Not only are these stories a personal accounting of the grinding poverty and hardships experienced by the people, they are also a sociological commentary on what was a common practice in the time period at the beginning of the 20th century.

Living in the shadow of the workhouse | HistoryExtra Living in the shadow of the workhouse | HistoryExtra

One old man told Worth how, as a boy, he had been loading coke on a barrow one day when he saw, 'an old bloke come up with an old girl, his wife. That was very well-written and much more immediate, dealing as it did with events that happened to and around Worth herself. Jane felt no more pain and was conscious only of a red mist around her and a terrible jolt to her body each time the lash fell. They met and lived together in a workhouse as young kids—one was only two, one four and one six at the start.Go back to what your mother taught you': TV presenter Susannah Constantine on the six money-saving hacks that helped her cut energy use on laundry by a THIRD! Shadows of the Workhouse: The Drama of Life in Post-War London by Jennifer Worth | London Evening Standard".

The Midwife Trilogy: Call the Midwife, Shadows of the The Midwife Trilogy: Call the Midwife, Shadows of the

The horror of extreme cruelty to children, together with the long-term emotional damage sustained, receives neither dumbing-down nor brushing over. especially lonely ones… she created with her vivid imagination a story that her stay at the workhouse would soon be coming to an end. William Beveridge’s report of 1942 proposed extending National Insurance to cover all classes, providing a range of benefits sufficient to live on. With her delicate bone structure she could have been very beautiful, but her excessive dowdiness and her shapeless grey hair made her seem nondescript. The master tried to pull the little girl away, but Sir Ian, not at all embarrassed, patted and comforted her, urging her to join her playmates - 'and I promise you will go to the seaside in the summer time.

It is split into three sections, each focusing on a different person (or group of people) that she knew. These parts just didn't ring as true to me as her earlier reminiscences when she wrote about events where she was present. Thanks to his friends in the press however, his little indiscretions were in the main kept out of the papers.