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

’uman life. I asks you - I asks you. Would I do anyfing like that, now? Would I?” He looked up from his position on the floor, and spread out his ash-covered hands in innocent appeal.
     
    “Of course not Fred,” we all chorused. “What happened?”
     
    “Well, they charged me, din’t they, but the magistrate, he lets me off wiv a fine, like, because I ’ad three kids. He was a good bloke, he was, the magistrate, but he says I would go to prison if I does it again, kids or no kids. So I never done it no more.”
     
    His most recent economic adventure had been in toffee apples, and very successful it was, too. Dolly made the toffee mixture in the little kitchen, while Fred purchased crates of cheap apples from Covent Garden. All that was needed was a stick to put the apple on, dip it in the toffee, and in no time at all rows of toffee apples were lined up on the draining board. Fred couldn’t imagine why he hadn’t thought of it before. It was a winner. One-hundred per cent profit margin and assured sales with the large number of children around. He foresaw a rosy future with unlimited sales and profits.
     
    A week or two later, it was clear that something had gone wrong from the silence of the small figure crouched down by the stove, manipulating the flue. No cheerful greeting, no chat, no tuneless whistle - just a heavy silence. He wouldn’t even respond to our questions.
     
    Eventually Chummy left the table and went over to him.
     
    “Come on, Fred. What’s up? Perhaps we can help. And even if we can’t, you will feel better if you tell us.” She touched his shoulder with her huge hand.
     
    Fred turned and looked up. His north-east eye drooped, and a little moisture glinted in the south-west. His voice was husky as he spoke.
     
    “Fevvers. Quail’s fevvers. Tha’s wha’s up. Someone complained fevvers was stuck to me toffee apples. So food safety boffins come an’ examined ’em an’ said fevvers an’ bits of fevvers was stuck to all me toffee apples, an’ I was endangerin’ public ’ealth.”
     
    Apparently the health inspector had asked at once to see where the toffee apples were made, and when shown the kitchen, in which the quails were regularly slaughtered and plucked, had immediately ordered that both occupations be discontinued, on pain of prosecution. So great was the disaster to Fred’s economy that it seemed nothing could be said to comfort him. Chummy was so kind, and assured him that something else would turn up, something better, but he was not reassured, and it was a glum breakfast that morning. He had lost face, and it hurt.
     
    But Fred’s triumph was yet to come.
     

A CHRISTMAS BABY
     
     
     
    Betty Smith’s baby was due in early February. As she dashed happily around all December, preparing Christmas for her husband and six children, her parents and in-laws, grandparents on both sides, brothers, sisters and their children, uncles and aunts, and a very ancient great-grandmother, none of the family dreamed that the baby would be born on Christmas Day.
     
    Dave was a wharf manager in the West India Docks. He was in his thirties, clever, competent and he knew his job inside out. He was greatly valued by the Port of London Authority, and he earned a good wage. In consequence, the family was able to live in one of the large Victorian houses just off Commercial Road. Betty never ceased to thank her lucky stars that she had married Dave just after the war, and was able to leave the tenements, with the cramped living conditions and minimal sanitation. She loved her big, roomy house, and that is why she had always been glad to have the family descend on her for Christmas. The children loved it. With about twenty-five little cousins coming from all over Poplar, Stepney, Bow, and Canning Town, they were going to have a high old time.
     
    Uncle Alf was Father Christmas. The house was at the bottom of an incline, and Uncle Alf had a home-made sleigh on wheels. This was taken to the top of the street, loaded with a sack of presents, and at a given signal, pushed off. The children did not know how it was done. All that they saw was Father Christmas trundling gently towards them, with no apparent means of propulsion, and stopping at their house. They were in an ecstasy of delight.
     
    But this year, things were to be rather different. Instead of Father Christmas on a sleigh, a midwife arrived on a bicycle. Instead of a sack full of presents, a baby came, naked and