The real story of the “sisters” of  “Call the Midwife” … and how it echoes the life and works of the founders of the various branches of the Vincentian Family

“The police were everywhere and never walked the streets alone yet the midwives could travel through the street at every hour of the day and night because they were well-known, respected and admired throughout the Docklands by the people who lived there.  Everyone spoke of them with sincere love.” (See reference below)

The recording setting British TV series “Call the Midwife” offers a riveting description of why the midwives of Nonnatus House were so revered.

The plot follows newly qualified midwife Jenny Lee and the work of midwives and the nuns of Nonnatus House, a nursing convent, part of an Anglican religious order, coping with the medical problems in the deprived Poplar district of London’s desperately poor East End in the 1950s. The Sisters and midwives carry out many nursing duties across the community. However, with between 80 and 100 babies being born each month in Poplar alone, the primary work is to help bring safe childbirth to women in the area and to look after their countless newborns.

The Context 

• The real life sisters of Nonnatus House lived in a time and place of frightening mortality rates:  35-40% maternal mortality among the poorest classes; 60% infant mortality
• There was no training and no control over who practiced as a midwife
• In the 19^th century no poor woman could afford to pay the fee required by a doctor for the delivery of her baby
• Women had to rely on the services of an untrained, self-taught midwife
• It was not until 1902 that the first Midwives Act was passed and the Royal College of Midwives was born

The Response

• In 1870 a group of Anglican Sisters at St. Raymund Nonnatus House began a campaign for legislation that would demand proper training and provide control over their work
• The work of the Midwives of St. Raymund Nonnatus was based upon a foundation of religious discipline
• The St. Raymund midwives worked in the slums of the London Docklands amonst the poorest of the poor … they labored tirelessly through epidemics of cholera, typhoid, polio and tuberculosis … they worked through two world wars and endured the blitz with its intensive bombing of the docks … they delivered babies in air-raid shelters, dugouts, church crypts and underground stations
• St Raymund Nonnatus, the patron said of midwives, obstetricians, pregnant women, childbirth and newborn babies.  He was delivered by Caesarean section (“non natus”) in Catalonia Spain in 1204.  His mother died at his birth and he became a priest and died in 1240

From Jennifer Worth, Call the Midwife, Phoenix Paperback Editions, London, 2002,  p. 6-8

“Call the Midwife” picks up the story based on the memoirs of Jennifer Worth and is set in east London in the 1950s and 60’s.

Similarities of Nonnatus House and the Vincentian Family

Each of the founders of the various branches of the Vincentian Family would recognize the pattern described above.

They saw a terrible need.

They responded with courage and compassion.

Implicitly they realized they could not do it alone. The nuns modeled collaboration with lay persons and involved others in their work.

Your thoughts on

• the similarities with Saints Vincent and Louise as well as Frederick Ozanam, Rosaie Rendu, etc.?
• where you see the followers walking in their footsteps today?