The production responded that the series was a period drama, not a documentary, and "highly accurate to the time it depicts".

On a parting note, I have the real names of the characters that loomed large in the television series and those that inspired characters not explicitly featured in the books but feature in the series. A total of twelve annual series, of eight episodes each, have aired subsequently year-on-year, along with an annual Christmas special broadcast every Christmas Day since 2012.In the book named Shadows of the Workhouse, the plot revolves around especially: Frank, Jane, and Peggy. Jennifer Worth trained as a nurse at the Royal Berkshire Hospital, Reading and was later ward sister at the Elizabeth Garrett Anderson Hospital in London, then the Marie Curie Hospital, also in London. I have to say it is probably mainly a book for women as it deals with - as the title says -midwifery and therefore babies and births and medical complications as well as women's home lives in the '50s and '60s. The Great White Plague ravaged Europe in volcanic proportions during the 1800s and the 1900s, and yet when Benjamin Marten suggested the concepts of germs and contagion in 1722, he was ridiculed. The series was created by Heidi Thomas, originally based on the memoirs of Jennifer Worth who worked with the Community of St.

The Wall Street Journal declared that "this immensely absorbing drama is worth any trouble it takes to catch up with its singular pleasures", [47] while The Washington Post stated that "the cast is marvelous, the gritty, post-war set pieces are meticulously recreated". Made me grateful to be living at this time because I don't think I could cope with what the very poor went through.BBC Worldwide also sold the programme to SVT (Sweden); NRK (Norway); RÚV (Iceland); Yle (Finland); AXN White (Spain; Portugal); ERT (Greece); [23] [24] ABC in Australia and TVNZ 1 in New Zealand, where its debut recorded a 35% share of the audience – 20% above average. For example, there are an elderly nun who is somehow crazy, a mother who has given birth to over twenty three children, teenage sex workers, and rough and tough dock workers. District midwife Jennifer Worth takes us into her last days at the house and some fascinating stories are told through reading.

This book is filled with all sorts of heart-warming gems, readers' responses and personal histories. Worth wrote the first volume of her memoirs by hand and sent them to Coates to read, and Coates later served as advisor on the books and the TV adaptation. I've not watched a lot of the TV series but the book is much better as it is 'real' with the most brilliant narrative. Parents with a dozen or more children regularly shared two or three rooms, counting themselves lucky to have an indoor cold–water tap with which to manage the cooking, cleaning, and endless piles of laundry.

The books paint a vivid picture of life in the East End, a kind of life most of us cannot even imagine: children playing in bombsites, crowded tenements with communal lavatories, large families with 13-15 children, laundry done by hand, brothels in abandoned buildings, loud costermongers deafening as one walks past, pubs full of casual labour in the evenings, sailors being nursed by nuns, nurses getting intimately involved, and hospitals being places of dread, not healing. John the Divine and many others like them to keep medical care going amidst heavy bombing, most of which was concentrated in the Docklands. For the most part it depicts the day-to-day lives of the midwives and those in their local neighbourhood of Poplar, with certain historical events of the era having a direct or indirect effect on the characters and storylines.

Shadows of the Workhouse’ (2005; reissued 2008) and ‘Farewell to the East End’ (2009) also became bestsellers. On 3 November 2014, BBC announced that an eight-episode fifth series had been commissioned; it began airing on 17 January 2016; the fifth series takes the story into 1961. If one has had the privilege of having grown up in this indomitable country, one knows the unconquerable attitude of which I speak. The Narrator: Nicola Barber is an Audie Award-winning narrator whose voice can be heard in television and radio commercials and popular video games such as World of Warcraft. A third eight-part series aired in the UK from January 2014, [33] with a consolidated average of 10.She worked with the Sisters of St John the Divine, an Anglican community of nuns, and focused her efforts on aiding the poor before becoming a ward sister at the Elizabeth Garrett Anderson Hospital in Bloomsbury.