Call the Midwife: Shadows of the Workhouse Author: Visit Amazon's Jennifer Worth Page | Language: English | ISBN:
0062270044 | Format: EPUB
Call the Midwife: Shadows of the Workhouse Description
Review
Dignified and unsentimental social history. OBSERVER
--This text refers to the
Audio CD
edition.
About the Author
Jennifer Worth trained as a nurse at the Royal Berk-shire Hospital in Reading, and was later ward sister at the Elizabeth Garrett Anderson Hospital in London, then the Marie Curie Hospital, also in London. Music had always been her passion, and in 1973 she left nursing in order to study music intensively, teaching piano and singing for about twenty-five years. Jennifer died in May 2011 after a short illness, leaving her husband, Philip; two daughters; and three grandchildren. Her books have all been bestsellers in England.
- Series: Call the Midwife
- Paperback: 304 pages
- Publisher: Ecco; Reprint edition (January 22, 2013)
- Language: English
- ISBN-10: 0062270044
- ISBN-13: 978-0062270047
- Product Dimensions: 8 x 5.4 x 0.7 inches
- Shipping Weight: 7.2 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
'Shadows of the Workhouse' is a brilliant memoir by Jennifer Worth that carries on her story of working as a nurse in the East End in the 1950s which began in her first installment, 'Call the Midwife.' Her descriptions of hardships endured by those who were forced to enter the workhouses near the turn of the century are heart-wrenching. Though she points out that in terms of social welfare they were well ahead of their time, that doesn't change anything for those people who suffered under the system. The first section especially focuses on people she encountered who grew up in the workhouse system. I found it curious that the second section centered on a woman who had never entered the workhouse, though she would have worked with people who were its victims. The third, and final, section tells the story of a man who entered the workhouse only in his old age after it was converted into a home for the elderly. Therefore, the title is somewhat misleading, but the stories are still amazing.
The story of Jane, Frank, and Peggy growing up in the workhouse together, and the long-term emotional effects that it had on them was full of emotional highs and lows. The reader cheers for their successes and cries for them when they are hurt. This story was the most relevant to the author's theme of the effects of the workhouse on those who were still alive two decades after they were officially closed. (Officially only because it would be impossible to just release thousands of poor people into the streets, so the workhouses carried on under other names with only slightly improved conditions for decades.) After this third of the book, I was ready to give it five stars.
The second portion of the book tells the story of Sister Monica Joan being on trial.
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