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

by Jennifer Worth

  The policeman was outraged. He took out his notebook, and licked his pencil. The children vanished. The street cleared. He looked at Chummy with menace. “I’ll take your name and address. Assaulting a policeman is a serious offence, I’ll have you know.”

  I swear it was Cynthia’s sexy voice that got us off. Without her, we would have been up before the magistrate the next day. I never knew how she did it, and she was quite unconscious of her charm. She said little, but the man’s anger quickly vanished, and he was eating out of her hand in no time at all. He picked up the bicycles and escorted us down the street to Nonnatus House. He left us with the words, “Nice meeting you young ladies. I hope we meet again sometime.”

  Chummy had to spend three days in bed. The doctor said she had delayed shock and mild concussion. She slept for the first thirty-six hours, her temperature raised and pulse erratic. On the fourth day she was able to sit up, and asked what had happened. She was horrified when we told here, and deeply remorseful. As soon as she could go out, her first visit was to the police station to find the constable she had injured. She took with her a box of chocolates and a bottle of whisky.

  MOLLY

  When I called at the Canada Buildings to reassess Molly for a home confinement, she was out. It took three calls before I found her in. On the second attempt, I thought I heard movement in the flat, and knocked several times. There certainly was someone inside, but the door was locked, and no one came to open it.

  On the third visit, Molly answered the door. She looked dreadful. She was only nineteen, but she looked pale and haggard. Lank greasy hair hung down her dirty face, and the two filthy little boys clung to her skirt. A week had passed since the first visit when I had interrupted a fight and a glance around the room told me that the domestic situation was worse, not better. I told her that we were reassessing her flat for a home confinement, and that perhaps it would be better if she went into hospital for the delivery. She shrugged, seeming indifferent. I pointed out that she had been to no antenatal clinics, and that this could be dangerous. She shrugged again. I was getting nowhere.

  I said, “How is it that four months ago, the Midwives assessed your place as satisfactory for a home confinement, and now it is not?”.

  She said, “Well, me mum come in, and cleaned up, din’t she?”

  At last some communication. There was a mother on the scene. I asked for her mother’s address. It was in the next block. Good.

  A hospital confinement had to be booked in advance by the expectant mother concerned through her doctor. I was not at all sure that Molly would do this; she seemed too slovenly and apathetic to bother about anything. If she won’t go to antenatal clinic, she won’t bother to change the arrangements for delivery, I thought, and I could imagine a midnight call to Nonnatus House in two or three weeks’ time to which we would have to respond. I resolved to see her mother, and report to her doctor.

  The Canada Buildings, named Ontario, Baffin, Hudson, Ottawa and so on, were six blocks of densely populated tenements lying between Blackwall Tunnel and Blackwall Stairs. They were about six storeys high, and very primitive, with a tap and a lavatory at the end of each balcony. It was beyond me how anyone could live there, and maintain cleanliness or self-respect. It was said that there five thousand people living in the Canada Buildings.

  I found her mother Marjorie’s address in the Ontario Buildings, and knocked. A cheery voice called “Come on in luvvy”. The usual invitation of an East Ender, whoever you were. The door was unlocked, so I stepped straight into the main room. Marjorie turned round as I entered with a bright smile. The smile vanished as soon as she saw me and her hands dropped to her sides.

  “Oh no. No. Not again. You’ve come about our Moll, ’aven’t you?” She sat down on a chair, buried her face in her hands, and sobbed.

  I was embarrassed. I didn’t know what to do or say. Some people are good at dealing with the problems of others, but not me. In fact, the more emotional people get, the less I am able to cope. I put my bag on a chair and sat down beside her, saying nothing. It gave me the chance to look around the room.

  Having seen Molly’s squalor, I had expected to see her mother’s place in the same sort of condition, but nothing could have been more dissimilar. The room was clean and tidy, and smelt nice. Pretty curtains hung at clean windows. The mats were clean, well brushed and shaken. A kettle was bubbling on the gas stove. Marjorie was wearing a clean dress and pinafore, her hair was brushed and looked nice.

  The kettle gave me an idea, and as the sobs lessened I said, “How about making a nice cup of tea for us both? I’m parched.”

  She brightened up and said, with typical cockney courtesy, “Sorry nurse. Don’t mind me. I gets that worked up about Moll, I do.”

  She got up and made the tea. The activity helped her, and she sniffed away the tears. Over the next twenty minutes, it all came out, her hopes and her heartache.

  Molly was the last of five children. She had never known her father, who had been killed at Arnhem during the war. The whole family had been evacuated to Gloucestershire.

  Marjorie said, “I don’t know if that upset her, or what, but the others turned out all right, they did.”

  The family returned to London, and settled in Ontario Buildings. Molly seemed to adapt to the new surroundings and her new school, and was reported to be doing well.

  “She was that bright,” Marjorie said. “Always top o’ the class. She could’ve been a secitary an’ worked in an orfice up West, she could. Oh, it breaks my heart, it do, when I thinks on it.”

  She sniffed and pulled out her handkerchief. “She was about fourteen when she met that turd. His name’s Richard, an’ I calls ’im Richard the Turd.” She giggled at her little joke. “Then she was stopping out late, saying she was down the Youth Club, but I reckoned as how she was telling me lies, so I asks the Rector, an’ he tells me Moll wasn’t even a member. Then she was stoppin’ out all night. Oh, nurse, you can’t even know what that does to a mother.”

  Quiet sobs came from the neat little figure in the flowered apron. “Night after night I walked the streets, looking for ’er, but I never found ’er. ‘Course I never. She’d come home in the morning, an’ tell me a pack of lies, as though I was daft, an’ go off to school. When she was sixteen, she said she was going to marry her Dick. I reckoned as how she was pregnant anyhow, so I says, ‘That’s the best thing you can do, my luvvy.’”

  They married, and took two rooms in Baffin Buildings. From the start, Molly never did any housework. Marjorie went in and tried to show her daughter how to keep her rooms clean and tidy, but it was no use. The next time she went, the place was as dirty as ever.

  “I don’t know where she gets her lazy ways from,” Marjorie said.

  At first Dick and Molly seemed fairly happy, and although Dick did not appear to be in any regular job, Marjorie hoped for the best for her daughter. Their first baby was born, and Molly seemed happy, but quite soon, things began to get worse. Marjorie noticed bruises on her daughter’s neck and arms, a cut above her eye, a limp on one occasion. Each time Molly said she had fallen down. Marjorie began to have her suspicions, but relations between her and Dick, never cordial, were breaking down.

  “He hates me,” she said “and won’t never let me come near her or the boys. There’s not nuffink I can do. I don’t know what’s worse, knowing he hits me daughter, or knowing he hits the kids. The best time was when he done six months inside. Then I knew as how they was safe.”

  She started crying again, and I asked her if social services could do anything to help.

  “No, no. She won’t say a word against him, she won’t. He’s got such a hold on her, I don’t think she’s got a mind of her own any more.”

  I felt deeply sorry for this poor woman, and her silly daughter. But most of all I felt sorry for the two little boys, whom I had seen in a pitiful state on the occasion when I had interrupted a fight. And now a third child was coming.

  I said, “My main r
eason for coming to see you is about the new baby. Molly is booked for a home confinement, but that, I believe, is only because you had cleaned the place up before our assessment.” She nodded. “We think now that a hospital delivery would be best, but she has got to book it, and she must go to antenatal clinics. I don’t think she will do either. Can you help?”

  Majorie burst into tears again. “I’ll do anything in the world for her and the kiddies, but the Turd, he won’t let me go near them. What can I do?”

  She bit her fingernails and blew her nose.

  It was a tricky situation. I thought perhaps we would simply have to refuse a home delivery, and inform the doctors. Molly would then be told that she must go into hospital when labour started. If she refused antenatal treatment, that would be entirely her own fault.

  I left poor Marjorie to her sad thoughts, and reported back to the Sisters. A hospital confinement was in fact arranged without Molly’s active consent, and I thought that would be the last we heard of her.

  It was not to be. About three weeks later the Midwives received a phone call from Poplar Hospital asking if we could arrange post-natal visits for Molly, who had discharged herself and the baby on the third day after delivery.

  This was almost unprecedented. In those days it was accepted by everyone, medical and lay people alike, that a new mother should stay in bed for two weeks. Apparently Molly had walked home, carrying the baby and this was considered to be very dangerous. Sister Bernadette went straight round to Baffin Buildings.

  She reported back that Molly was there, looking a good deal cleaner, but as sullen as ever. Dick was not at home. He was supposed to have been looking after the children whilst Molly was in hospital, but whether he had or not was anyone’s guess. Majorie had offered to take care of them, but Dick had refused, saying they were his kids, and he wasn’t going to let that interfering old bag poke her nose into his family.

  There had been no food in the flat. Perhaps Molly had anticipated this, and that was why she’d discharged herself. She had no money on her, but on the way home with the baby, had called in the cooked meat shop, and begged a couple of meat pies on tick. As the butcher knew and respected her mother, he let Molly have them. The two little boys, dressed only in filthy jumpers, were sitting on the floor devouring the pies ravenously when Sister Bernadette had arrived.

  Molly hardly spoke, Sister told us. She had submitted to being examined, and the baby, a little girl, to examination, but remained morosely silent all the while. Sister had said she was going to tell Marjorie that her daughter was home.

  “Please yerself,” was all the reply she got.

  Marjorie had had no idea of the turn of events, and ran round to Baffin Buildings straight away. Unfortunately Dick chose the same moment to return, and they met on the landing. He lunged at her drunkenly, and Marjorie ducked. Had he hit her, she would have fallen down the stone staircase. After that, all the poor woman dared to do was to buy food and leave it on the landing outside her daughter’s door.

  Our custom was to visit twice a day for fourteen days after delivery. Molly and baby were satisfactory, from a purely medical point of view, but the domestic situation was as bad as ever. Sometimes Dick was at home, sometimes not. Poor Marjorie was never seen there. She would have made all the difference in the world to Molly and the little boys. Her cheerfulness alone would have lightened the atmosphere, but she was never allowed in. She had to content herself with coming round to Nonnatus House to ask the Sisters how her daughter and grandchildren were getting on. One day she gave us a bag of baby clothes to take on our next visit. She said she didn’t like to leave them on the landing, in case they got damp.

  Over the next few days several nurses visited Molly, all reporting the same disquieting condition. One nurse said that she was very nearly sick in the room, and had to rush outside into the fresh air in order to control her stomach. On the eighth evening I called, and there was no reply to my knock. The door was locked, so I knocked again - no response. I thought Molly might be busy with the baby and unable to answer. As it was only 5 p.m., I continued my visits, intending to return later.

  It was about 8 p.m. when I got back to Baffin Buildings. I was tired, and it seemed a long climb up to the fifth floor. I was almost tempted to skip it. After all, Molly and baby were medically satisfactory, which was our remit. But something prompted me not to miss this visit, so I wearily climbed the stairs.

  I knocked, and there was no reply again. I knocked again, louder - she can’t still be busy, I thought. A door opened just down the balcony, and a woman appeared.

  “She’s out,” she said, her fag drooping off her lower lip.

  “Out! You can’t mean it. She’s only just had a baby.”

  “Well, she’s out, I tells yer. Saw ’er go, I did. Tarted up an’ all, she was.”

  “Well where’s she gone to?” It flashed through my mind that she had gone to her mother’s. “Has she taken the three children?”

  The woman uttered a shriek of laughter, and the fag dropped to the floor. She stooped to pick it up, and her hair curlers clacked together as she bent.

  “What! Three kids! You must be joking. Three kids wouldn’t do her much good, would it now?”

  I didn’t like the woman. There was something about the knowing way she grinned at me that was most unpleasant. I turned my back on her, knocked again, and called through the letterbox. “Would you let me in, please, it’s the nurse.”

  There was definitely a movement inside, I heard it quite distinctly. Self-conscious, because I knew that woman was sneering at me, I kneeled down and looked through the letterbox.

  Two eyes, close to mine, met my gaze. They were a child’s eyes, and they stared at me unblinking for about ten seconds, then vanished. This enabled me to see into the room.

  A faint greenish-blue light came from an unguarded paraffin stove. A pram stood nearby, in which I presumed the baby was sleeping. I saw one little boy running across the room. The other was sitting in a corner.

  I caught my breath sharply. The woman must have heard it. She said, “Well, do you believe me now? I told you she was out, din’t I?”

  I felt I must take this woman into my confidence. She might be able to help. “We can’t leave the three children alone with that paraffin heater. If one of them knocks it over, they will be burned to death. If Molly’s out, where’s the father?”

  The woman drew closer. She clearly enjoyed being the bearer of bad news. “He’s a bad lot, that Dick, he is. You mark my words. You don’t wants to ’ave nuffink to do with ’im. He’s no good to her, and she’s no better than she should be. Oh, it’s a shame, I says to our Bette, it’s a shame, I says. Them poor little kids. They didn’t ask to be born, did they, now? I always says it’s a ...”

  I cut her short. “That paraffin heater is a death-trap. I’m going to inform the police. We’ve got to get in there.”

  Her eyes gleamed, and she sucked her teeth. She clutched my arm and said: “You going to call the police, then? Cor!”

  She dashed off down the balcony and knocked on another door. I imagined her bearing the news all around Baffin Buildings, even if it took her the entire night. Tiredness had left me, and I sped down the stairs to street level, and just about ran to the nearest phone box. The police listened with concern to my story and said they would come at once. Marjorie had to be informed, I decided, so my next call was Ontario Buildings.

  Poor woman. When I told her she crumpled, as though I had hit her in the stomach.

  “Oh no, I can’t bear any more,” she moaned. “I guessed as much. She’s gone on the game, then.”

  So innocent was I, that I didn’t know what she meant.

  “What game?” I said, thinking she meant darts or billiards or gambling in a local pub.

  Marjorie looked at me compassionately. “Never you mind, ducky. You don’t need to know about that sort of thing. I must go and see after them kiddies.”

  We went together in silence. The police were al
ready at the door working on the lock. I had thought that they would bring a locksmith with them, but no - most policemen are expert at picking locks. Do they learn it in College? I wondered.

  A crowd had gathered on the balcony. No one wanted to miss a thing. Marjorie stepped forward saying that she was the grandmother, and when the door was opened she was the first to enter. The police and I followed.

  The room was suffocatingly hot, and the stench putrid. The children were not to be seen, apart from the baby, who was blissfully asleep. I went over to her, and she looked surprisingly well cared for, clean and well fed. The rest of the room was indescribable. It was full of flies to begin with, and a heap of excrement and dirty nappies in a corner was crawling with maggots.

  Marjorie went into the bedroom, gently calling the boys’ names. They were behind the chair. She took them in her arms, tears streaming down her face.

  “Never mind, my luvvies. Nanna’s got you.”

  The police were taking notes, and I thought perhaps I should leave, as the grandmother would now take charge. But at that moment, there was a commotion outside, and Dick appeared in the doorway. Obviously he had not known that the police were in his flat. As soon as he saw them he turned to run, but his path was barred by the onlookers. They had let him in, but they were not going to let him out again. Perhaps there were several scores to be settled between Dick and his neighbours. He was told that he would be cautioned about the neglect of three children under the age of five.

  He swore, spat, and said, “What’s wrong with ’em? Kids are all right. Nothing wrong, far as I can see.”

  “It’s a very good thing for you that there is nothing wrong. Leaving them alone with a paraffin heater alight and unguarded would have caused a fire if one of the children had knocked it over.”

  Dick started to whine. “That’s not my fault. I didn’t put the heater on. The missus did. I didn’t know she’d gone out and left it. The lazy slut. I’ll give her what for when I sees her.”