The real Chummy?

[hackmum]

This is for Call The Midwife fans.

The latest issue of the Radio Times has an article asking people to help find the real Chummy. Jennifer Worth's daughters say she was a real person, but that Worth didn't use her real name. They say they've seen photos of her that they no longer have.

In the book, Worth says that her father was governor of Rajasthan - but according to the RT governors of Rajasthan have all been Indian. She also says that Chummy won St Thomas's Nightingale Prize three times - but St Thomas has no such prize.

So Worth obviously changed or invented a few details, but the RT is asking people to write in if they have any idea who she might have been. It's piqued my curiosity (and we all love Chummy, don't we?) so I thought I'd pass it on to see if anybody else has any ideas.

In the book, there was a footnote saying that the boy "Jack" who helped Chummy while out on her bicycle grew up to become Lady Diana's bodyguard and that Jennifer Worth had seen him on the TV.

Is there a way to get a call out to "Jack"? That narrows the field a bit as to who might have interacted with "Chummy" and he may know more about her.

Yoohoo, oh Jacky Boy . . .

www.orionbooks.co.uk/Articles/Interviews/An%20interview%20with%20Jennifer%20Worth.page

Interesting interview with Jennifer.

Considering that the aftermath in the third book, "Farewell to the East End", explained what happened to all the characters (and which ones were composites or fictional), then Chummy was real and should be possible to trace, if anyone was up for the task. It would be lovely to know about her, if in fact she approved of the invasion of privacy! What an incredible woman she must have been and still may be.

the real chummy is Eve Vause.
www.express.co.uk/news/uk/376724/The-real-life-Chummy-A-community-midwife-who-got-call-from-God

The article on Eve vause doesn't say she is chummy, just that her life is similar.

I'm still surprised that no-one has cracked this particular mystery. The Radio Times article says, "Jennifer Worth’s daughters remember her in photographs and stories, but we don’t know her real name."

I don't believe JW would have made her up completely. But you'd think someone would have been able to track her down.