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

an’ pushes ’er ’gainst : fender, an’ she ’its ’er ’ead, an’ vat’s ’ow she gi:s a black eye, see? Oei’m tellin’ yer.
     
    A particularly charming idiom in narrated gossip is the continuous use of ‘I said’, ‘she/he said’ - but used in the present tense. (In all the following I is pronounced oie.):
    I says to ’er, I says, “look ’ere” I says, “I’ve just abou: ‘ad it up to ’ere” I says “an’ you be:er watch it” I says “or else”. an’ she says, she says “wha:” she says, “you fre:enin’ me?” she says, an’ I says “I am va: you ge: narky wiv me”, I says, “an’ I’ll give yer a proper mahfoooo (mouthful) . I’m tellin’ yer, nah jes watch i:, ’cos I’m tellin’ yer.”
     
    This last phrase I’m tellin’ yer is intensely Cockney, and is always spoken with determination, and sometimes anger. It is also a guarantee of veracity: oei teoozhya vis ’ere nag’s a winner, oei’m a-tellin’ yer (I tell you, this horse is a winner, I’m telling you.); oei teoozhya, ’e’s va: mean ’e wouldn: give the pickins ah: ‘is shnah: (I tell you, he’s that mean, he wouldn’t give you the pickings out of his snout [nose]).
     
    “Don’t talk to me about … ” or “you can’t tell me nothing about … ” are both used as an opening gambit to attract attention. They both imply unrivalled personal experience and specialist knowledge of a subject already under discussion:
    Dandruff! You can’t tell me nuffink abah: dandruff, you can’t. Cor, we all go: i:. I goddi:, me mum’s goddi:, me dad’s goddi:, me free sisters an’ me nan’s goddi:. An’ know what? Bleedin’ dawg’s goddi:. Cor! Dandruff all over : bleedin’ place; on : table, on : dresser, on : mantlepiece, all over : floor. Everywhere. Me mum she shweeps up bucki:s of i: every day. Gor blimey, don: talk :a me ’bah: dandruff, ma:e.
     
    Subordinate clauses take on a life of their own; overheard in All Saints between two church workers, one of whom had been asked to join the roster of flower-arrangers:
    “’oo asked yer to be a flarh-loeidy (flower-lady) ven?” “Ve loeidy wiv ve long teef.” “Oh yers. Ve loeidy wiv ve long teef an’ ve boss-oiyes (boss-eyes) .” “Nah, nah, no: ‘er. Ve loeidy wha: asked me :o be a flarh-loeidy’s teef are more longerer’n ’erens.
    The foregoing is just a taste of the rich vernacular that goes to make up the Cockney dialect. A comprehensive study would be a full-time job for any writer, but it would be rewarding.
     

Slang
     
    Slang, rhyming slang and backslang were so much a part of Cockney speech in the 1950s that many children starting school at the age of five had to learn a whole new vocabulary.
    Backslang has largely disappeared from the vernacular. It used to be the language of the Costers, and was used between themselves for trading and bargaining, e.g yennep (penny). The street coster lingered almost to the end of the twentieth century, but has just about disappeared now.
    The slang I heard in the 1950s was rich, varied, colourful, obscene, racy, and widely used. It has been said that rhyming Cockney slang was originally developed to outwit authority and nosy parkers. If this was the case, it was entirely successful, because no one but the initiated could follow it. Whatever the origins of this closed language, the humour of it is too good to be missed.
    The following is taken from Jack Jones’s Rhyming Cockney Slang , published by Abson Books in 1971:
     
    This evocative and often elusive language was widely used until the 1970s, but with the closure of the docks and the disintegration of family life, Cockney speech is changing, and this fascinating heritage of rhyming slang is falling into disuse. It was once a vital, living, idiomatic form of speech, but I predict that during the first quarter of the twenty-first century it will become a mere relic, found only in dictionaries to be studied and reproduced in soap operas for the amusement of the masses.
     
    The following books can be recommended:
     
    The Muvver Tongue , by Robert Balthrop and Jim Woolveridge,
The Journeyman Press, 1980
The Cockney , by Julian Franklyn, Andre Deutsch, 1953
Dictionary of Rhyming Slang , by Julian Franklyn, Routledge, 1975
     
    An unrivalled record of Cockney speech is to be found in
Mayhew’s London and the other following books can be
recommended:
     
     
    Balthrop, Robert and Jim Woolveridge, The Muvver Tongue (The
Journeyman