Call The Midwife: A True Story Of The East End In The 1950S

by Jennifer Worth

  However, the courageous, hard-working, dedicated women eventually won. In 1902 the Midwives Act was passed, and in 1903 the Central Midwives Board issued their first certificate to a trained midwife. Fifty years later I was proud to be a successor of these wonderful women, and to be able to offer my trained skills to the long-suffering, cheerful, resilient women of the London Docklands.

  At the church hall, the antenatal clinic had been set up again. It was mid-winter, and the coke-stove was burning fiercely. It was well guarded on all four sides for the protection of the numerous little children running around. Lil had been in my mind on and off during the past fortnight - a curious mixture of revulsion and admiration. Whilst I admired the way she coped, I hoped I would not have to meet her again, at least not in the intimate patient/midwife relationship.

  The pile of notes on the desk told me it would be a busy afternoon - no time to brood about Lil and her syphilis. There were seven piles of notes, with about ten folders in each pile. Another seven o’clock finish, if we were lucky.

  I glanced at the top of the first pile, and saw the name Brenda, a woman of forty-six with rickets. She would be admitted to hospital for a Caesarean, and she was booked with the London Hospital in Whitechapel, but we were looking after her antenatally. At that moment she hobbled in, punctual to the minute for her two o’clock appointment. As I was at the desk, and the other staff were not available, I took her for examination and check-up.

  My heart went out to little Brenda. Rickets showed itself in malformation of the bones. For centuries it was not known what caused the condition. It was thought, perhaps, to be inherited. The child was thought to be “puny” or “sickly” or even just lazy, as rachitic children always stand and walk very late. The bones are shortened and thickened at the ends, and bend under pressure. The spine is deformed, as many vertebrae are crushed. The sternum is bent, and therefore the ribcage is barrelled and frequently twisted in shape. The head is large and square shaped, with a jutting, flattened lower jaw. Frequently, the teeth drop out. As if these deformities were not enough, rachitic children always had a lower immunity to infection, and bronchitis, pneumonia and gastroenteritis constantly occurred.

  The condition was common throughout Northern Europe, especially in cities, and no one knew what caused it, until in the 1930s it was found to be due to the simplest of causes: a lack of Vitamin D in the diet causing deficiency of calcium in the bone.

  Such a simple reason for so much suffering! Vitamin D is found abundantly in milk, meat, eggs and especially in meat fat and fish oils. You would think most children would have had an adequate diet of these items, wouldn’t you? But no, not poor children from deprived backgrounds. Vitamin D can also be made spontaneously in the body by the effect of ultra-violet rays on the skin. You might think there should be enough sun in Northern Europe to balance things. But no, the sun was not for poor children in industrial cities where the density of buildings virtually blocked out the natural light, and where children had to work long hours in factories and workshops or workhouses.

  So these children grew up crippled. All the bones of their bodies were deformed, and the long bones of the legs buckled and bent under the weight of the upper body. During adolescence, when growing ceased, the bones ossified into that position.

  Even today, in the twenty-first century, you can still see a few very old people hobbling around who are very short, with legs that bow outwards. These are the brave survivors who have spent a lifetime struggling to overcome the effects of the poverty and deprivation of childhood nearly a century ago.

  Brenda beamed at me. Her strange face, with an oddly shaped lower jaw, was alight with eager anticipation. She knew she would have to have a Caesarean section, but that did not bother her. She was going to have a baby, and this time it would live. That was all that mattered to her, and she was intensely grateful to the Sisters, the hospital, the doctors - everyone - but above all to the National Health Service, and the wonderful people who had arranged that everything should be free, that she wouldn’t have to pay.

  Brenda’s obstetric history was tragic. She had married young, and in the 1930s had had four pregnancies. Every baby had died. The tragedy for a woman with rickets is that, along with all the other bones, the pelvis is also deformed, and a flat, or rachitic pelvis develops. The baby therefore cannot be delivered, or at any rate can only be delivered with great difficulty. Brenda had had four long, obstructed labours, and each time the baby had died. She was lucky not to have died herself, as countless numbers of women did in earlier decades all over Europe.

  The incidence of rickets had always been slightly higher among little girls than among boys. The reason for this was probably social, and not physiological. Poor mothers of large families tended often (and still do!) to favour the sons, so the boys got more food. Boys have always been more mobile, and go outside to play more. In Poplar, it was always the boys who were down at the water’s edge, or in the wharfs or the bomb sites. So they were getting sunlight on their bodies, whilst their sisters were kept at home. Also, many holiday projects were organised by socially aware philanthropists. Summer camps, which took poor boys to the country for a month under canvas, were quite common, and these camps were lifesavers for thousands of boys. But I have yet to hear of summer camps for girls one hundred years ago. Perhaps it was not considered suitable to take girls away from home and put them under canvas. Or perhaps the needs of girls were simply overlooked. Anyway, one way or another, they missed out. The life-giving sun was withheld from them each summer, and rickety little girls grew up to become deformed women who could conceive and carry a child for nine months, but could not deliver the baby.

  It will never be known how many women died of exhaustion in the agony of obstructed labour: the poor were expendable, and their numbers not counted. Where was it I had read, in some ancient manual for the Instruction of Women attending the Lying-in: “If a woman is in labour for more than ten or twelve days, you should seek a doctor’s aid”? Ten or twelve days of obstructed labour, in the hands of an untrained woman! Dear heaven - was there no mercy, no understanding? I had to shut such agonising thoughts out of my mind, and quietly thank God that obstetric practice had moved on. Yet even in my training days, the most up-to-date textbooks taught that a woman with a rachitic pelvis should have a ‘trial labour of eight to twelve hours to test the endurance of both mother and foetus’.

  Brenda had been subjected to four such trial labours in the 1930s. Why on earth, after the first disaster, it had not been agreed that she should have a Caesarean section for the delivery of subsequent babies, I could not imagine. Possibly she could not afford to pay for it, because, before 1948, all medical treatment had to be paid for.

  Brenda’s husband had been killed on active service in the war in 1940, so she had not had any more pregnancies. However, at the age of forty-three she had married again, and now she was pregnant once more. Her joy and excitement at the prospect of a living baby seemed to fill the antenatal clinic, and throw everything else into shadow. She called out: “Allo’, sis, ah’s yerself?” to everyone in sight, and to queries about her health, she responded, “I’m wonderful. Never bin better. On top ’o the world all the time.”

  I followed her over to the couch, and it stabbed my heart to see her little bow legs struggling to carry her. With each step the right leg in particular bent outwards, and her left hip swung precariously in the opposite direction. I had to arrange two stools and a chair before she could climb on to the couch, but she managed it, with awkward movements. It was painful to see. She was panting, and beaming in triumph when she got up. It seemed that every difficulty in life was a challenge to her, and every one successfully overcome was an occasion for rejoicing. She was not, by any stretch of the imagination, a good-looking woman, but I was not at all surprised that she had found a second husband who, I had no doubt, loved her.

  Brenda was only six months pregnant, but her abdomen looked abnormally large, due to her tiny stature, and also to
the inward curving of the spine, which pushed the uterus forward and upwards. She could feel movements, and I could hear the foetal heartbeat. Her pulse and blood pressure were normal, but her breathing was laboured. I remarked on it.

  “Don’t mind me. That’s nothing much,” she said cheerfully. I did not feel confident about examining Brenda’s misshapen body, so I asked Sister Bernadette to confirm, which she did. Brenda was as healthy as could be expected, and was carrying a healthy foetus.

  We saw her every week for the next six weeks, and she struggled on with increasing difficulty, using two sticks to help her get about. Her happiness never left her and she never complained. At thirty-seven weeks she was admitted to The London Hospital for bed rest, and a Caesarean section was successfully carried out at thirty-nine weeks.

  A fine healthy daughter was delivered, whom she called Grace Miracle.

  ECLAMPSIA

  Throughout history, and until after the end of the Second World War in 1945, most babies were born at home. Then the drive for hospital delivery started, and it was so successful that by 1975 only one per cent of babies were born at home. The district midwife became very nearly an extinct species.

  The fashion, or trend, is reversing slightly today, and the home birth rate is around two per cent. Perhaps this is because hospital delivery presents new and totally unexpected risks for mother and baby, and people are getting wise to this fact.

  Sally came to us because she believed her mother more than she believed the doctor, who had advised hospital for her first baby.

  Her mother had said, “Nark ’im. You go to the Nonnatuns, luvvy. They’ll see yer right.”

  Gran had stepped in, too, with a wealth of ancient folklore, and hair-raising stories about the lying-in infirmaries, which used to be feared more than death itself by women.

  In vain the doctor tried to convince Sally that modern hospitals were not like the old infirmaries, but he was no match for Mum and Gran, so he retired from the ring, and Sally booked with the Midwives of St Raymund Nonnatus.

  We saw patients antenatally once a month for the first six months, then fortnightly for six weeks, followed by weekly check-ups for the last six weeks of pregnancy. All went well with Sally for the first seven months. She was a pretty little twenty-year-old, and she and her husband occupied two rooms in her mother’s house. She was a telephonist, and her mum, who attended every antenatal visit, was proud of her.

  I sat down with her, and went through her notes. Her blood pressure had been quite normal for the first six months. On the previous visit it had been slightly raised. I was concerned to find the BP even higher when I took it. I asked her to go to the scales, and found that she had gained five pounds weight in a fortnight. Warning bells were beginning to ring in my head.

  I told Sally that I would like to examine her, and followed her over to the couch. By so doing, I was able to see that her ankles were swollen. A diagnosis was taking shape in my mind. She lay on the couch and I was able to feel, quite certainly, pitting oedema up to the knees - not very pronounced, but palpable to experienced fingers. Water retention - that would account for the weight gain. I examined the rest of her body for oedema, but could find none.

  “Are you still getting any sickness?” I asked.

  “No.”

  “Any stomach pains?”

  “No.”

  “Any headaches?”

  “Well, yes, now that you mention it, I have. But I puts it down to working on the phones.”

  “When do you give up work?”

  “I gave up las’ week.”

  “And are you still getting headaches?”

  “Well, yes, I am that, but Mum says not to worry. It’s normal.”

  I glanced sideways at the mother, Enid, who was beaming and nodding wisely. Thank God the girl had come to antenatal clinic. Mum is not always right!

  “Stay there, would you, Sally? I want to test your urine. Have you brought a specimen?”

  She had, and Enid produced it after rummaging around in her voluminous handbag.

  I went over to the Bunsen burner, which was on the marble slab, and lit it. The urine was quite clear and looked normal as I poured a little into the test tube. I held the upper half of the glass vial over the flame. As it heated the urine turned white, whilst the urine in the lower half of the tube, which was unheated, remained clear.

  Albumen urea. A diagnosis of pre-eclampsia. I stood quite still for a moment, thinking.

  It is strange how you forget things, even momentous things in life. I had forgotten Margaret, but as I stood by the sink looking at that test tube, Margaret and the whole of my first and only horrifying experience of eclampsia flooded into my mind.

  Margaret was twenty, and must have been very beautiful, though I never saw her beauty. I saw dozens of photographs of her though, which her adoring and heartbroken husband, David, showed me. All photographs were black and white in those days. They had a particular charm, created by the effects of light and shadow. In some of the photos, Margaret’s intelligence and sensitivity claimed your attention, in others her laughing, puckish humour made you want to share the joke. In others, her huge, clear eyes looked fearlessly into the future, and in all of the snaps, her soft brown hair hung curling over her shoulders. One memorable photo was of a laughing young girl standing in a swimsuit beside the sea in Devon, with the spray from the waves leaping up the cliff face, and the wind blowing through her hair. The balance of her body on her long, slim legs and the angle of the shadows from the setting sun made an exquisite photo, by any standards. She looked like the sort of girl I would want to know - but I never did, except through David. She was a musician, a violinist, but I never heard her play.

  All these photos David showed me during the two days of watching. When I first met him I’d assumed he must be her father. But no, he was her husband and lover, and worshipped the very ground beneath her feet. He was a scientist, and looked a very reserved, controlled, unapproachable sort of man, perhaps even cold and unemotional. But still waters run deep, and over those two long days the intensity of his passion and pain nearly split the hospital apart. Sometimes he was talking to her, sometimes to himself, occasionally to the staff. Sometimes he muttered prayers, or a few words forced out through sobbing tears. From these fragments, and the case history, I pieced together their story. There was nothing of the cold remote scientist about David.

  They had met at a music club, at which Margaret was performing. He couldn’t take his eyes off her. All through the interval, and the social afterwards, he followed her every movement with his eyes. He thought he might speak to her, but stammered and couldn’t get the words out. He couldn’t understand why; he was an articulate man. He did not know what was happening to him. She continued laughing and talking with other people while he retreated to a corner, scarcely able to breathe for the beating of his heart.

  In the following days and weeks, he couldn’t get her out of his head. Still he didn’t understand. He thought it was the music that had affected him so deeply. He felt restless and ill at ease and his comfortable bachelor habits afforded him no comfort. Then he bumped into her in a Lyons Corner House, and amazingly she remembered him, though he couldn’t think why. They had lunch together, and this time, far from being tongue-tied, he couldn’t stop talking. In fact they talked for hours. They had a thousand things to say to each other, and he had never felt so relaxed and happy with anyone in all his forty-nine years of fairly solitary life. He thought, She can’t possibly be interested in a dried-up old fogey like me, smelling of formaldehyde and surgical spirits. But she was. Perhaps she saw the integrity, the spiritual strength and the depths of untapped emotion in that quiet man. She was his first and only love, and he lavished on her all the passion of youth, with the tenderness and consideration of maturity.

  Afterwards he said to me, “I am just thankful that I knew her at all. If we had not met, or if we had met and just passed each other by, all the great literature of the world, all the poets, a
ll the great love stories would have been meaningless to me. You cannot understand what you have not experienced.”

  They had been married for six months, and she was six months pregnant, when she was admitted to the antenatal ward of the City of London Maternity Hospital where I was working. According to her antenatal records, Margaret had been in perfect health throughout the pregnancy. She had been seen at the clinic two days earlier, and everything had been quite normal - weight, pulse, blood pressure, urine sample, no sickness - nothing that would indicate what was to come.

  On the day of admission she had awoken early, and was sick, which was unusual as morning sickness had passed about eight weeks earlier. She returned to the bedroom, saying there were spots in front of her eyes. David was concerned, but she said she would lie down again. It was a bit of a headache, and would go if she had another sleep. So off he went to work, saying he would telephone at eleven o’clock, to see how she felt. The telephone rang and rang. He imagined he could hear it echoing through the empty house. She might be out, of course, having woken up refreshed, but a premonition told him to go home.

  He found her unconscious on the bedroom floor, with blood smeared all around her mouth, across her cheek, and in her hair. His first thought was that there had been a burglary, during which she had been attacked, but the total absence of any signs of a break-in, and the apparent depth of unconsciousness, the stertorous breathing, the bounding heartbeat that he could feel through her night dress, told him that something serious had happened.

  The hospital sent an ambulance straight away, in response to his frantic phone call. A doctor came also, as the implications of David’s description were very grave. Margaret was sedated with morphine before the ambulance men were allowed to move her.