Call the Midwife

Jennifer Worth was just 22 when she volunteered to spend her early years midwifery training in the heart of London's East End in the 1950s. Coming from a sheltered background, there were tough lessons to be learned. The conditions in which many women gave birth just half a century ago were horrifying, not only because of their grimly impoverished surroundings but because of what they were expected to endure. Seeing brutality and tragedy first hand, Jennifer dealt with it with amazing kindness and understanding - and a great deal of Cockney humor. She also earned the confidences of some whose lives were more strange, poignant and terrifying than any fiction.