Call the Midwife - BBC

It's easy to forget that Workhouses are not that far in the past. The maternity hospital I was born in was previously a workhouse. The series has touched on the workhouse mentality quite a bit - the brother and sister who lived as a couple in the first series had been in one too.

About 20 years ago they started closing down some of the state run 'homes' that still existed here for people with learning difficulties and I remember that some elderley women had been in there for 40+ years. Their 'difficulty' was that they had gotten pregnant out of wedlock as teenagers and been committed for 'moral' reasons. It's frightening.

My Mum Nora....

...by the process of she and my Dad (Wilfred) adopting me, is the Matron on the right in this picture:



(do we have Matrons in the U.S.? - read: 'Head Nurse' if not)

She was in charge of a childrens hospital in the North of England during WWII and regarded, even by her close friends - one of whom is with her in the picture, as a 'Tartar' or 'Martinet' for her strict rules at work....to this day I still place the open ends of our pillow cases away from the door!

She was previously a midwife, visiting nurse, and after a period of retirement to raise yours truly and my sister (also adopted), a geriatric visiting nurse.

I was adopted from a facility where 'fallen women' went to have their children in 1953 and thank God for it! I had a great childhood, a classical education, and a successful career.

In 2001 I tracked down my birthmother, Lily, I have visited her 4 times in U.K. since then and I am in regular communication with her and my two 'new' 'half-sisters', one in London and one in Australia.

She died in 2000 at the age of 88 and I watch 'Midwife' and can hear my lovely adoptamom shouting at the 'telly' righting every little wrong

That's a lovely story Mike, she must have been one amazing woman. I'm not sure they make 'em like that any more - mores the pity!

In the U.S we didn't have work houses, but we did have institutions. My mother and father both worked in a developmental institution, whose main mission was to take care of individuals with learning and cognitive impairments. There were a lot of children in the facility, however, who were completely "normal intelligence" who were from unwed mothers who had been institutionalized. There were also a number of people there who were severely physically disabled, but were extremely high mental functioning (so much so, they had probably been misplaced there). I can remember interacting with a few older folks there that I, as a child, could remember not understanding at all why they were institutionalized. (I was also a child, and many of these people had the intelligence level of a child as an adult, so that might have clouded my perceptions.)

I think the complex had about 30 or so large brick buildings and was basically self-sufficient- they produced and canned all their own food and even supplied food for the institutions downstate. They also produced artisan goods (loom weaving, ceramics) which were sold to the public. The idea was when the place was built that it would be a self-sufficient community, and at one point the doctors, nurses, and aids lived right off grounds. Both my parents and myself; however, only experienced the institution after a wave of reforms went through the U.S. in the late 1960s and early 1970s.

W-D Forties said:

That's a lovely story Mike, she must have been one amazing woman. I'm not sure they make 'em like that any more - mores the pity!

Click to expand...

Yeah she was, no 'barefoot kitchen bound little woman' there. You may remember that show jumping used to be very popular on the telly in the 70's - Harvey Smith et al?, she would curse the German riders and wish them all the bad luck in the world when it was their turn to start their round.....................despite having visited Nuremburg to see Hitler, of whom she was briefly a fan, at a rally in the mid 30's!

Quite a broad my mum

Season 2 starts in US this Sunday March 31 on PBS, 8/7c!!! Yay, can't wait!

And if you haven't seen season 1, PBS.org has all the episodes streaming through April 17th.

http://video.pbs.org/video/2337385146/

I'm two episodes into binging season one (Netflix). Love it.