Call the Midwife.

[Toddlerteaplease]

Anyone watching? Dr smug unfortunately appears fully recovered from the train crash.

I mean to say the seating was set out like an aisle with pews and 'half of Poplar waiting, dressed in their finest' implying the bride is delayed.

Maybe they did the registry office bit then wanted a blessing in front of everyone.

Or maybe I misread the whole scene 🙂

I agree with this, I think there is such a very clear change in tone after season 2. Which is very understandable.

What I find odd though is that it seems like they could at least intellectually deal with the idea that people's ideas are complicated or different, and that does not make them evil - someone like Sister Evangalina was very lovingly portrayed but she'd hardly have been approving of the pill, homosexuality, or abortion - and I have no doubt she'd be far more outspoken about them than someone like Sister Julian has been. And yet they now seem to either push SJ to the background, or her character is inconsistent, or seems like an idiot - when before she was clearly an orthodox Christian but very aware of what things went on and also in many ways deeply empathetic even to the worst of them. To me that was one of the interesting things about the show - if I want to watch a show about people from 2020 I'll watch a show set in 2020!

I think they are almost embarrassed by the nuns at times.

But I've noticed that in a lot of other shows too so I wonder if it's about younger writers, or editorial policy, or just the way people think now?

I really hope so

Not necessarily. It’s London, not a village. People wouldn’t have known her or her backstory. As strangers, they wouldn’t have known she was only 15, so would have assumed she was a bit older at a time when it was common to marry and have children young. The other anachronism was that the court said that when the baby was settled (whatever that meant) she should go back to school). Except 15 was the school leaving age, so she was free to leave anyway baby or no baby.

I thought he got the psoriasis afterwards with all the stress. I don't know why he couldn't leave the house and, at least, sign on rather than living on paperboy wages.

There is absolutely no way they could have lived on a paperboys wages! My friend, (same year) earned 30 shillings £1.50 per week as a 15 year old delivering for WH Smith’s. That wouldn’t even covered the rent on the hovel the family were living in. And I doubt the Buckles paid as well as Smiths and certainly not to a 10 year old! And why were the socially conscious Buckles employing primary school aged children to deliver their papers when there would have been plenty of 13 year olds willing to take the job.

I assume it's because it was the "norm" at the time - I'm guessing the minimum age for employment (or paper rounds, at any rate) may have been lower then and was raised to 13 later? The number of child workers attending the clinic was quite an eye opener, though. People were also prepared to put up with much greater privations in those days. Only a century before it was considered normal to employ kids in dangerous factories and send them up chimneys....
I winced when Fred said the boys arrived at 5.30 then would have time to go back to bed before school after they did their round. All of my kids did paper rounds and would never even entertain the notion of getting up that early... apart from which, it would actually be illegal under modern-day laws.

Having lived through the late 60s and early 70s, and experienced the general opinions and sensitivites of those times, I think the breezy "how was your weekend away with Mr Aylward" inquiries sounded a bit unrealistic, especially in a convent environment. If Trixie and her beau were having weekends away together, enagaged or not, they probably would be keeping it to themselves and such excursions would certainly not be referenced quite as openly!

I really do think these episodes should be run past people who actually remember the times to check for realism. There are plenty of people from that time who would instinctively know if something doesn't ring true for the time setting. It's not just about how people dressed and how they furnished their homes!

@GarethSouthgatesWaistcoat there was a sign up on the stage that said ‘Bonny Britain Competition’ so I think they were holding some sort of show/beauty pageant, hence the line about the photographer not turning up.

It really wasn’t the norm! 13 was about the average age, though sometimes younger brothers and sisters used to tag along with older children. The 5.30 start seems unlikely as that is about the time the drivers pick up from the wholesalers to deliver to the shops. The shopkeepers would then have to sort and mark up and bag the papers for the boys and girls. I have been that driver ( though more recently) and often dropped outside closed shops .

The clinic for child workers also seemed unlikely. If a PP wondered how they could staff it at such short notice, I wondered the children would have been aware of it and what what would have induced them to attend.

I thought so too, but then in Series 3, Jenny was going to go away for a weekend with Alec to the seaside (before Trixie stuck her nose in, suggested to Jenny that Alec would have booked a single room to get his wicked way, Jenny confronted Alec in a rage and flounced off without waiting to hear him say he had actually booked separate rooms, then the trip was off so Alec stayed at work instead of going to the seaside only to have a horrible fall which he subsequently died of. I can't help but blame Trixie for starting that chain of events).

Anyhoo... it was fine for Jenny and Alec to be going away for the weekend 10 years prior, and not being married or even engaged, but I must admit that it felt a bit different for Trixie and Mr Aylward, like it was being implied/accepted that they would definitely have shared a room.

Thanks!! Sorry for the crossed wires everyone 😊

I thought they had been to stay with his mother, they did mention her. She would have put them in separate rooms.

The clinic for child workers seemed very much a plot device. I've certainly never heard of anything like that (although why would I) but I think the children most in need of it wouldn't have turned up anyway.

I thought that too @TheFifthTellytubby
My parents were married in the 50s and were asked to show their marriage certificate when they arrived at their honeymoon hotel!
OK, CTM is now well into the Swinging Sixties but, at least publicly, a lot of people would still have been sticking to the old expectations, and I think it's highly unlikely that a couple like Trixie and Matthew would have been openly having weekends away together. To visit his grieving mother maybe, but a relaxing country weekend, no way. And the nuns would at the very least have ignored it, and more probably have been openly disapproving.
The 60s nuns of Poplar are more liberal and open minded than lots of people today - I just don't buy it. It's a pleasant, undemanding way to spend a Sunday evening but not remotely realistic any more.

Having lived through the late 60s and early 70s, and experienced the general opinions and sensitivites of those times, I think the breezy "how was your weekend away with Mr Aylward" inquiries sounded a bit unrealistic, especially in a convent environment. If Trixie and her beau were having weekends away together, enagaged or not, they probably would be keeping it to themselves and such excursions would certainly not be referenced quite as openly!

I think it would have been fine as long as they had separate rooms. And as they are not short of money that is what the nuns would have thought whether true or not!

@CaptainMyCaptain - thanks, that makes sense. It was the "relaxing" reference that made me think they'd gone somewhere else, though.
@AgeingDoc - yep, that makes sense. I vividly remember my mother referring to members of the extended family who "had to get married".... what times they were! Lips were pursed, pearls were clutched and bosoms were hoiked. I remember it well! 😂

No, can you imagine teens and preteens voluntarily attending something like that? Why would they? Not then; not now!

The only thing that really hit me as horribly realistic last night was the medical staff not telling the boy with leukaemia what was wrong with him, even when he asked directly. That was still unfortunately common when I was a medical student and junior doctor 20 plus years later and I imagine it was the norm then. Mind you, it wasn't just children, plenty of adults weren't given their diagnoses either. Awful.

I winced when Fred said the boys arrived at 5.30 then would have time to go back to bed before school after they did their round. All of my kids did paper rounds and would never even entertain the notion of getting up that early... apart from which, it would actually be illegal under modern-day laws.

I assumed he meant the evening!

@Fieryfairies she'd also been skiing, and for weekends away with the dentist.

Definitely the morning.

It’s amazing really how times change. Where parents don’t demand their teenage daughters marry the boy who got her pregnant just to avoid the “shame of it all”.

How men and women not married can happily flaunt off somewhere and maybe someone will imply sex might be involved but no one cares.

How the wishes of children are taking more in consideration.

Probably this has been already made obvious in a previous episode but I've missed it, but last night Matthew's father was referred to as a Lord.

If so, I wonder if he's a hereditary peer? Wouldn't Matthew then inherit the Lord title from his late father? And if so, wouldn't Trixie be a Lady! She'd love that

(Obviously, if he was a knighted rather than hereditary Lord the title can't be passed down to Matthew.) Does anyone have any clue?

They are business rather than gentry so I assume his father was knighted rather than being of noble stock.

Interesting. But what makes you think they are business rather than gentry?

They are posh and they don't seem to have a family business as such, unless it's being the reluctant landlords of some warehouses in Poplar, which will hardly have kept them in cravats and so they clearly have other sources of income. His father doesn't appear to be a self-made man who was knighted for services to business (was that even a thing in the 1950s/60s? I don't know).

I assume Matthew's father had inherited the land/buildings in Poplar as he is highly unlikely to have bought them as a business proposition.

As I know from Downton (excellent source of social history!) a lot of gentry lost or had to sell their family seats in the 20s and 30s. They did retain parcels of land around the place, a self-generating (from investment) income, a townhouse or smaller house in the country, etc.

I was just the sense that I had mostly from the comments about Matthew never had done a days work which made me think that his father had - which implies fairly humble roots (after all Matthew has a job so it inferred physical work rather than earning his own money). Matthew and his first wife just always struck me rich rather than posh.

I imagine it was would services to the war effort or similar that would see men of Matthew's father's generation who were in business knighted.

I'm also certain Trixie would mention it regularly if Matthew was inline for being a sir.