QUOTE FOR THE DAY

“The Pill was introduced in the early 1960s and modern woman was born. Women were no longer going to be tied to the cycle of endless babies; they were going to be themselves. With the Pill came what we now call the sexual revolution. Women could, for the first time in history, be like men, and enjoy sex for its own sake. In the late 1950s we had eighty to a hundred deliveries a month on our books. In 1963 the number had dropped to four or five a month. Now that is some social change!”

__________

“Whoever heard of a midwife as a literary heroine? Yet midwifery is the very stuff of drama. Every child is conceived either in love or lust, is born in pain, followed by joy or sometimes remorse. A midwife is in the thick of it, she sees it all.”

__________

“Sister Evangelina had plenty of homespun advice to offer her patients: "Where-ere you be, let your wind go free", to which the reply was always chanted: "In Church and Chapel let it rattle".”

   __________

                                       

- Jennifer Worth (1935 - 2011), quotes from Call the Midwife

Worth as a nurse, 1950's

By the way:

Great TV show, on Britbox, a new episode of Season 14 drops each Thursday.

Worth wrote a best-selling trilogy about her work as a nurse and midwife practising in the poverty-stricken East End of London in the 1950s: 

Call the Midwife (2002)

Shadows of the Workhouse (2005) and 

Farewell to The East End (2009). 

The television series, Call the Midwife, based on her books, began broadcasting on BBC One in the UK on 15 January 2012 and on PBS in the US on 30 September 2012.

She left midwifery to work in palliative care, married the artist Philip Worth in 1963, and they had two daughters.

Worth left nursing in 1973 to pursue her musical interests. In 1974, she was appointed a licentiate of the London College of Music, where she taught piano and singing. She obtained a fellowship in 1984. She performed as a soloist and with choirs throughout the UK and Europe.

Worth was highly critical of Mike Leigh's 2004 film Vera Drake, for depicting the consequences of illegal abortions unrealistically. She argued that the method shown in the film, far from being fairly quick and painless, was in fact almost invariably fatal for the woman. As a result of the harm done with such illegal procedures, she approved of the legalization of abortion in the UK, saying this was a medical, not moral, issue.

Worth died in 2011 after having been diagnosed with cancer of the oesophagus earlier in the year.