Farewell To The East End

their old Cockney dialect with its distinctive accent, its idiosyncratic grammar, its delicious word order, its double and triple negatives, its back slang and rhyming slang. Sadly the old Cockney lingo virtually disappeared.
    In the 1960s vast areas of London were torn down, and with them went the Canada Buildings. The heart went out of old Poplar.
    I wandered around the Buildings after they had been evacuated. Where little girls had played hop-scotch and skipped, where boys had played football or marbles, where women in curlers and head scarves had gossiped and men exchanged racing tips, where teeming human life had been lived in all its rich fecundity was now a ghost town. Hollow sounds echoed up the walls of the high buildings, a dustbin lid rolled across the cobbles, a broken door swung against a wall. In the court, where costers had once trundled their barrows, stood rows of municipal rubbish bins. Where once there had been washing lines festooned with clean washing, broken lines now trailed in the dirt. Where the coalman with his horse and cart had sauntered in stood a notice – NO ENTRY. Stairways up which women had heaved everything, including a baby in its pram, were barricaded with the notice DANGER. Dark corners, where giggling and kissing had once been heard, were now filthy, piled high with detritus blowing in from the yard. Windows, where net curtains had fluttered, were boarded up. Doors that had always been open were now permanently closed. No movement, no life, no humanity. I left the Buildings and never went back.

IT IS FINISHED

    The exodus of the traditional Cockney people affected the Sisters’ practice, especially when the docklands became ‘smart’. Newcomers did not know, nor particularly want to know, about the nuns. The National Health Service and the fashion of going into hospital to have a baby reduced their midwifery practice considerably. The advent of the Pill in 1963 brought it to an end altogether. Women, for the first time in history, had control over their own fertility, and the birth rate plummeted. Throughout the 1950s the Sisters had delivered around 100 babies per month. In the year 1964 that number had dropped to four or five.
    The Sisters, who had done so much to help the very poor in the slums of Poplar, were no longer needed.
    They had come to Poplar in 1879, when there was virtually no medical or nursing care, and their dedication and self-sacrifice had saved the lives of thousands of poor women. They were known and loved by everyone living in the area, but in the brave new world of modern technology, the nuns suddenly seemed absurdly old-fashioned. The history of these heroic women was forgotten.
    This may seem a sad outcome. But the Sisters were first and foremost a religious order living under monastic vows in the service of God, and they did not look at it that way. A century earlier they had been called to nurse the sick and deliver the babies of those who could not afford medical attention. This vocation they had faithfully carried out for nearly 100 years. If the poor no longer needed them, they had fulfilled their mission and they were well pleased. ‘It is finished,’ were Christ’s last words from the cross. A life’s work fulfilled and finished is a triumph.
    The nuns closed their nursing and midwifery practice and turned to other work – drug abuse, shelter for the homeless, working with the deaf, helping Asian women to integrate into British life, and in the 1980s they started working with AIDS patients. They continue to do these and other tasks into the new millennium.
    In 1978 Nonnatus House was closed after ninety-nine years of service to the people of Poplar. The Sisters removed to the Mother House, to await God’s calling for work – they knew not what or where. They left quietly and with no fuss. Perhaps only the local clergy and a handful of older people were aware that they had gone.
    And here my tale ends, with the closure of Nonnatus House.

    THE END

GLOSSARY

    This glossary by Terri Coates MSc, RN, RM, ADM, Dip Ed.

    Afterbirth . Also known as the placenta (see below). It is called the afterbirth because it is expelled from the womb after the baby has been born.
    Amniotic fluid . The water that surrounds a baby in the womb.
    Antenatal . The term used to describe the whole of pregnancy from conception to the onset of labour.
    Anterior presentation . The back of the baby’s head in labour will normally be in the front or anterior part of