Farewell To The East End

by Jennifer Worth

  The big red nun laughed so much she was wheezing and coughing. ‘Oh dear oh dear, this is going to finish me. Pass me that towel. I can’t contain myself.’ She stuffed the towel up her skirts and wiped it around her legs. The children couldn’t believe their luck, and crowded around, lying on the floor trying to get a look at a nun’s knickers.

  Meanwhile, all the laughter must have been good for labour, because the third stage was progressing rapidly. The third stage of labour can be an anxious time for a midwife, and requires a great deal of knowledge, experience and care to enable the placenta to be delivered complete. But Cynthia hardly had to do anything. Janet couldn’t stop laughing and the placenta just slid out in one piece. It was a revolting sight, bloody and slimy and covered in soot, but at least it was out. Placenta and baby, of course, were still attached!

  ‘Sister, I shall need clean scissors and clamps and swabs,’ said Cynthia quietly.

  Sister Evangelina was not just a comedy act for the children’s entertainment. She was a professional nurse and midwife, and her mood changed instantly.

  ‘We will have to take the baby into another room and scrub up thoroughly. We cannot cut the cord in these conditions. As it is, the soot is not going to harm the baby. But I am not sure what would happen if it got into the bloodstream.’

  Disappointed children were shooed away and taken downstairs. The baby, with the placenta still attached, was carried into another bedroom, and with sterile equipment the cord was cut.

  The job of cleaning up fell to the grandmother. It took her about four days, and she needed a holiday to recover.

  NANCY

  The harlot’s curse from street to street Shall weave old England’s winding sheet. William Blake (1757-1827)

  Sister Monica Joan had fascinated me from the first time I met her on a cold November evening in Nonnatus House, when we had devoured an entire cake between us, and she had rambled on about poles diverging and saucers flying and etheric ethers converging and goodness knows what else. She has continued to fascinate me over the years, and I have never been able to resolve the enigma that was she. How could a young woman of beauty, talent, intellect and wealth reject the privileges of the Victorian upper class to work in squalor amongst the poorest of the poor at the end of the nineteenth century? How could she reject offers of love and marriage and children to become a nun? I was never able to answer these questions. A religious-minded woman who has nothing to lose by embracing the monastic life, I could understand. But Sister Monica Joan had everything to lose. Yet she gave it all up. In fact, she had given up her position in society ten years before entering the convent, by becoming a nurse – a lowly and almost despised occupation in the 1890s. She was not, however, a saint! She was wilful, haughty, sarcastic; she could be cruel and unfeeling, arrogant and demanding. All these faults I was aware of – and loved her still.

  I liked nothing better than to go to her room when work permitted and listen to her talking. Sometimes her mind wandered through a muddle of various religions – Christian, pagan, oriental philosophies, occultism, theosophy, astrology; she embraced them all with uncritical enthusiasm, whilst still observing the strict monastic disciplines of her order.

  One day I asked Sister why she had given up her life of wealth and privilege for the humble life of a nurse, a midwife and a nun.

  She winked at me.

  ‘So you think our life “humble”, do you? Nonsense. Fiddlesticks. Ours is a life of adventure, of daring, of high romance.’

  ‘I agree with you there,’ I said. ‘Almost every day comes as a surprise. But I started nursing when I was eighteen, because there was no other choice. But why did you? You had plenty of choices.’

  ‘You are wrong, my dear. The choice of which pretty dresses to wear? Pooh! The choice to spend each afternoon “visiting”, and talking about nothing? Pooh! Pooh! The choice to spend hours embroidering or making lace? Oh, I couldn’t stand it – when nine-tenths of the women of Britain were toiling with their half-starved, stunted broods of children. I could not leave my father’s house and start nursing, or lead any sort of useful life until I was over thirty.’

  She was in good form. I was on to a streak of luck, because it was always a lottery talking with Sister Monica Joan. At any moment she might say no more. I said nothing, but waited.

  ‘When Nancy died, I had an almighty row with my father, who wanted to control me. I hated the shallow, empty life I was leading, and wanted to throw myself into the struggle. I left home to become a nurse. It was the least I could do in her memory.’

  ‘Who was Nancy?’

  ‘My maid. She had been surgically raped.’

  ‘What! Surgically raped? What on earth does that mean?’

  ‘Exactly what it says. Josephine Butler had rescued the child and she asked me if I could take her on as my lady’s maid. I was eighteen at the time, and my mother permitted me to have a lady’s maid of my choice. Nancy was thirteen.’

  ‘Who was Josephine Butler?’

  ‘An unknown saint. You are ignorant, child! I cannot waste my time with such ignorance. Go, fetch my tea, if your mind cannot rise to higher thoughts.’

  Sister Monica Joan closed her fine, hooded eyes, and haughtily turned her head on her long neck, to signify that she was offended, and that the conversation was over.

  Humiliated by her cruel tongue and furious with her (not for the first or last time), I retreated to the kitchen. But that same evening I asked Sister Julienne about Josephine Butler.

  Josephine Butler, born in 1828, was the daughter of a wealthy landowner in Northumberland.10 The whole family of seven children were highly educated and brought up to think deeply about class inequality and the conditions of the poor. In those days, this was considered to be radical, unconventional and dangerous. Her grandfather had worked with Wilberforce for the abolition of the slave trade, and Josephine had listened to adult discussions about slavery, child labour, factory work and related subjects throughout her childhood. In later life she said, ‘From an early age I mourned about the condition of the oppressed.’ She was particularly drawn to the condition of women whose abject poverty drove them into prostitution, through which they would frequently become pregnant, and then both the woman and child would be destitute.

  In 1852, at the age of twenty-four, Josephine married George Butler, an academic and professor at Oxford University. He was ten years older than her and was a reformer and radical thinker, just as her father had been. It proved to be a perfect meeting of minds. After the marriage Josephine moved with her husband to Liverpool. It was not difficult to find poverty in Liverpool in the 1850s. The workhouse alone housed 5,000 souls. She visited and worked in the oakum sheds: ‘vast underground cellars, unfurnished, with damp floors and oozing walls, where women sat on the floor all day picking their allotted portion of oakum. Yet they came voluntarily, driven by hunger and destitution, begging for a few nights’ shelter and a piece of bread.’

  In 1864 their little daughter Eva, aged five, fell downstairs and was killed. Josephine was paralysed with grief. She had always been deeply religious, but now she turned in on herself, rejecting all comfort, all consolation.

  Unknown to Josephine, and indeed to most people in Britain, 1864 was the year in which the Contagious Diseases (Women) Act was passed in Parliament. When she did learn about it two years later it came as a shock and was the catharsis needed to rouse her from deepening depression.

  The Contagious Diseases (Women) Act of 1864, intended ‘for the prevention of contagious diseases at certain naval and military stations’, was profoundly immoral. Venereal disease was spreading rapidly among the armed forces and was thought likely to undermine military strength. It was widely assumed in those days that women spread the diseases, and that to curtail the spread of infection prostitution must be controlled. So far, so good – in theory. But there were not, and never had been, legalised brothels in England. Women touted for their customers in the streets, and so the Act empowered the police to fi
nd their victims in the streets.

  The Contagious Diseases Act was administered by a special unit of volunteers from the Metropolitan Police who were known as ‘the Spy Police’. These men had the power to arrest on suspicion only any woman found alone in the streets whom they thought might be soliciting, confine her in a cell and call a doctor to examine her vaginally for evidence of venereal disease (Josephine Butler called this ‘surgical rape’). There were no female police officers or doctors in those days so the women were handled entirely by men who had volunteered for the job in the first place, and no witnesses were required. If evidence of venereal disease was found the woman would be confined to a lock hospital11 for treatment. If no evidence was found, she would be given a certificate saying that she was ‘clean’, but her name would be kept on a special police register and she could be arrested and re-examined at any time. In theory the woman had to give written consent for the first examination, but this was a cynical farce because the Act stated that a woman who refused to sign should be confined indefinitely until she did consent to be examined.

  Any woman of any age could be subjected to this horrifying treatment. At the time the age of consent was thirteen, so a child of that age could legally be regarded as a woman. The Contagious Diseases Act affected only working-class women, because upper-class women never walked in the streets alone, but would be accompanied or in a carriage. Men of any age or class were exempt from arrest and examination, even if caught in the act of soliciting, because the Act of 1864 was specifically designed for the control of women.

  Josephine was stirred to the depths of her soul by the injustice and the immorality of the Act. She saw at once that the floodgate had been opened for the police to abuse women with impunity, and she vowed to God, and to her husband, that she would devote all her strength to getting it repealed. George was the perfect husband for her. In those days men controlled their wives absolutely. A respectable woman was not supposed to know about things like prostitution and syphilis, still less to talk about them publicly. George could have forbidden Josephine to take any action; instead he supported her.

  Josephine addressed meetings all over the country, she wrote articles and pamphlets, she lobbied Parliament. She shocked and scandalised Victorian Society with her outspoken language at public meetings, describing ‘the surgical violation of women’. She not only insisted that the medical examination of women by the speculum was a form of rape, but also made public accusations against the police, doctors, magistrates and Members of Parliament, saying, in the strongest language, ‘There is such a thing as the medical lust of indecently handling women, as well as the legislative desire to rule women with an iron hand for the purpose of gratifying vicious propensities in men.’

  Such speeches from the lips of an educated middle-class lady were deeply shocking, but they were enough to stir the conscience of the nation, and in 1883 the Contagious Diseases (Women) Act was removed from the statute books of Great Britain.

  Nancy’s misfortune was that she was the daughter of a poor woman who lived in Southampton, a naval dock town. She was the eldest of five children whose father had died. Their mother took in washing from the garrison, and Nancy carried it back and forth. She was thirteen at the time of her arrest.

  One of the volunteer police had observed her coming and going and lusted after her. He had unlimited power. One evening he accosted her.

  ‘What do you go to the Docks for?’

  ‘Please, sir, I take the washing.’

  ‘And what else?’

  ‘I collect the money, if you please, sir.’

  ‘What money?’

  ‘For the washing, sir.’

  ‘Is that all?’

  ‘Yes, sir.’ Nancy was beginning to feel frightened.

  ‘You’re a bad girl. You’re telling me lies.’

  ‘I’m not, sir. I’m a good girl,’ she whispered.

  ‘You’re a wicked girl. Come with me.’

  He grabbed her arm and hustled her along the dark street. She was sobbing now.

  ‘My mum’s expecting me. I must go home.’

  ‘If your mum knew what you’d been up to, she wouldn’t want you home, ever.’

  ‘I’m a good girl. I haven’t been up to anything. And I’ve got threepence in my pocket for the washing, and my mum needs it.’

  ‘Your mum would be ashamed to touch the money you’ve been earning if she knew how you’d earned it, you wicked girl.’

  They reached the police station, and he pushed the terrified child into a cell.

  ‘Wait there,’ he ordered, going out and locking the door.

  The Act required that a doctor should carry out the examination, so the police officer sent a message boy to call the doctor, who came quickly. They were hand in glove: two men, lustful and eager to discharge their duties to the letter of the law, and well beyond it, if they were sufficiently aroused. There were no witnesses, and none were required.

  The doctor barked at Nancy, ‘Can you write your name?’ She nodded, too terrified to speak. ‘Then write it here.’ He thrust a piece of paper and a pen at her. She signed. Unknowingly, she had consented to be examined.

  Swiftly the policeman picked her up and laid her on the half-length couch, pulling her skirts above her head and tying the ends under the table, effectively blinding and gagging her. The doctor grabbed her legs, pushed her knees towards her chest, and fixed her heels in the leather straps that were attached to metal stirrups. Her thighs were forced wide apart, and her bloomers were ripped off. Nancy thrashed around in terror, and, even though her legs were secured, she succeeded in throwing the upper half of her body off the table.

  As she fell backwards, hanging by her legs, one of her lower vertebrae was crushed against the metal edge of the couch. It was an injury from which she never recovered. The policeman swore and yanked her back on the couch, securing her arms and body with a leather strap, so that she was unable to move at all.

  Then the examination began. The Act required that the examining surgeon should first assess if a gonorrhoeal discharge or warts, or a syphilitic chancre was present on the external labia. If necessary, he could explore the vagina with his fingers, to feel for a chancre or other signs of venereal disease. If he was in any doubt he could use a vaginal speculum and forceps with which to examine the cervix. The doctor and the police officer took full advantage of all their legal rights. It took them forty-five minutes to conduct an examination that should only have taken two or three minutes.

  Today a clear plastic vaginal speculum is still used for clinical examination. Then it was a heavy metal instrument about five or six inches long made of two halves. When closed, it is roughly circular, about one and a half inches in diameter. This is inserted into the vagina. The jaws then open to about three or four inches, and a central ratchet holds it open so the cervix is visible. In the nineteenth century, the speculum would have been made of rough, unpolished metal, and I doubt if anyone would have taken the trouble to lubricate it.

  The surgeon and policeman thrust the speculum repeatedly into Nancy, twisting and turning it. They thrust their hands into her young body. Then they introduced other instruments, including long-handled forceps, with which they were able to grab hold of the cervix, pulling and turning it, ostensibly to examine for signs of venereal disease. Can you imagine the pain for a thirteen-year-old virgin? Whether they raped her phallically as well is not known. When they were satisfied they untied her. ‘She is clean. No sign of venereal disease. We can give her the certificate. Get up, girl, you can have your certificate to say that you are clean. Your mother will be pleased.’

  The distraught mother was powerless. There was no one to complain to. If she had been so bold as to complain to the police, she would probably have been victimised herself. In any case the men had acted within the requirements of the law. If they had raped the girl it was of no consequence because the speculum had opened up the vagina. Josephine Butler coined the phrase ‘surgical rape’, and thousands of
innocent women were subjected to it.

  Nancy’s mother wrote to the Association for Repeal of the Contagious Diseases (Women) Act and received a visit from Mrs Butler herself, who advised her that Nancy must leave Southampton at once, because she could be seized again at any time and re-examined. Mrs Butler promised to find a position for the child, and that is how Nancy came to be the lady’s maid to young Monica Joan, the rebel daughter of a baronet.

  Sister said, ‘Her back was badly injured, she could hardly walk. She was cringing and terrified. She was with me for eleven years, and then she died of tuberculosis of the spine.’

  She said no more about Nancy. Perhaps it would have been too poignant, too troubling, after all those years, for Sister Monica Joan to recall.

  MEGAN’MAVE

  Megan’mave were identical twins and masters in the art of grumbling. They must have spent their time in the womb grumbling to each other about cramped living conditions, a damp environment, too dark, smelly, and wet. And when they emerged into the world kicking and screaming they would have started to complain about too much light, noise, fuss and bustle. Their cot would have been too hard or too soft; their clothes too tight or too loose; their milk too hot or too cold; and the breast (if they ever had suckled a breast) would have been grabbed by relentless baby hands as they each sucked a nipple voraciously, each fixing black unblinking eyes on the mirror image of herself across the soft and yielding body of the mother. After feeding they would have grumbled to each other about excesses of wind and gripe; they would surely have grumbled about the paucity of the milk, or the lack of proper nourishment to which they were daily subjected, and which would be the cause of untold suffering as they grew up. Over the years they honed their chosen art to an unprecedented level, finding fault with everything and everyone.

  Megan’mave kept a fruit and vegetable stall in Chrisp Street market. From Wednesday to Saturday each week they could be heard shouting more loudly and more aggressively than any other coster. They had an intimidating way of glaring at a potential customer and demanding, ‘Well?’ If the unwary buyer, perhaps through nervousness, were to hesitate, they would lean forward menacingly, black gypsy eyes gleaming, and repeat, ‘Well? What do you want?’ even more loudly. Should the innocent buyer have supposed that the customer was always right, that error would soon be rectified. Megan’mave were always right, and the customer was always wrong.