The Midwife's Tale

by Billie Hunter

  ‘The mother said, “Well, you can’t stay like that!” I said, “No, well, I’ll have to get some of these clothes off”, because I was wringing wet. Well, we’d lost all the water and we’ve to go up to get more water, so she said, “You’d better go up. In the kitchen there’s my clothes that I dropped out of on the floor.” So I dressed in her maternity clothes in the kitchen! Didn’t care whether Dad could see what I was doing or not! I undressed in the kitchen! He said, “I won’t look.” I said, “You can’t see if you did!” It was pitch black. He said, “Where are you?” I said, “I’m finding the clothes!” Oh! Nothing so funny in all of my life! So I go down in her maternity clothes! And he had to proceed to get some more water. I don’t think I ever got any hot water from beginning to end.

  ‘Anyway, he’d made little curtains across the bunks and these little children kept looking out at me. And I said, “Now look, if you’re very good when the baby comes you can open the curtains when I tell you and have a look …”

  ‘We carried on, and Mum was delivered on the bunk, no stitches, and Dad was wonderful. He was in a terrible state about what he’d done to me. I said, “Don’t be silly – that’s nothing!” Anyway, she was marvellous and the baby was born and it was a boy and she’d told me that she was going to call it Richard if it was a boy. And I said, “We’ve got Richard!” And I said, “Children – you’ve got a little baby brother.” And d’you know, it was just like out of comic cuts. They all pulled the little curtains back – this is true! – they pulled the little curtains back and had a little look out!

  ‘And I said “I’ll bring the baby over and show you in a minute.” And they were awake all that time. And I took the baby over, pulled the curtains back, they had a look and then they went to sleep. We never heard another word. About 4 o’clock in the morning, the doodlebugs stopped because it was light. Dawn coming, they didn’t come on over then.

  ‘Of course, it takes a long time to clear up when you’re down in a place like that. Where d’you start? We got Mum over onto the clean bunk, did all this, that and the other.

  ‘That was my most wonderful delivery. All on my own. I mean, when you think of it, that wasn’t bad was it? Of course, my midwife had said, “If you don’t want me in the night for any reason, let me know about 8.30 a.m. and we’ll sort out the work.” Well, by the time I’d finished everything there, I’d forgotten about my clothes. Elated I was! You won’t believe this. I put on my coat – navy blue gabardine mac in those days – and a storm cap, on top of Mum’s clothes and left her and went on.

  ‘It was about seven in the morning when I finished and I thought, “Oh, I must tell my midwife – had my first baby!” So I went by her door and I knocked. And she looked out of her bedroom window and she said, in her posh accent, “What’s the matter, Nurse?” And I said, “Nothing. I’ve delivered a baby.” She said, “Well, I don’t want to know at 7 o’clock in the morning.” “Oh, but it’s lovely!” So she said, “What have you got on?” She saw all these clothes hanging down! “Oh,” I said, “I’ve got mother’s maternity clothes on.” Course they were so big and they just dropped below my mac! She thought I was a nutcase, I think. Anyway, I had to go back at 8.30 a.m. and explain what had happened.

  ‘But, I mean, oh dear, oh dear, that was a wonderful delivery though. You can imagine can’t you. I was absolutely elated!’

  9

  Working Lives: the effect on childbearing women

  ‘I lost my babies through poverty – going to work. But there was nothing for it. You had to work.’

  Although many women did paid work in the period between the wars, much of it was casual or home-based, especially for working-class women. So it was not recorded in official statistics. Hence, the 1931 census stated that only ten per cent of married women had paid work.1

  Common jobs for women were taking in washing, ironing, mangling, cleaning and child minding. This type of work could be fitted in around a woman’s home life, especially her own childcare needs and provided vital extra money. Lou N. remembers:

  ‘When I first started work (at 14) I was a coil winder. Then I was a French polisher. Next I was a brush maker – yeah, that used to cut your fingers, that did, brush making. But, of course, once you got married and had kids you couldn’t fit these jobs in so I had to go cleaning flats and offices. I was in one job for 22 years, cleaning Social Services. I worked even when the kids were little. It was the only way. I couldn’t live on his money ‘cause a barman was the worst paid job out, it was.’

  Edie M. talked about a job to which she returned with her baby, who was only a few weeks old:

  ‘He went onto the dole and I went and did washing for half a crown a day. I worked from about ten in the morning to four o’clock at night at Miller’s Yard. They were the people that had neighbouring stalls next to us, Italian fruiterers, they were. I used to go and wash for them for half a crown a day. I used to take me baby in an old-fashioned wooden pushchair with a bit of carpet on the seat. I used to put the pram in the doorway, put the copper in the corner of the room, light it, then start the washing. They had great big sheets, these Italians – luxurious beds – and she’d keep throwing more things out the window: “Here y’are, Ede”. Later, I went and got a job at Millers in Gray’s Inn Road, washing up and that, and then somebody minded the baby.’

  Domestic work was demanding and exhausting. The tasks were repetitive and tedious, with women having to stand for hours on end. Hard physical labour coupled with an inadequate diet had disastrous effects on women’s health and hence on their pregnancies and births. It is important to remember that the women we interviewed have all lived into their seventies, eighties and even nineties, but there were many other women who died early in life, often from the consequences of poverty.

  Jane W. describes working throughout her pregnancy:

  ‘That was in 1925. I’d stayed at work till I was six months pregnant, working as a machinist down Tooley Street – Army & Navy Territorial Outfitters – a good firm to work for. And then, at that time – I don’t know if you’ll remember the Charleston garters that came out top fashion, all frills and bells and bows – well, my aunt, she had this little draper’s shop and she asked me if I could make up these garters for her, so I used to do that. But really, perhaps I should have been resting more? I don’t know. Anyway, I got over it.’

  It is not necessarily harmful to work during pregnancy. In fact, the reverse is often the case. However, the type of work undertaken by pregnant, working-class women – whether the hard physical slog of washing or the painstakingly delicate activity of doing needlework in a sweatshop – certainly was detrimental to their health.

  There was no maternity leave, and many women had to return to demanding jobs soon after childbirth. Outside of the professions, terms and conditions of employment were poor or nonexistent. Edie M. attributes the death of two of her babies to returning to work too quickly after the births:

  ‘My first baby was a beautiful baby, right up to ten months old when I lost her. Every time I took her on the bus, people said, “Oh what a lovely baby!”

  ‘During that time we had extreme poverty. My husband was on the dole and we lived in one tiny little room without running water or sanitation. So I got a job in Whitechapel, washing up again. They had a big night trade there, and when I went in in the morning there’d be a great big wooden sink full of plates, piles and piles of plates, and I used to have to stand on a box to reach ‘em.

  ‘I left the baby, and my husband being out of work, he used to mind her. Well, what happened was, it must have been 1921, we got an extreme summer then and [gastro]enteritis started. Any rate, she was taken to Bancroft Road Hospital and to cut a long story short, I lost her there. Fifty babies died in that ward that week from ‘enteritis. So I lost my baby. They brought her round in this little white coffin beside the bed, and I bought some flowers and put them there and they told me I shouldn’t have done it ‘cause it turned her. When I went to look at her again sh
e was discoloured under there. They said, “You shouldn’t have put flowers in the coffin”. I slept with that coffin a week there … People wouldn’t realise it, would they? …

  ‘I think I had an empty brain as a teenager. But it wasn’t empty when I lost my first baby. I walked the streets at night for about six weeks – missing her, missing holding her, missing washing the nappies, missing getting her ready before I went to work in the morning … It was a nightmare.

  ‘My third baby, Freddie, I lost him at 13 months, but he had wasting disease on and off. I was just pulling him out a bit, he was getting a nice, normal little boy, and then he developed pneumonia. He’d been ill all the time I had him so I suppose I recovered from that quicker than the first one. A sad little baby he was. One part I don’t like to remember was when I went to see him when he was dying. That baby, he was so lovely … he was 13 months and knew me so well. My baby was dying … and he put his little arms out and tried to get to me as I sat beside the bed … That won’t go, that memory …

  ‘So I lost the third one, too. But only through poverty, going to work. I think if I’d stayed at home I wouldn’t have lost that first one because she wouldn’t have been minded by her dad and developed gastroenteritis. And I wouldn’t have lost the second one if I hadn’t gone to work. They say if you breastfeed it gives them protection, but he went into the nursery at two weeks old. There was nothing else for it. You had to work unless – well, I s’pose you could stay at home and manage on bread and marg [margarine] or something.’

  Edie had a crèche place for some of her children. The crèche was near where she worked, a kitchen in Drury Lane, and her employer contributed to its cost. At the time, crèches were quite unusual. However, later on, in wartime, when the state wanted women’s labour, nurseries and crèches became readily available:

  ‘I was working in Drury Lane at the time. The crèche closed for holidays, so I used to put him in a little box beside me in the kitchen, and we used to keep putting his dummy into syrup or something. And that’s how we got over the week or fortnight’s holiday when the crèche was shut. Our missus used to contribute to that crèche. Got a place in it, nine pence a day. And I used to have to come right the way from Dulwich on a tu’ppenny [two penny] tram to get the baby in. D’you know, I’ve stood waiting in Essex Road, holding my baby in a shawl, on a foggy morning, 7.30, to get up to the Kingsway by eight, get it in the crèche. Sometimes I think to meself, “Oh poor babies”. It’s wrong innit? Well, it was wrong. I never had the pleasure of bringing them up.’

  Although combining the roles of mother and worker was difficult, it would be wrong to paint a picture of all women resenting their working lives. For many women, work meant time away from the home, a sense of freedom and pride. Despite her gruelling experiences, Edie M. says:

  ‘Me life was at work. All me fun was at work.’

  Women in the home

  The overriding ideology of the period between the wars was very much that: ‘A woman’s place is in the home’. Women’s magazines of the period reinforced this attitude. The first issue of Woman’s Own in 1932 described itself as: ‘Our new weekly for the modern young wife who loves her home’.2 For middle-class women who had access to the new gadgets on the market, housework became a science. Women were encouraged to stay at home and create a cosy nest, adorned with hand-crocheted doilies and home-made cakes, from which their husbands and children could blossom forth into the world. Pregnant women were exhorted to take up embroidery to while away the hours:

  ‘Surely there is no more delightful task than preparing an outfit for the Little Stranger. The wee garments are so dainty and easy to make, and as we stitch into them all the best wishes in the world, we wonder perhaps if we are working for some boy or girl who will one day become a national hero or heroine.’3

  As well as being the ideal homemaker, middle-class women faced another pressure. They also had to be desirable at all times. Magazines of the period contain many articles citing the dire consequences of ‘letting yourself go’:

  ‘I will not listen to the little housewife who tells me that she is so busy looking after the house that she has no time to bother about herself. That is sheer bunkum and a woman with that point of view deserves all the heartbreak that is coming to her.’4

  Such messages had very little meaning for most working-class women. For them, working in the home was a never-ending succession of grinding tasks – beating carpets, scrubbing floors, blacking hearths, washing and mangling. The impossibility of winning the battle against dirt meant that there was often an emphasis on outside appearances. The step was always clean, the doorknob was always polished and girls had to have clean pinafores. One midwife, Bronwen H., who worked in Wales, remembers with awe, standards of cleanliness achieved against all the odds:

  ‘A woman with eight babies, and she was a tiny wizened little thing. But her place was absolutely spotless. Poor thing, I don’t know how on earth she managed it … and the children were beautifully clean, very poor, of course, but the table and all that, beautifully clean. Another mother … she had about four or five children and she used to sweep all the floors and there was a hole in the wooden floor – and she’d just sweep everything down into the hole! How they survived, I don’t know … I just don’t know.’

  Feeding a family

  In the 1920s and 1930s, most people did not possess refrigerators so buying, preparing, preserving and storing food was a major part of domestic work. Fresh food had to be bought daily, often entailing a long walk to the cheapest shops or street market. It was a time-consuming and tedious task, and all the more exhausting if several children were in tow and there was a heavy pram to push.

  Poverty meant little choice in food, but the women we interviewed were proud of their ability to ‘make do’ and concoct something appetising to put on the table. Midwife Esther S. remembers:

  ‘People lived ever so poor, but they didn’t waste, that’s the thing. They always managed to make a meal out of something. They did all sorts of things to make sure that there was always a meal on the table for their husbands to come home to. Even if it were two penn’orth of chidlings, they’d fry them up, p’raps put them on a piece of toast … Often the women themselves would go without.’

  Jane W. reinforced this idea:

  ‘There were 14 of us kids. I never saw my mother have a dinner. We’d all sit round the table, and she’d be like a waitress, giving it all out, passing it on. Whether she had any before or after, I’ll never know. I don’t think she did when I look back. She worked really hard to feed us lot.’

  Edie M. remembers ‘making do’ with whatever food was available. She describes a period in her life when she shared this task with a neighbour:

  ‘I always cooked a hot dinner. I can remember getting a pound of chops for sixpence so you could have them with potatoes and get a dinner for about ninepence. We didn’t have meat every day. One of my famous dinners was three penn’orth of bacon bones, put on with lentils and we’d have a whacking fine pot of stew.

  ‘When I lived in Clerkenwell – just one room with a table, two chairs, a bed and a gas stove – I had a neighbour downstairs, Mrs W. She had three boys and a girl. We used to take it in turns inviting each other up. I’d call down, “Mrs W …” and she’d come up with the children and share my stew. Next day, she’d call up to me and we’d have a big plate of hers [laughs]!’

  Housing

  Housework was doubly difficult because much of the housing stock was in a very poor condition. Mary W., a midwife, describes the conditions in a Yorkshire mining village:

  ‘Most people were in terraced housing. The council houses were only just starting to be built, so there was a lot of really old housing. No indoor sanitation. It was the exception rather than the rule if they had a bathroom. No indoor toilets – outside privies. Lighting was mainly gas, though we had parts of the village that had oil lamps. Of course, it was a colliery area so there was plenty of coal. The miners get an allowance of co
al and so the houses were well heated. Very often, for the birth, they would bring the bed down into the living room and the woman would stay in bed (or at least she told me she stayed in bed; we had this strict rule at that time about a woman staying in bed for eight days) and she would supervise her domestic arrangements from the bed – and very well too. I should imagine, looking back, it did them good, too, because, for example, I once went in and the woman was kneading a stone of bread on the bed. That sort of thing may have reduced the risk of deep vein thrombosis, which we now know was increased by all that enforced bed rest.’

  Poor housing had serious effects on women’s health. To keep the houses and children clean and free from bugs required a huge effort, especially when there was no running water. Edie M. describes the conditions that contributed to her first baby’s death from gastroenteritis in the very hot summer of 1921:

  ‘I only ever had one room to live in for a very, very long time. At that particular time, we were living with his mother over in Stepney. They had a Coronation Street house, two up, two down, and about six or seven kids. We were in one tiny little room. We had a little backyard with freezing cold water. I used to go out there and do me bit of washing.

  ‘After a very bad time in that house (I’d lost one baby and I was now pregnant), my mother-in-law committed suicide, over poverty. She got into such a lot of debt, she took carbolic acid. Oh, I tried to mind her kids what were my in-laws. He had a paper stall, the father did. He was a dear old boy, and he used to bring home half-a-crown a day to keep his family. Well, I’ve always been very clean and that house was bug-ridden – millions and millions of them behind every picture. So I started cleaning up, burning this, burning that. And filthy heads they all had. I learnt how to clean – let’s put it plain – lousy heads and get rid of bugs. I soaked them in paraffin for a few hours, then washed it off. I had all them children’s lousy heads to clean up but I got rid of them.