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One third of Dockland housing had been destroyed, and in the 1950s re-building had not yet begun. So, after the war, Cockney people moved in with each other and lived as they had in the 1930s. Traditions, community life, extended families, even speech were virtually unchanged.

This was the world I entered as a young midwife. Most of the men worked in the docks. Police patrolled the streets in pairs, yet nurses and midwives cycled alone, day or night. The bomb sites were the haunts of meths drinkers, and also children’s playgrounds. In the primitive, bug-infested tenements we often had to deliver babies by gaslight or lamplight, and sometimes with no running water or lavatory in the flat. We went into the homes and saw at first hand the courage, the bawdy humour and inner strength of the women who created happy and secure family lives for their children in conditions that would today be described as unfit for human habitation.

It was an extraordinary time, and for us young midwives, girls from middle-class privileged backgrounds, it was fun – sometimes hilarious fun – and we did not realise that we were witnessing the end of an era, soon to be shattered by the closure of the docks, the demolition men and the fragmentation of the Cockney peoples into New Towns. For me personally it was probably the greatest experience of my life, and I relive it all in Call the Midwife.

Further reading...

Call the Midwife
by Jennifer Worth
Phoenix
Buy now