Farewell To The East End

organ. If too much fluid is pumped too fast into the uterus it could cause shock, a sudden drop in blood pressure, heart failure and even death.
    At a talk I gave to the East London History Society in 2006, a woman in the audience told us that, in the 1930s, in the small Essex village where she was born, there was a bona fide midwife who was also an abortionist. She was a good practitioner, experienced and respected. A mother in the village came to her and said that her fourteen-year-old daughter was pregnant and begged her to carry out an abortion. The woman did not want to, but the mother pleaded so earnestly that eventually she agreed. The flushing-out method was used, and the girl died on the table. Mother and abortionist were sent to prison.
    As nurses and midwives we often had to clear up the mess after a bungled abortion, especially when we worked on gynaecological wards. The outcome for these women was frequently chronic ill health. Conditions such as anaemia, scar tissue with adhesions, prolapse with chronic pain, incontinence, cystitis or nephritis could be expected, along with many others. Thrombosis of the leg was not uncommon. This could lead to a clot travelling in the bloodstream and lodging in the lungs. Anticoagulants were not available until the 1950s.
    I have seen much mutilation and two deaths. The first was a girl of nineteen whose internal mucosa and cervix had been burned by a carbolic acid or some other caustic solution used during a flushing-out abortion. There was little we could do, and she lingered for a while, but she was in constant agony and died after a few days.
    I recall another tragic woman, the mother of five children, who developed a massive sac of pus in the peritoneum after a surgical abortion. We tried to drain it without success, and for many weeks pus oozed from her abdomen. The five children coming into hospital just before their mother died can never be forgotten.
    The Criminal Abortion Act 1803 was repealed in 1967. Knowing that I had been a midwife I was sometimes asked if I approved of it or not. My reply was that I did not regard it as a moral issue, but as a medical issue. A minority of women will always want an abortion. Therefore it must be done properly. 13

STRANGER THAN FICTION

    Life, my dear Watson, is infinitely stranger than fiction; stranger than anything which the mind of man could invent. We could not conceive the things that are merely commonplace to existence. If we could hover over this great city, remove the roofs, and peep in at the things going on, it would make all fiction, with its conventionalities and foreseen conclusions flat, stale, and unprofitable.
    The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

    A couple of months passed, and Hilda was just about able to cope with her household again, but the constant clamour of young children, incessant washing, endless meals to prepare and above all the squalid surroundings were dragging her down. She became more and more depressed, irritable with the children and quiet with Bill. He hadn’t seen her like this before. They had always had fun together. Now she was a woman who hardly spoke. Sometimes he wondered what he had done wrong. He’d always been a good husband and a good father – or he’d tried to be – he’d always brought his money home, not like some of the blokes who drank all their money, and then beat their wives for not cooking a hot dinner for them.
    Hilda roused herself and went to the Council. She was going to have it out with them. But she could have saved herself the effort. No four-bedroom houses or flats were available. They were scheduled for building next year, and the Hardings would be informed. Yes, they were top of the list, and they would be the first to be offered a place. In the meantime …
    In the meantime, Hilda came close to throwing herself under a bus. But suicide is not so easy, and she balked at the actual fact of doing it. Life dragged on.
    Another couple of weeks passed, and something strange was happening in Hilda’s body. At first she thought it was wind, and she took a dose of Epsom Salts. After a good clear-out, it seemed to settle down, and she thought no more of it. But a week later it came back, and then again with added emphasis. She put her hands on her tummy, and at that instant felt an unmistakable kick. With horror and disbelief the truth dawned upon her: the bleeding she had experienced must have come from a rupture to an artery, and