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

not no ’ow. He’ll kill ’er, he will, or break ’er legs or somefink. I’m gonna put a stop to this, I am. It’s barbaric, I tells yer.”
     
    Sister had to restrain him.
     
    “It’s all perfectly natural. That’s the way they do it, Fred.” Fred was not easily pacified. Sister and the farmer had to hold him back until it was all over.
     
     
    The Nuns were assembled in the Chapel, kneeling in private prayer. The bell for Vespers sounded just as Sister Julienne entered Nonnatus House. Flushed and excited, she raced along the corridor, leaving behind footsteps of a sticky and highly pungent substance on the tiled floor. In haste, she composed herself, took her place at the lectern, and read:
    “Sisters, be sober, be vigilant, for your adversary
the Devil roareth around like a raging lion, seeking
whom he may devour.”
     
     
     
    One or two of the Sisters looked up from their prayers and glanced sideways at her. A few sniffed suspiciously.
     
    She continued:
    “Thine adversary roareth in the midst of thy congregation.
Thine enemy hath defiled thy holy place.”
     
     
     
    The sniffs got louder, and the Sisters glanced at each other.
     
    “But as for me, I walk with the godly.”
     
     
    The sacristan filled the censer with an unusually large quantity of incense and swung it vigorously.
     
    “In my prosperity I said I shall never be cast down.”
     
     
    Smoke filled the air.
     
    “But thou, oh Lord, hath seen my pride and sent my misfortune to humble me.”
     
     
    There was unrest amongst the Sisters. Those kneeling closest to Sister Julienne shuffled a little distance from her. It cannot be easy to shuffle sideways whilst on your knees and wearing monastic habit, but in extremis it can be managed.
     
    “But thou dost turn thy face from me,
and I was troubled, and I gat me to my
Lord, right humbly.”
     
     
    The incense swung furiously, smoke billowing out.
     
    “And I will say unto my Lord, I am
unclean. I am unfit to dwell in Thy Holy Place.”
     
     
    Coughing broke out.
     
    “And I cried aloud What profit is there in me?
I am undone. I shall go down into the Pit.
Oh Lord, hear my prayer. Let my cry
come unto Thee.”
     
     
    Eventually, and not before time, Vespers concluded. The Sisters, red-eyed, choking and spluttering, filed out of the chapel.
     
    It took a long time for Sister Julienne to live down the opprobrium of having filled the chapel with the odour of pigshit, and I am sure that God forgave her long before her Sisters did.
     

OF MIXED DESCENT I
     
     
     
    In the 1950s the African and West Indian population in London was very small. The ports of London, like those of any nation, had always been a melting pot for immigrants. Different nationalities, languages, and cultures were flung together and intermingled, usually bound to each other by poverty. The East End was no exception, and over the centuries just about every race had been absorbed and propagated. Tolerant warm-heartedness has always been a hallmark of the Cockney way of life, and strangers, though they may have been regarded with distrust and suspicion at first, were not resisted for long.
     
    Most of the immigrants were young, single men. Men have always been mobile, but not so women. In those days it would have been virtually impossible for a young, poor woman to go jaunting around the world by herself. Girls had to stay at home. However bad the home, however great the hardships and poverty, however much their spirits longed for freedom, they were trapped. This indeed is still the fate of the vast majority of the women of the world today.
     
    Men have always been luckier, and a footloose young man in a foreign place, once his stomach is full, is after one thing - girls. The East End families were very protective of their daughters and, until recently, pregnancy out of wedlock was the ultimate disgrace and a catastrophe from which the poor girl never recovered. However, it did occur quite frequently. If the girl was lucky, her mother stood by her and brought up the baby. Occasionally the father of the child was forced to marry her, but this was a mixed blessing, as many a girl found to her cost. Whatever the social hardship for the girl, it did mean a continuous infusion of new blood - or new genes, as we would say today - into the community. This may, in fact, account for the distinctive energy, vitality, and boundless good humour of the Cockney.
     
    Whilst daughters were protected,