Call the Midwife: A True Story of the East End in the 1950S

furniture, pots, saucepans, the plates and mugs, clothes, linen. Last to go was the bed in which they all slept. She constructed a platform out of orange boxes to raise them off the damp floor, and on this the family slept. Finally the blankets had to go in to be pawned, and mother and children clung to each other for warmth at night.
     
    She asked the Board of Guardians for outdoor relief, but the chairman said she was obviously lazy and workshy, and when she told them of the accident in the factory, and showed them her right arm, she was told not to be impertinent, or it would count against her. The gentlemen debated amongst themselves, and offered to take two of her children off her hands. She refused, and returned to the basement with six hungry mouths to feed.
     
    With no light, no heat, constant damp and mildew, and virtually no food, the children became sickly. The family struggled on for six months like this, and still the mother could not work. She sold her hair; she sold her teeth, but it was never enough. The baby became lethargic and ceased to thrive. She called it “wasting fever”.
     
    When the baby died no money could be spared for burial, so she sealed him in an orange box weighed down with stones, and slipped him into the river.
     
    That furtive journey in the middle of the night with her dead baby was the moment when she finally accepted defeat, and knew that the inevitable had come. She and the children would have to go to the workhouse.
     

THE WORKHOUSE
     
     
     
    The Poor Law Act of 1834 started the workhouse system. The Act was repealed in 1929, but the system lingered on for several decades because there was nowhere else for the inmates to go, and long-term residents had lost the capacity to make any decisions or look after themselves in the outside world.
     
    It was intended as a humane and charitable Act, because hitherto the poor or destitute could be hounded from place to place, never finding shelter, and could lawfully be beaten to death by their pursuers. To the chronically poor of the 1830s the workhouse system must have seemed like heaven: a shelter each night; a bed or communal bed to sleep in; clothing; food - not lavish, but enough, and, in return, work to pay for your keep. The system must have seemed like an act of pure Christian goodness and charity. But, like so many good intentions, it quickly turned sour.
     
    Mrs Jenkins and her children left the basement with three weeks’ rent owing. The landlord had threatened to put the whip to her back if she did not pay the following day, so they had left during the night. The family had nothing to take with them; neither she nor the children wore any shoes, their clothes were just rags thrown over their thin bodies. Dirty, hungry, and shivering they stood in the unlit street, ringing the great bell outside the workhouse.
     
    The children, were not particularly unhappy as yet; in fact, it seemed something of an adventure to them, creeping out in the dead of night and making their way along dark roads. Only their mother was crying, because only she knew the dreadful truth: that the family would be separated once they entered the workhouse gates. She could not bring herself to tell the children, and hesitated before ringing that fateful bell. But her youngest child, a boy of nearly three, started coughing, so she pulled the handle resolutely.
     
    The sound echoed through the stone building, and the door was opened by a thin, grey man who demanded, “What do you want?”
     
    “Shelter, and food for the little ones.”
     
    “You’ll have to come to the Reception Room. You can sleep there till morning, unless, of course, you’re ‘casuals’ and go to the Casual Centre. There’s no food until morning.”
     
    “No, we are not casuals,” she said wearily.
     
    They were the only people in the reception room that night. The sleeping platform, a raised wooden construction, was covered with fresh straw and looked inviting. They cuddled up together in the sweet-smelling hay, and the children fell asleep at once. Only the mother lay awake, her arms around her children, until dawn. Her heart was breaking. She knew it would be the last time she would be allowed to sleep with her children.
     
    Morning sounds, keys clanking, and doors opening, were heard long before anyone unlocked the door of the reception room. Finally, the Mistress entered. She was a resolute looking woman, not unkind, but one who had seen too many paupers