Call the Midwife, I love Sunday night telly!!

[BrightnessFalls]

well, I will do for the next six weeks

Ahh, that's so sweet to think of your dd watching some of it with you Taylor, and thinking she might like to be one when she grows up - like you !

Perhaps she'll deliver one of my dd's babies !

• Just thinking we'll always need midwives

Hello!

Mmmm, I sais my girls could watch it with me tonight as no school tomorrow. 5 minutes in and I'm regretting it though!

Hmmm how did you explain that last story to them badday

Why, why, why did they have to have the condom practise when I've let the DD's watch it. DD2 is still sniggering at the word 'penis'

Can someone explain work houses to me please

I want that car

"Did you know, years ago, families had lots of children and it wasn't 'til the 50's that we were able to decide how many children we had?"

DD2 (6) "What, like the cat when it had its infection?" (she means injection)

Er, no.

Workhouses were institutions set up to house the poor.
Families who had no visable means of support were placed in them.
Husbands and wives were seperated as were children.
They were set to work doing things like picking Okam (a horrible and painful process)
Breaking rocks and sewing.
The food was basic and the care was appalling.

They were like prisons.

They were expensive to run and did nothing to 'rehabilitate' the poor.

People died in them. The infant mortality rate was very high.

They left people of my grandparents generation terrified of anything institutional ie. hosptials and and old people's homes.

They were hell on earth.

basics of the workhouse

And now DD2 just asked me "Whats shit?" Grrrr.

"Can I ask you something?"
"I'm not dancing for money." (or something)

Hilarious.

Really enjoying Miranda in this!

Thx Mrsdevere and nutella

Awww, Chummy!!!

A dear little piglet aww

I've just started the second book and the workhouse section is harrowing... The story of Frank, Peggy and Jane was so sad. The thought of families being split up like that but mothers having to do it in the hope that it ensured the survival of their children.

It only ended so recently in our history as well.

The Frank and Peggy story haunted me. It makes me upset now If I think about it. I couldn't read the rest of that book.

Didn't they rename workhouses as "Industrial Schools", or the like, for the children. DH's great-grandfather was in one for the 1891 census, along with his brother. We knew his father had died the previous year so we only presume that his mother couldn't care for the children any longer .

The crossword :(

Industrial schools were more for the teenagers/ older children. In the later years of the workhouses, children would go to the Cottage Homes, usually set up outside of cities

Thanks SecretNutellaFix, we've never been able to track down the records for the particular "Industrial School" he was in, so will never know how he and his brother came to be there.

I just read the second book and pretty much howled throughout. On the 3rd book now and Julia's story has had me howling too. Such sad sad times, and tragic to think how recent it all was. :(

Not sure about the Jimmy/Jenny storyline in the programme though