Call the Midwife, I love Sunday night telly!!

[BrightnessFalls]

well, I will do for the next six weeks

OMG. Bawling my eyes out here.

Had just last night read the heart-rending tale of Frank and Betty as children when they went into the workhouse too......

OMG blinded by tears!!!!!

My Gran was born and raised in London but evacuated towards the end of the war and only returned once when my dad was about 10. She's dead now. All I remember is her mentioning tenements (I remember because I didn't know what it meant. Her Dad was a Market trader, fruit, and she mentioned Holborn and Chancery Lane a lot.. But they're quite posh now, not sure I they were in the 20-40s but if they were in tenements I can't imagine they were. This is our very recent history... It's fascinating... Why don't we think to ask our Grandparents when they were still alive?

Because we are self obsessed when we are young and wisdom gets us as we age. usually too late.

Argh missed last 10 mins. Was on time delay & tv switched over!
When will it be on iplayer?

Mmm, Somehow the Jenny/Jimmy storyline didn't come through as well as it could have done. Dream roles you would have thought. Maybe it just needed more time to develop before she turned him down. Something not quite right IMHO. Swimming pool scene not bad.

I was more interested in Miranda and her beau - loved the green dress and the way she didn't stop to sacrifice it for the pig and little piglets !

One mistake I spotted - did anyone else hear Miranda/Chummy when talking about the pig "He's in a lot of trouble" - I think you'll find it's the female pigs, or sows, that have the piglets !

Well I don´t know if I´m a heartless bitch but the Frank/Peggy story didn´t get me at all.

I'm not sure we had enough background to truly feel for them - but maybe I missed that bit ?

I don't think the workhouse stories can work on the tv. There was so much background to them in the book. They tried to do it with Sister Evangelina's rant at the young midwives but I don't think it was enough.

Oh definitely... It only got to me because I have just read that part of the book. The Frank and Peggy story (and Jane) is totally harrowing... My heart was aching reading it.

Me too - talk about double whammy with the book and the tv prog!

Queen's Hospital in Pawson's Road, Croydon, used to be the workhouse - and it looked like it, built of dark brick. When I was young, in the 50's and 60's , it was a geriatric hospital, and old people were still afraid of ending up there. A friend researched her family history and found one of her forebears had been in that very workhouse at one point.

On the opposite side of the road was (and still is) a large cemetary The hospital was only demolished in the last 15 years or so, they preserved the tower.

I am so going to read this book! The best TV I've seen in ages - only sorry I missed the first two episodes.

One of Tony Robinson's 'worst jobs' on the programme of the same name was picking oakham (separating short bits of thick rope into strands) in the workhouse.

I was born in 1952, so Call the Midwife is sort of familiar, not in Poplar though, but in a S London suburb. I can remember DM getting DB weighed at the chemist each week, he was born in 1955.

Another thing with the Frank/Peggy thing-how everyone just glossed over the incest as if the hard life/separation from each other excused/explained it.

That just didn´t seem right to me.

Or was there no incest?

I've read the books but missed last night's ep. Why do you mean they glossed over it?

Oh that was a terribly sad story with Frank and Peggy. It's a long time since a TV programme made me cry.

No I don't think they glossed over the incest story. Think it was pretty obvious they'd lived as man and wife after being so brutally separated as children.

Among siblings who were adopted separately and lost touch there are a sizeable minority who embark on incestuous relationships if they meet as adults. One of my best friends was adopted away from her brother in the fifties , they finally met in the eighties and she has confided in me that they had a relationship for a while which she felt very confused about. She says she was a willing participant in this but that after a few months they mutually agreed it wasn't right and ceased the relationship although they remain in touch. Both are now happily married.

I had a read about it after she told me and found that this was a surprisingly common phenomenon. Confused feelings lead to all manner of things.

Well no one seemed at all put out by it really.

Or when one of the midwives said "oh that´s incest".

"Yes, but they´ve had a hard life separated in the workhouse".

Oh, that makes it OK then??!!

diddl have you read the book Shadows of the Workhouse? it is explained far better there. But do be warned you will need a man-size box of tissues to get through that book. Jane's story too, that almost broke me :(

Oh I sobbed last night - just sooo sad.

Can't believe its the last episode next week.

Its a complicated issue diddl its not the same as a couple of kids growing up in a family and deciding to have sex.

They were seperated and as the nun said 'there was no family left in that place' (or something like that). The social construction of the family had been obliterated by the workhouse.
As the normal social constructs no longer existed you could argue that the construct of incest didnt either.

Everyone was taking a pragmatic approach to the way they lived. What was the alternative? To get them both thrown in jail?

There woud have been no counselling, no network of support to pick up the peices. They would have been arrested and convicted and that would have been that.

Oh I can see how it came about.

I suppose it´s the acceptance of that by the nuns with the juxtaposition of taking babies away from "fallen young women"

Yeah well quite. I can understand what you mean there.

I dont know, I grew up in a working class area in the 70s (north london). I know there was at least one couple like them and people didnt do anything about it.

They were in their 50s by then. I suppose it was the reluctance to interfere as long as there was a veneer of respectablity.

Taking babies off of unmarried girls was riddled with hypocricsy in so many ways.

I was sobbing last night i was so sad even cried at the bloddy piglet surviving , i must be PMTy anyway i think the frank and peggy story was much more complex than incest , as was said they created a life of their own , I dont think it was about sex at all , I think it was quite well done because of the time it was on ,