carolyn, I thank the Lord...

Vee - Canada wasn't even 100 years old in 1958, I don't think there were any inner cities then and fortunately we hadn't been bombed or suffered like those in England during the War. Nor have we ever had that kind of population density. The East End was hit hard during the War, I am not surprised that the children were playing in bomb sites but I was surprised that the living conditions were that bad. Just ignorant, I guess.

Midwives here were regulated in 1995 and you need a university degree. They are independent, with their own offices and have hospital priveliges, if that is required.

Jennifer searched all those records Vee to find out what happened to Mrs. Jenkins' children and her history. She then took her to where they were buried, for some kind of closure.

I had easy deliveries so wanted to get out of the hospital asap and got my doctor to agree to it. :) As for my own delivery, I was a forceps deliviery and to this day have a dent on the right side of my head as proof. Just glad the doctor didn't apply one more iota of pressure. LOL

Vee, my mother is about the same age as the author and as I was reading I was contrasting what I knew of her life in the 1950s-60s with the London being described in the book. Hence my surprise at the living conditions. My mother did grow up in a suburb, but the city wasn't far away and that was where the family went to shop, see movies, etc., and there was nothing ever described to me that approached the conditions Worth describes in the East End. Maybe we were just unaware, but I truly don't think conditions were similar even in the most impoverished areas. And as Janalyn said, we had no bomb damage nor the population density.

I was one of those unfortunate mothers who was sent packing from the hospital within 24 hours with my first child. I was completely and utterly clueless and she was two weeks early and had colic -- it's a wonder we made it! I could have definitely used at least another day to acclimate and figure out what I was doing. (Those poor first children, they are the experimental models, aren't they?) But we survived and she's all grown up and off to college.

After a huge fuss about "drive-thru deliveries" the insurance companies relented and I was covered for two days with the next one. He was over ten pounds and an easy baby. If there had been any complications or if I'd needed a C-section the insurance would have certainly provided for that. As it was, I had a very busy four-year old at home and wanted to get out of the hospital as quickly as possible.

I ordered the DVD of the first season of "Call the Midwife" and I'm really looking forward to seeing the book come to life.

Sheriz6, I heard somewhere that the oldest child has a lot of mistakes made on it but gets a lot of extra love and attention to make up for it. In that Army hospital where I was and where all the new mothers were thousands of miles from their own mothers and had only their equally young and inexperienced husbands to help, the nurses gave classes on bathing baby, making formula, etc. (My little daughter was the guinea pig bathing beauty; I have always thought she was chosen because she was the prettiest baby on the maternity ward.) We were also required to have rooming in where we had to take complete care of the babies ourselves. I suppose that was so that the medical personnel could be reassured that we weren't going to go home and kill the poor little things.

Janalyn, is it you who has all three of the Midwife books? I have returned mine to the library, but I'm pretty sure it was the appendix in the last book that gave the information that "Chummy" had spent her life in Africa as a missionary and never returned home. I read that, along with the information that she and Jennifer had corresponded for a number of years and then sent Christmas cards and then, finally, ceased corresponding at all. She mentioned all the nurses and said that she and Cynthia had remained friends to the last.

Carolyn
I have read only the first book because I was worried I would get them all mixed up when it came to this discussion. :) I will get the other two from the library later.
In BC when I was pregnant, we had prenatal classes with registered nurses, where, among all the standard stuff, they taught husbands to be coaches hahahahah!. I love mine dearly but he was like a deer in headlights during labour. We had regular prenatal doctor visits etc and after the baby was born, you were visited by a community nurse and, as a first time mom, you had the option to register for a postnatal clinic. Now that was wonderful! About ten of us and our babies met once a week with a community nurse who checked all the babies and answered questions. Some of those women became my best friends and their children and mine are best friends, We had our own informal support group, set up weekly babysitting/coffee mornings and were simply there for one another. I think that postnatal program was cancelled years ago, have no idea why because it met many needs. I digress lol

What did you think of Mary (I think that was her name), the naive Irish girl who was seduced by a pimp, and how she was treated when her baby was taken from her against her wishes? Fair or not?

The story of Mary was pitiful, including her compulsion to steal a baby to replace the one taken away from her. By the standards of the day, it probably was considered 'the right thing to do' for her not to be allowed to keep her baby. It was fairer to the child, as the thinking went. We might not necessarily think so today, though.

Something Worth touched on that I wish she had gone into more detail about was the nutritional advice given to pregnant women. I've run across mentions of this in other memoirs of this period and earlier.

The women were malnourished when they needed food most. Of course there might simply have been no food for anyone in the family, but even when there was, the women couldn't seem to stop denying themselves food when their children were hungry and the breadwinner (the husband, usually) needed sustenance first.

In sociological terms this is called "the breadwinner effect" when the rationalization of a disproportionate amount of food, especially meat, will always go to males because they need it for work. However, nutritionists know that pregnant and lactating women, especially those who also do domestic and wage-earning labor themselves, have nutritional and caloric requirements only slightly less than adult males and perhaps more than some males with less strenuous jobs. Yet pregnant women in many cultures will still submit the greater share of food to their menfolk. It is a status thing, too, and evidently it was still 'the norm' in the East End in the 1950s. Maybe it still is, although the demographics of the East End are quite different today to what they were back then.

Vee, Nella Last did this for her husband Will in the 1940s and '50s, although by the standards of the East End, the Lasts were well off. Do you think it is a cultural thing that still exists in England?

'Pimping' is still alive over here and many ignorant/vulnerable/poor girls are subjected to it; especially those who are trafficked from Eastern European countries. Sometimes these unhappy girls are found months or years later after police raids in quite 'respectable' areas of our towns and cities. They are set free yet within a matter of weeks are 'recaptured' by their tormentors.
I think the nutrition' thing is as much about ignorance as lack of money. In the '50's there were jobs aplenty; although 'casual labourers' would have been more insecure. I'm sure men always got the biggest 'helpings' at mealtimes; I know my father did . . . but then he was bigger and there was no shortage of money/lack of food in our home. Some of the East Ender's wages would have disappeared at the pub or the dog track; that was how the man of the house relaxed. English men always seem to need the company of their fellows/peers rather than their families . . . and yes, I do realise there are many exceptions to the rule. I think women, pregnant/breast feeding or not had little knowledge of the nutritional properties of food. The introduction of rationing had provided a minimum balanced amount of food for each family, all pregnant/nursing women received a free pint of milk (I think per day), free orange juice and codliver oil was given to all babies. Each school child had a free third of a pint of milk each morning . .. I remember it right up until I was eighteen as the only source of fresh milk we received at boarding school.
I think everyone except the absolutely destitute families still sat around a table at mealtimes and ate something even if it wasn't filled with vitamins and the required '5 a day' mantra of modern thinking.
A nursing acquaintance told me they were trained to notice women's complexions. Pale, undernourished girls were know as having the bun and a cup of tea look.
I could go on about the lack of 'balanced home-cooked meals' provided in many UK homes today.
Frieda you will be familiar with the tradition of a Sunday Roast over here. It was the one day when everyone would expect to get their feet under the table and eat meat, potatoes, veg, gravy and a solid pudding with lots of custard. No longer is this the case. Many families drag their whining kids to shopping malls/supermarkets where they visit that well-known burger outlet. One Sunday I was chatting to a friend with two small sons. "I'm off to get supper for them. I'm doing potato 'wedges' (frozen) with grated cheese." Not my idea of a 'Sunday' lunch!

The idea that men got the meat, women the gravy, was one I heard my mother repeat, though she attributed it to an earlier generation. And yes, everyone got meat on Sunday if it could at all be managed.

In our house our parents both got bigger portions, in part because they were adults and we were children, but we could have more if we wanted it. Our parents were on a tight budget, but they were scrupulously fair.

Having read the book a good year ago, I am now in the midst of watching the DVDs of the first season. I will agree with the comment that everything looks so much cleaner than the book lead me to believe. I will also agree that while I found the book fascinating, I found the emotional tone to be very flat, almost without affect.

Rosefolly

Vee, I suppose Worth's intentions in writing her memoirs were to provide accounts of some of the more positive aspects of midwifery -- as Janalyn said above, "uplifting" stories -- although Worth did sprinkle her narrative with some unsavory parts as well. However, I question whether her balance is enough to leave a reasonably accurate impression.

Someone mentioned how the midwives felt safe going into even the roughest areas. I'm not sure I buy that, unless there was a blip in the late 1950s and early 1960s when the East End was transformed into an Eden. It certainly wasn't one earlier or later. And it was in the mid-to-late-fifties East End that the Kray twins incubated their gangsterism, Peter Rachman practiced his slum landlording, and pimping was rife, as already mentioned, etc., etc. Then there's the public houses located at just about every cross street and, as you noted, the clientele who probably got inebriated enough at times to be menaces to anyone they accosted, including young midwives on bicycles. Worth's picture is incomplete, I think, or am I just being skeptical?

I got familiar with Bethnal Green in the early 1970s. The general advice given to females at that time: You'll be all right on the busier streets in the daytime, but don't venture alone, or with just one mate, in the lanes and alleys, particularly at night. Do you think that was the prevailing advice for most of the districts of the East End, even in the 1950s/early '60s?

I feel I'm ruining quaint imagery left by Worth's writing and the charming TV series. :-(

I found the stories in the memoir uplifting because even though some of them were disturbing and sad, people were trying to help. The TV series was sanitized - probably too much "unpleasantness" would have turned off watchers in the same way people even here admitted that they cannot read "unpleasant" novels.

I have read time after time that the nuns and midwives felt safe. I imagine if one of them had been accosted the whole community would have risen up in arms against the attacker. So, I do believe it. I found this on the web, from one of the original nums:

One of the St John CommunityâÂÂs surviving nun-midwives, 93-year-old Sister Teresa, recalls a case where âÂÂall the bedbugs walked out of the mattressâ as soon as a fire was lit in one expectant motherâÂÂs icy bedroom.

âÂÂBut although the conditions were a shock at first, I grew to love the people ��" there was a magic about the East End, community-wise,â she says.

âÂÂI felt sorry for the women with their endless births and their lack of know-how about running a house because of generations of slum-dwelling, so we befriended them.âÂÂ
The St John Community was created in 1848 as a âÂÂnursing sisterhoodâ that sent nuns to the Crimea to work with Florence Nightingale. The nuns continued their work back in the East End, and when the NHS was founded in 1948, the nuns served alongside NHS midwives and doctors for several more decades.

The area could be dangerous, but even around Cable Street, the red-light district where policemen walked in fours for self-protection, the nuns felt safe.

They were highly visible in their white wimples and long tabards, which they tucked into their belts when they rode their bikes and, later, mopeds. But they enjoyed protected status because they were a comforting presence at the two greatest events in peopleâÂÂs lives ��" birth and death.

Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-2082629/Sisters-St-John-braved-squalor-1960s-East-End-London-deliver-babies.html#ixzz2sWJFNb4C
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Sorry, Janalyn, I tried several times but couldn't get the DailyMail address to work. I'll try again later on a different device.

The nuns in full gear could have felt safe enough, I suppose, but I was speaking more generally of young females of any stripe and some not so young, even some old women, and midwives not necessarily in uniform. Statistics don't bear out that women were any more safe in the East End than they were in any other part of London. Ellen Ross, the social historian, relates that women were subjected to all sorts of violence, mostly domestic (brought on by drunken or loutish spouses, usually) but also by other men (and sometimes women):
Husbands were, practically by definition, violent. Indeed, one woman brought a warrant against a man who had "knocked me down as if he was my husband." Husband-wife violence was indeed a privileged form in a culture that permitted a wide range of physical expressions of anger and in which violence was the prerogative of those in authority. Parents slapped, spanked and whipped children, as did police, neighbours, and teachers; fights broke out in pubs and streets not only between men but sometimes between women also. -- Love and Toil

The nuns were looking through a different prism.

This post was edited by friedag on Thu, Feb 6, 14 at 2:31

Frieda, I have never heard of any violence that took place against uniformed nurses 'going about their business', although, as you say, for the average female in any slummy part of a big city it was/is better to be there in daylight and walking purposefully, no strolling or looking in shop windows in case your motives were misconstrued.
However I have been told by an old Irish midwife friend that in Dublin, where she trained in the '40's, if nursing staff were called out during the night to an emergency, a policeman would have to accompany them, even if they were in an ambulance, because they were liable to be stoned or set-on by youths and/or drunks. She also commented on the 'domestic violence' she witnessed and the fear for her personal safety after she reported a father who she believed had kicked a new-born baby and broken its spine. Another nurse acquaintance told horror stories of working in the Gorbals slums of Glasgow, as bad if not worse than London.
My DD's PR firm 'relocated' (as you say in the US) to Bethnal Green, a slum area which is being rejuvenated. She not only hated the long walk from the nearest Tube station over London Bridge, but the police tape surrounding pools of blood on the pavements after another night's stabbing . . . the knife being the weapon-of-choice among the ethnic community.

Frieda - try this. When I copy pasted that late last night, the url just appeared and I was in a hurry and didnt have time to check it out.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-2082629/Sisters-St-John-braved-squalor-1960s-East-End-London-deliver-babies

I completely agree with you abou the violence - that appeared in many of the stories, also she talked about the domestic violence in the introduction as well, I believe. But I do think the uniforms protected them.

Thank you, Janalyn. That address popped immediately. I'll read it with interest, since I prefer the synoptic approach. I'm still miffed that I'm handicapped by not having the Intro you have. We could be speaking at cross purposes because of it.

Yes, I can understand the preference for a 'light' version, nothing unpleasant enough to make one's blood boil or bile to rise. It probably helps too that this is a character-driven set of stories and personal, although as Vee said, the personality of Jennifer/Jenny Lee is perhaps the least fascinating of the lot. I do think it's interesting, though, that when Jennifer gave up nursing, she went into music.

Re the food issues: Vee, I've been reading Robert Roberts's The Classic Slum about his childhood in Salford in the first two decades of the 1900s. The feeling of entitlement many men felt about their share of the food and the arguments they had with their wives when the women couldn't meet the men's requirements, Roberts put it this way:
Some men demanded [in their packed lunches] fillings which the family budget could not sustain. One mechanic, I remember, after a violent quarrel with his wife found next day that lunch consisted of the rent book between two slices of bread.Ellen Ross in Love and Toil (that I quoted from above) says this:The London fathers and elder brothers who routinely dined on fare for which they had worked hard [including meat, fish and eggs] but over which their wives and children were literally drooling were not monsters who enjoyed tormenting their families; their dietary privileges and their families' deprivation were simply on the edges of [their] awareness.

Vee, I did run across one reference to a nun/nurse being attacked by a drunk who claimed that he did it because he thought she was a bird of prey after him! That was back in the 1890s, though.

Intoxicated people don't always observe the distinctions of uniforms, so it is perhaps a testament to the sisters' faith that they were never or seldom abused.

Frieda - I went to Amazon and looked at the preview of the book. It includes most of the introduction, page 7 appears to be missing, but you can at least read it. Just keep going past the table of contents...

Here is a link that might be useful: Into in Amazon preview

Hooray, Janalyn. Sharp of you to think of the Amazon preview including the Intro. I sure didn't.

Worth's memories are a bit contrary to the historians', sociologists', and other memoirists' estimations I've read so far. But she was there and her experiences could very well agree with those of other writers who were in the East End at the same time, or they could almost completely disagree. But more likely different people will remember similar things slightly differently. Again, it's the nature of memory, and only a synthesis of all sources is likely to come closest to accuracy -- one source is never enough. But I'm preaching to the choir, I know! I'm just reaffirming it in my own mind. :-)

I'll shut up now. I want to read others' opinions of Call the Midwife. Thanks, Janalyn, for turning me on to it. I've enjoyed it, although I may seem hypercritical.

I saw this on the Mental Floss website today and thought it might make an interesting side note to this this discussion. The "professional medical" advice from a century ago is amazingly awful.

Here is a link that might be useful: How to Give Birth 100 Years Ago

I read this all this thread today as I had only watched one episode of the TV series and haven't read the books, so felt I had nothing to contribute. One point though....
Many years ago, probably around the 1950s I read a book about the East End and recall that there was a mention of midwives on their bikes being able to go into the "tough" areas safely by themselves where the policemen went in pairs.
Strange how some facts stick in the mind but I don't remember what the book was called.
I also read a similar non-fiction book set in South Africa and remember a story about a young girl who was married to an older man and was having a baby. While the midwife was in the house, he told her that his wife was an illegitimate child who was handed over by a well-dressed woman with a bunch of violets on her coat to a slum family. He said that the girl was in a dreadful situation and he had rescued her and wondered how this woman with the violets could have done such a thing.
These books must have been in the library where I worked in the early 1950s as I never read this kind of thing normally but we were encouraged to read the latest books so that we could recommend them to the subscribers.
Richard Gordon had brought out a popular book "Doctor in the House" so my recollection about the midwives might have been from that book.

I finished the book a few weeks ago, and had to return it to the library, so I am commenting from my memory and notes. I attributed the safety issue to the fact that that it was a close community, though with a lot of violence. When everyone knows everyone, especially at that time in history, a "good" woman, as the nurses and sisters would have been considered, would be relatively safe.
My brothers and sister often remind each other that everyone remembers different things from shared experiences, and different experiences that others may have forgotten. We find that when recounting things from our childhood (safely from the current ages of 54-59), as close in age as we were our remembrances sometimes differ. I try to keep this in mind when reading memoirs, especially when I read several in a row from the same time period and area.
Jenny seems to step back from the story, making her character almost flat compared to the others. I wonder if it was personality, or a desire not to be perceived by the others still alive as making herself the center of attention.
I loved the book, and did watch a few of the episodes, but find myself curiously without any desire to read the rest of the series.
Would those of you who have read the other books recommend them?

Your comment struck a chord with me, Kathleen. I read the first book with interest, but did not go on. And I have been watching the series but will probably not watch the last DVD.

I like the book best as a vivid picture of another time and place. For me the stories exist to make it real and poignant.

My favorite character by far is Chummy. I choose to believe that Jennifer's daughters were right, and that she was real.

Folly

Kathleen, the other two books are different from the first. They don't have very many of the stories but deal more with the locale and one or two families. I didn't enjoy them the way I did the first book and the TV programs. Unless you are just very interested in the time period, you may not want to read them.

The interesting article below is taken from today's Sunday Telegraph and is by Heidi Thomas who adapts 'Call the Midwife'.

Here is a link that might be useful: Heidi Thomas

This thread is a fascinating read in itself. Veer, Freida, Janalyn and others have shared lots of unknown-to-me (and therefore amazing :^) knowledge about midwives, the East End, workhouses, hospitals, etc. Thank you very much!

One thing Frieda mentioned about the book struck me, because I hadn't thought about it, though it seems obvious now that it's been pointed out - and that is the bit about Jennifer Worth's "flatness," her lack of emotion about what she was describing. Several of you suggested reasons for this, and all of them sounded quite plausible to me.

You all are a bunch of smart cookies!

Just got back from the Seattle Flower and Garden Show, so have been away. (Can't wait for spring)

Thanks!! to all of you who participated in this discussion and hope others who have been inspired to read this, will add their thoughts too.

If any of you would like to discuss a book, no matter what the genre, please start a thread and I promise to join in. I think we should take turns leading one, if this is what you all would like to do. Now, back to the couch and watching Olympics. :)

Vee, thanks for the Heidi Thomas site. I enjoyed reading it.

After a few days of rumination and further reading on 20th century midwifery, I couldn't stay away from this thread and had to see what you all were saying. :-)

Oh gawd, Sheri, that 'professional' advice from 100 years ago is a reminder of how much medicine and health care has been a 'work in progress', and how amidst some of the sound advice and changes for the better, there have been some equally flaky ideas. Unfortunately, I think a lot of flakiness still exists because medical advice seems to flip flop every few years -- witness: breastfeeding bad, bottle-feeding good to breastfeeding good, bottle-feeding bad.

Vee, I too found the piece about Heidi Thomas interesting. At least she acknowledges that the series can be viewed on more than one level, although the 'cream-topped trifle' consumers are probably in the majority. I agree that Worth's characters are not realistic in that they are all paragons, as Thomas related. I was a bit annoyed with that, but then that wasn't part of Worth's purpose in writing her memoirs. For all those who gush about the good and glory of midwifery, there are also those who can relate the opposite. I don't watch television to have a 'good cry', but sometimes I'm caught off guard. I didn't realize that many (most?) Down's children were institutionalized in the UK until the 1960s/1970s.

Speaking of opposite views, I've been reading about what poor English women, including East End women, thought about the 'do-gooders' who came into their lives after about 1900 and then as the decades of the century progressed. Incipient nannyism dates from the mid 1800s, but it was only in the 20th century that the 'State' really imposed itself. At first, women thought most of the advice dispensed was a crock, since they had their own ways of doing things and they resented the officious bores who told them everything they did was wrong. Many of the older children would warn their mothers with, "Here comes the lady with the alligator bag," meaning the social worker or welfare representative was in the neighborhood.

One of the biggest contentions was breastfeeding versus bottle-feeding, as I mentioned above. The health workers were only trying to solve the problem of sickly babies who couldn't thrive on their exhausted, malnourished mothers' breast milk. They prescribed bottle-feeding of cow's milk, supplemented with barley water and cod-liver oil in bottles with nipples that the State provided. And they advocated that babies past newborn should be fed only every six hours on a strict schedule. All right, but the women didn't have any way to keep cow's milk fresh, if they could afford it in the first place; they didn't have the water, much less boiling water, needed to keep the bottles and nipples clean; and they weren't about to let a screaming baby disrupt their husbands' and the other children's sleep when it was easier to whip out a breast every time the baby cried.

Women who had already given...

My SiL , a qualified midwife, ran a clinic for new mothers and told me that she advised against using dummies/pacifiers until she had her own baby! BiL needed his sleep to be able to function at work she ruefully acknowledged and wondered how many people had taken her advice.
I told her that probably no one had!

I was searching for more books on the East End and the following link came up. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/East_End_of_London

I know it is Wikipedia so you read it with eyebrow raised, but it has a lot of information. Near the end of the article they mention books on that period including Call the Midwife. It appears that a number of books appeared after it was published, no doubt cashing in on the public's fascination.

I checked out one of them, Silvertown http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/1149217.Silvertown
and it is another memoir. Practically every review mentions the butcher pulling out all the teeth of the girl at age 17, and that this was standard practice due to the dental problems that inevitably happened as adults.

This seemed questionable to me so I tried to find some more info and came across the following memoir, written by a Jewish woman who was a child in the East End during the thirties and forties.. I thought it was excellent and encourage you to read it.

Here is a link that might be useful: My East End Story by Jean Rubenstein 2001

Janalyn, I've read Silvertown in my current glut of memoir-reading from former East Enders. I think it's one of the better written accounts. And, yes, unfortunately, the tooth-pulling stands out. Dental problems plagued many poor people in that locale for most of the 20th century according to several of the memoirists I've read. One detailed how chewing tobacco helped dull toothaches among old and young alike, including a father who shared his plug with his nine-year-old son because he understood the pain the boy was having with his bad teeth.

I read the memoir you linked to, Janalyn. I enjoyed it as a different perspective, that of a Jewish family. It's unpolished, but I like that because it feels genuine. The mother was indomitable. I like how she got the next-door bakery with the cockroach problem to give her two loaves gratis!

Annpan, the use of dummies/comforters/pacifiers was another thing that the social workers tried to discourage, but, as in the case of what you said to your SiL, the women let that piece of impractical advice go in one ear and out the other.

I think Heidi Thomas in the Sunday Telegraph article misspoke when she referred to "the advent of the Pill in the late 1960s." The Pill was invented in the 1950s and was approved in the US by the FDA in 1957 but only for menstrual cycle problems. All of a sudden many American women were having menstrual problems! Then in 1960 the Pill was approved as a contraceptive and by 1962 it was a hit with American women. God bless the Mexican yam!!

In the UK the contraceptive pill was introduced on the NHS in 1961, but it got a slower start there than in the US because "the government at the time did not want to be seen to be encouraging promiscuity or "free love." That's about the only time I can think of that Britain was more conservative than the US.

That puzzled me, so I searched the Internet for a quick explanation and found a BBC News article (see link below) that British GPs were slow to prescribe the Pill but that changed when family planning clinics were allowed to prescribe the Pill to single women in 1974.

It's that date of 1974 that drew me up short because I landed in England in 1972 and all the women I knew as coworkers, housemates, and friends were already on the Pill and nearly all of them were single. Something doesn't gibe. What about all those stories of free-swinging London in the 1960s? I don't get it.

Take a look at the BBC News piece, if for no other reason than to view the advertisement photo about halfway down, captioned "Would you be more careful if it was you that got pregnant?" I remember actually seeing that advert!!

Here is a link that might be useful: How the pill changed Britain

Along with Melanie Mc Grath's Silvertown her Hopping is well worth reading.
Up until the late '40's early 50's, train/bus loads of Eastenders would up sticks and travel down to Kent where they camped and worked in the hop-fields for a couple of months every summer. For the poorest families it was the only chance of a change-of-scenery and some fresh air for the children.

Frieda, the 'Swinging Sixties' certainly never existed until almost the '70's; believe me I was there.
I can honestly say I never heard anyone discussing whether or not they were on the Pill. Maybe I just moved in less exciting circles than you . . . and I did have quite a few Catholic friends. Doctors would be unlikely to prescribe it unless patients told them they were were just about to marry.
As late as the early '70's, while working on the 'edge' of the East End I remember visiting a work colleague. She was 'showing off' her just-bought house. Upstairs I admired one of the bedrooms and suddenly noticed her confusion as she hastily removed a pair of mens trousers from the back of a chair. She later said she had been embarrassed as she was sharing the place with her boyfriend and was worried about her reputation . . . friends were more upset that she had moved in with a small-time gangster, rather than her sexual morals.
Another friend took up with a bloke who turned out to be a local crook. It took her some time to work-out why he never paid when eating out or why the locals were so obsequious towards him.

The Jewish woman's story is interesting as it was the main settlement area for all those entering England as they escaped the various European 'pogroms'. Before them the Huguenots had settled in Spitalfields and a large Bangladeshi (sp) community made its home around Brick Lane in the '90's.
Once these people started to make a 'go' of things they moved on to 'better' areas of London.

Vee, I guess it did depend upon what circles one moved in, but to hear people (that I knew) talk in 1972, it was easy to get the impression that I had missed the 'excitement' boat that was Swinging London in the 1960s. Most seemed to think it was downhill after the turn of the decade, and London was only a shadow of what it had been during 'the greatest decade of the 20th century'. I always suspected that was hype, but I could also observe from firsthand experience that the London I knew in the early '70s was pretty jaded, or at least some of the young career women and men put on that front.

Most of the women I knew were from 'good' families, well-enough educated (although not in the most prestigious schools), and most paid lip service to the notion that they weren't looking to 'settle down' soon. I did know several who cohabited with men, some with boyfriends and others in platonic arrangements (I did the latter myself). We women lived together in such close quarters that it was hard to keep any secrets from each other, and it didn't appear that taking the Pill was anything shameful because the packets were often left out in the open in bedrooms for others to see. However, I don't recall ever asking anyone or anyone volunteering how they got the Pill. I didn't need that information.

I do remember being annoyed with men who liked to ask women, "Are you on the Pill?", scoping out women as potential sex partners, I suppose. One housemate who was asked that by some bloke within hearing of everyone else in the lounge sneered, "What's it to you?" I think that was the first time I actually heard that much-used phrase.

When word got out that I had been married, I was asked by some stupid guys, "Don't you miss having a man?" I got to practice the sarcasm that my housemates were so good at: "Well, if I do, it wouldn't be for the likes of you!"

Vee, do you remember that advertisement with the pregnant man? I can't recall exactly where or when I saw it.

Frieda, sorry not to have replied before but have been having power-outages due to the gales/storms.
I well remember the advert with the pregnant man. There used to be another Pill related one, though maybe unofficial, that played on the old advert seen on the ice-cream sellers bikes "Stop Me and Buy One" replaced by "Buy Me and Stop One"
I can imagine your '70's path being strewn with wimpy English boys suffering with more than deflated libidos. Did you ever read the The Female Eunuch?

Vee, I heard about those 100mph-plus winds and flooding. Scary! I hope you and all of yours remain well through it.

The contraception-campaign adverts seem to have been effective. I followed a link, though, that told of a current baby 'boomlet' in Britain. According to that article, most people assumed it was because of immigrant women having more babies than native-born women, but the writer says the demographers now think the uptick in births may be due to "Tony Blair and New Labour's commitment to eradicate child poverty." I don't profess to understand all the ins and outs, but as near as I can make out, the Working Family Tax Credit (WTFC) has given couples 'room' to add another child to their family. (I notice that WTFC has the middle initials reversed and I checked to see if I had transposed them but that's the way they are in the article.) In the comments section, responders are skeptical: they still think the immigrants are the more likely cause. What have you heard or read about this?

Of course I read The Female Eunuch; it was a 'bible' of second-wave feminism. I never took it as seriously, though, as some females I knew. I thought it was hilarious, in parts, and cottoned onto Greer being satirical -- pointedly so, but still satirical. I used to say I was a feminist who likes men and I have never thought there was anything contradictory about that. I admit that it took me many years to understand why women -- and the feminists especially -- were so angry with men.

Which reminds me that Janalyn above asked whether the 1950s were pallid in comparison to the 1940s and 1960s. I remember that we touched on this in different thread, and I think we concluded that the 1950s was a very conformist decade but there was a lot going on under the surface. After all, the 1950s laid the groundwork for the 1960s. Right?

Frieda, I've not heard of the Blair Govt's attempt at the 'eradication of child poverty' leading to poorer families deciding to have another child and had always understood it was the newly arrived immigrant population, whether from the 'New EU' or the Third World countries, putting an unexpected strain on maternity services/school etc. I think those relying on State handouts, at least the young single teenage mothers, are little concerned about the number of children they have. When working down in the East End (not the dock area) some years ago I was told if someone wanted a Council House it 'helped' to have a baby as it put you nearer the top of the waiting list.
Personally, the thought of being a single mother, with several small children, living on State benefits and no useful man/partner (other than as an impregnator) would terrify me and would certainly act as an immediate 'natural' contraceptive.
I think the '40's were black rather than pallid. The '50's gradually brightened up . .. plenty of jobs about, more 'stuff' becoming available, then the '60's gave added expectation to those who had had little in the past and especially their children who saw the apparent wealth/life-style in the US and wanted a slice . .. anything from clothes, records, cars, foreign holidays. I think it became a worrying time for the older generation used to following in 'father's footsteps' and more content with their lot.
The Necessary Aptitude by popular 'personality' Pam Ayres paints that period very well. It's not high literature but it gives a good insight into trying to break out of the rural working-class rut and eventually getting into 'entertainment' . . . plus she seems a genuinely nice person.

Here is a link that might be useful: Pam Ayres poem

I have always been a fan and mutter the first line of her apt poem when visiting the dentist!
My dream is to win enough money to get implants!

In the latest TV episode of Call the Midwife beside being genuinely sad as they dealt with the difficult subject of two young handicapped people falling in love .. . the subject of how the Nonnatus House nuns were so nonjudgmental towards the mothers they helped, came up.
It struck me the story more-or-less coincides in time with the true story of Philomena Lee. The shame of an illegitimate birth was not dissimilar but the attitude of the East End nuns and there counterparts in the Mother-and-Baby home that PL was incarcerated in, are totally different. One caring and efficient, the other with the emphasis on sin and being made to pay for it . . . no drugs during childbirth etc.
Then today a news item caught my attention. The film has produced something called the Philomena Effect in Ireland. Many many women have found the courage to come forward hoping to find out what happened to the babies they were forced to give up for adoption, also adults looking for their own 'real' Mothers.
The difficulty is that the law does not allow anyone to search the records for their 'natural' parents, either those held by the Church or the State.
A campaign has started looking at ways to change this law. Up to sixty thousand children/Mothers could be involved.

Here is a link that might be useful: The Philomena Effect

I very much enjoyed the series "Call the Midwife." I have watched up to season 3. It was so refreshing to watch a show that doesn't overlook the hardships that women have faced, and to some degree still face. I live in Canada, and have seen a lot of US/Cdn TV which usually features wealthy and perfect conditions, beautiful movie stars, with little to no reality, and without touching on female perspectives. I saw a mention earlier about the lack of slums in Canada. I can only speak to the history of western Canada, which was mostly rural. In the 1950s, Western Canada enjoyed a high standard of living where there was ample food, although, my father did say that if you spent all your money on frivolous things you could starve. Before that, especially during the Great Depression, my grandfather had a sister who died because the family couldn't afford the medicine for her, and his mother saved for years after to pay the hospital for her daughter's death there. They lived in fear that the bank would take their house, but almost every house was in foreclosure in their area, Vancouver BC. My grandfather had a dairy cow he quite liked, and a garden, so it seems that western Canada was quite rural, even in the cities at that time, possibly with the exception of Chinatown, where the Chinese Canadians there had things quite rough. Today in Canada there seems to be a greater divide between rich and poor especially in the larger cities. Some of the issues in the book and movie still go on today, for example, abuse of women, children, losing a child, (although not as common today) being judged by others, mental illness after pregnancy and the great love we as mothers have for our children. I found it interesting that Jennifer Worth said most families lived near their parents, brothers and sisters, usually moving two streets away from where they grew up at most. Here in Canada we don't seem to have that closeness with family. Also there is a lot of privacy here and I think many mothers can feel isolated or suffer in silence. I don't live near my family because the housing prices and lack of jobs paying over minimum wage makes it very difficult to live there. Worh had another comment on the older people being rehomed to better living conditions, but that many of them died because they missed their friends and family and they didn't have that support. I found it interesting, and I think nowadays here in Canada, people's values are more about money than relationships which is sad too. In that way, the community of East London seemed to be better.

In my opinion, what you are describing about life in modern day Canada seems identical to the fragmentation of American society, in general.

I just re-read this with interest, instead of doing 'chores'! A new series of Call the Midwife is due out on the BBC either this Autumn or Winter.

I think the 'community spirit' of the East End (however much over-egged) has well and truly gone. Large swathes of the old docks have been replaced with yuppy apartments and office blocks and most of the children and grandchildren of the original inhabitants have moved out into Essex or further afield. Of course the larger 'container' ships could no longer get so far up the Thames, the old style 'dockers' lost their jobs and their decedents probably work in IT, PR, HR . . .choose your initials.

One small boy I knew when I worked near the area told me, in a strong Cockney accent "My Dad's a docker and 'e don't care 'bout nuffink" which summed it up quite nicely.

Vee, I have just found this book and look forward to reading it, as I know someone who grew up in the East End in the early 40's. When, exactly were the old docks replaced?

Mary, the site below gives a brief outline of the redevelopment of London Docks, although it doesn't mention the bomb damage from WWII. The 'Docks' area was quite small, strung along the Thames and much of the population of the 'East End' was well-away (though not in miles) from that particular way of life.

Nor is there anything about the recent building of the Olympic Park at Stratford-by-Bow which has done much to tidy up and provide wonderful sports facilities for locals.

Docklands Development

Vee, thanks. It was interesting to read. So are you saying the Docklands area is separate from the old East End?

I've watched the whole series and have read about 1/2 of the book --- haven't gotten back to it as it so closely matches the tv series. Some thoughts on the slum conditions of the East End. First, I knew very little about life in Britain during WWII and how hellish things got during the bombing. Another BBC series - Foyle's War - helped me to understand so much. Also, the slums were totally believable to me. There were similar communities in the US. One I'm very familiar with is The Bowery (NYC) - & instead of working to describe it, here is a Wikipedia exerpt:

"From 1878 to 1955 the Third Avenue El
ran above the Bowery, further darkening its streets, populated largely
by men. "It is filled with employment agencies, cheap clothing and
knickknack stores, cheap moving-picture shows, cheap lodging-houses,
cheap eating-houses, cheap saloons", writers in The Century Magazine
found it in 1919. "Here, too, by the thousands come sailors on shore
leave,—notice the 'studios' of the tattoo artists,—and here most in
evidence are the 'down and outs'".[15] Prohibition eliminated the Bowery's numerous saloons: One Mile House, the "stately old tavern... replaced by a cheap saloon"[16] at the southeast corner of Rivington Street, named for the battered milestone across the way,[17] where the politicians of the East Side had made informal arrangements for the city's governance, [18][19] was renovated for retail space in 1921, "obliterating all vestiges of its former appearance", The New York Times reported. Restaurant supply stores were among the businesses that had come to the Bowery,[20] and many remain to this day.

Pressure for a new name after World War I came to naught[20] and in the 1920s and 1930s, it was an impoverished area. From the 1940s through the 1970s, the Bowery was New York City's "Skid Row," notable for "Bowery Bums" (disaffiliated alcoholics and homeless persons).[21] Among those who wrote about Bowery personalities was New Yorker staff member Joseph Mitchell
(1908–1996). Aside from cheap clothing stores that catered to the
derelict and down-and-out population of men, commercial activity along
the Bowery became specialized in used restaurant supplies and lighting
fixtures.[1]"

Mary, the 'East End' of London includes the docks but the dockers and their families were a tight-knit community, for the most part poorer and rougher than their immediate neighbours. Probably outsiders would be cautious about venturing into dockland territory . . . especially on a Saturday night. Of course this is a generalisation and there must have been some 'overlap'. Much of the writings/memoirs etc about that way of life back then make the place seem so happy and families so loving . . but . . . the poverty, squalor and violence must have been terrible. I think rose tinted spectacles made the true picture less bleak.

Thanks for the info. This is all quite interesting to me. I did watch most of Foyle's War, which is mostly set in the quaint area of Hastings, during WW II. Vee, have you seen this excellent series? (Michael Kitchen is Foyle).