Farewell to the East End: The Last Days of the East End Midwives by Jennifer Worth

My rating:

Imo, this deserves 3.5 stars, but it felt wrong rounding it up to 4 stars as it was slightly less light-hearted than the first two volumes of the trilogy.

In this 3rd and last volume of the “Call the Midwife” series, Jennifer Worth ties the loose ends of her first two volumes describing the hardships and joys of nursing in the East End in the 1950s.

The author was obviously a firm believer in the progress made in midwifery from the Midwives Act, 1902 onwards. It’s wonderful to think that over the course of a 100 years the loss of a child, then a habitual occurrence, has turned into the epitome of pain, the sole loss parents can no longer fathom, even less recover from.

The writing stays easy, well-paced, and interesting. This book felt like a pot pourri of everything that hadn’t been said in the first two volumes from lost babies, hospitals, infirmaries, backstreet abortions, to the progress in midwifery and medicine. This volume also bears more references and, facts and figures, than the previous two - and short essays. I found it a little solemn at times.

In a nutshell, I would summarise the three volumes as follow (all in the 1950s):
1. Midwifery in the East End with some more youthful moments thrown in like friendships and a crazy night trip to Brighton!
2. The Workhouses and their terrible post-war legacies
3. Lost babies, child mortality, East End brawls, facts and figures, infirmaries, tuberculosis, ship’s women, backstreet abortions, and also uplifting stories of midwifery, and the author’s farewell to the East End and her near and dear.

“... life is made of happiness and tragedy in equal proportions, and we will never change that.”


You have to hand it to Jennifer Worth: through all the hardships she witnessed, she remains upbeat and even humorous in her memoirs. I’m glad I read all three books, and though the last felt a little more dispersed, and a tad more solemn, it also brought tears of joy and sadness to my eyes, and made for a moving finale.

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