Shadows of the Workhouse by Jennifer Worth

The Reverend Thornton-Appleby-Thorton, a missionary in Africa, visits the Nonnatus nuns, and Sister Julienne acts as matchmaker. At the time, there was no other option for them but the workhouse. Peggy and Frank's parents both died within six months of each other, and the children were left destitute. There's Jane, who cleaned and generally helped out at Nonnatus House - she was taken to the workhouse as a baby and was allegedly the illegitimate daughter of an aristocrat.

In this follow up to Call the Midwife, Jennifer Worth, a midwife working in the docklands area of East London in the 1950s, tells more stories about the people she encountered. Worth's book made me cry in a railway carriage.A fascinating slice of East End life, from the number one best-selling author of Call the Midwife, now a major BBC TV series. Worth is indeed a natural storyteller and her detailed account of being a midwife in London's East End is gripping, moving and convincing from beginning to end.a powerful evocation of a long-gone world. - David Kynaston in Literary Review

Trixie Franklin, a fun-loving young nurse.

Cynthia Miller, a kind and thoughtful young nurse.

Chummy Browne (Camilla Fortescue-Cholmeley-Browne), a very tall, upper-class young nurse.

Worth based her book on the lives of such people, many of whom she met through her work as a midwife in London's East End during the 1950s and 1960s. Some as young adult, others who had been born there or sent as orphans. Subsequently, until the end of the 20th century and early years of the 21st, there were still many people who had lasting memories of life in the workhouses.

It was not until the 1948 National Assistance Act that the last traces of the Poor Law disappeared, and with them the workhouses. At the outbreak of the Second World War in 1939 almost 100,000 people were accommodated in former workhouses, including 5000 children. Renamed Public Assistance Institutions, they continued under the control of county councils. Setting Īlthough Britain's workhouses were officially abolished in 1930, many did not close their doors until much later. It formed the basis for the second series of the television drama Call the Midwife. Shadows of the Workhouse is a 2005 book by British author Jennifer Worth (1935-2011).

Shadows of the Workhouse by Jennifer Worth