Shadows Of The Workhouse: The Drama Of Life In Postwar London

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Maysel Brar, for legal advice; Douglas May, Peggy Sayer, Betty Hawney, Jennie Whitefield, Joan Hands and Helen Whitehorn for advice, proof-reading, typing and checking; Philip and Suzannah, for everything; all the kind people who have written to me about the workhouse system, particularly Kathleen Daley and Dennis Strange; Chris Lloyd, Bancroft Library, Mile End, London; Jonathan Evans, Royal London Hospital Archives, London; Eve Hostettler, Island History Trust, the Isle of Dogs, London E14; Jean Todd, Allan Young and Jeff Wright for help with archive pictures; London Metropolitan Archives, London EC1; Hackney Archives, London N1; Camden Local Studies and Archives Centre; The Local History Collection of Gravesend Library, Kent; Peter Higginbotham for his help in checking the material on the history of the workhouse.

Nonnatus House was both a convent and the working base for the nursing and midwifery services of the Sisters of St Raymund Nonnatus.1 The house was situated in the heart of the London Docklands and the practice covered Poplar, the Isle of Dogs, Stepney, Limehouse, Millwall, Bow, Mile End and parts of White-chapel. I worked with the Sisters in the 1950s. It was a time, shortly after the Second World War, when the scars of the devastated city could be seen everywhere – bomb sites, blown-out shops, closed streets and roofless houses (often inhabited). It was a time when the docks were fully operational, and millions of tons of cargo poured in and out every day. Huge merchant vessels sailed up the Thames, to be piloted into the wharves through a complex system of canals, locks and basins. It was not unusual to pass along a road within a few feet of the towering hulk of a merchant ship.

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