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

evening visit. Are you all right, Mrs Jenkins?”
     
    She looked up at me, but didn’t say a word. She sucked her lips, and gazed at me steadily as I helped her to her feet and led her to the armchair.
     
    On the bare table was a cooked lunch, left for her by the Meals on Wheels ladies. It was untouched, and quite cold.
     
    I moved the plate, and said, “Didn’t you fancy your lunch, then?”
     
    She grabbed my wrist with unexpected strength and pushed my arm away. “For Rosie,” she said in a hoarse whisper.
     
    I checked her physical condition, and asked a few questions, none of which she replied to. She just gazed at me unblinkingly, and continued sucking her lips.
     
    On another occasion when I called, she was chuckling to herself as she played with a piece of elastic. She was stretching and releasing it and twisting it round her fingers. She said to me, as I entered, “My Rosie brought me a bit of elastic las’ night. Look ’ow it stretches. It’s good an’ strong. She’s a clever girl, my Rose. She can always get hold of a bi’ of elastic for you, if you wants it.”
     
    I was beginning to get irritated with Rosie. She wasn’t much help to her old mother. A bit of elastic, indeed! Was that the best she could do?
     
    But then I saw the tenderness and happiness on the old face, and the warmth and love in her voice as she fiddled with the elastic. “My Rosie give it me, she did. She go’ it fer me, she did. She’s a dear girl, my Rose.”
     
    My heart softened. Perhaps Rosie was as simple as her mother, her mind also unhinged by her early life in the workhouse. I wondered how long she had spent there, and what had happened to her brothers and sisters.
     
     
    Life in the workhouse was terrible. All inmates were locked into their quarters, which consisted of a day room, a sleeping room and an airing yard. They were confined to the dormitory from 8 p.m. to 6 a.m., and there was a drain or channel running down the centre, into which they relieved themselves at night. The day room was their dining room, where they sat at long benches to eat. All windows were above eye level so that no one could see out of them, and the window sills sloped downwards, so that no one could climb up and sit on them. The airing yard was an enclosed gravel square, from which no door or gate issued. It was, effectively, a prison.
     
    Misery and monotony blurred days into weeks, and weeks into months. The women worked all day, mostly rough work: in the laundry, washing for the entire workhouse; scrubbing - the Master was fanatical about scrubbing; cooking poor quality food for all the inmates; heavy sewing, such as sacks, sails, matting; and, strangest of all, picking oakum. This was old rope, usually tarred, which had to be untwisted and unpicked into strands, which were then used for caulking the seams of wooden ships. This sounds easy; but it was not. The rope, especially if caked in oil or tar or salt, could be as hard as steel, and unpicking it tore the hands and left the fingers raw and bleeding.
     
    Yet the working hours were less terrible than the hours of rest. Mrs Jenkins found herself among about one hundred other women of all ages, including the sick and infirm. Many of them appeared to be mad or demented. Tired from their physical work, there was nowhere to sit down, except on benches in the middle of the day room or the airing yard. In order to rest themselves, the women sat back to back on a bench, each supporting the other. There was nothing to do, nothing to look at or listen to, no books, nothing with which to exercise the mind. Many of the women just walked up and down, or round and round in circles. Most of them talked to themselves, or rocked backwards and forwards continuously. Some moaned aloud, or howled into the night air.
     
    “I will ge’ like tha’ meself,” thought Mrs Jenkins.
     
    They were ushered into the airing yard twice a day for half an hour of exercise. From the yard, Mrs Jenkins could hear the sounds of children’s voices, but the walls were fifteen feet high, and she could not see over them. She tried calling the names of her children, but was ordered to stop, or she wouldn’t be allowed out into the yard again. So she just stood by the wall where she thought the sounds came from, whispering their names, and straining her ears to catch the sound of a voice she would know to be her child’s own.
     
    “I didn’ know wha’ I done wrong to be in there. I jus’ cried