The Stepney Doorstep Society

by Kate Thompson

The unsung and remarkable stories of the women who held London's East End together during not one, but two world wars.

'Inspiring tales of courage in the face of hardship' Mail on Sunday

'Inspiring . . . Takes you back to a time of community and helping one another' 5***** Reader Review

'It made me laugh and gasp in equal measure' 5***** Reader Review
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Meet Minksy, Gladys, Beatty, Joan and Girl Walker . . .

While the men were at war, these women ruled the streets of the East End. Struggling against poverty to survive, and fighting for their community in our country's darkest hours.

But there was also joy to be found. Across the East End the streets were alive - you need only walk a few steps for a smile from a neighbour or a strong cup of tea.

From taking over the London Underground, standing up to the Kray twins and crawling out of bombsites, The Stepney Doorstep Society tells the vivid and moving stories of the matriarchs who remain the backbone of the East End to this day.
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'Kate Thompson's study of five working-class women who lived through the blitz shows how informal collectives can provide lasting support and inspiration . . . [a] fascinating account' Guardian

'An important glimpse into a vanishing world' Sunday Express

'One of the best books I have read in recent years' 5***** Reader Review

'Crammed full of fascinating stories' BBC 2 Steve Wright

'Fascinating . . . It was fascinating to hear how these women kept going' 5***** Reader Review

'Astonishing' Radio 5 Live

Genres: Nonfiction, History, World War II, Biography, Biography Memoir, Womens, Family

317 pages, Kindle Edition

Published August 23, 2018

About the author

Kate Thompson was born in London and worked as a journalist for twenty years on women's magazines and national newspapers. She now lives in Sunbury with her husband, two sons and two rescue dogs. After ghost writing five memoirs, Kate moved into fiction.

Kate's first non-fiction social history documenting the forgotten histories of East End matriarchy, The Stepney Doorstep Society, was published in 2018 by Penguin. She is passionate about capturing lost voices and untold social histories.

Today Kate works as a journalist, author and library campaigner. Her most recent books, The Little Wartime Library (2022) and The Wartime Book Club (2023) by Hodder & Stoughton focus on two remarkable libraries in wartime. Her 100 libraries project, celebrates the richness and complexity of librarians work and the vital role of libraries in our communities.

Kate is also proud to have worked in collaboration with one of Britain's oldest Holocaust survivors, Renee Salt, to research and write, A mother's Promise (UK) Do Not Cry When I Die (US and Canada) to be published on the 80th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz-Birkenau.


Podcast host - From the Library With Love. Interviews with librarians, best-sellling authors and our remarkable wartime generation. https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast...

Reviews

[Maureen · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a memoir that takes a fascinating peek into the lives of London’s East End women, both during peacetime and throughout the dark days of the Second World War.

Join the unsung women who not only held things together during some of the darkest days in Great Britain’s history, but who fought numerous battles of their own on the home front, in an effort to improve their communities. Poverty was no stranger to these gutsy women, but their ingenuity knew no bounds!

There are the usual stories of women in the community who were the ones to go to if you were in any kind of trouble - the child minder, the abortionist, the midwife, the one who would lay out the dead, or act as counsellor in family feuds. There are also some moving stories, not least the Bethnal Green tube disaster in 1943, where over 170 civilians were crushed to death trying to escape an air raid. Everybody in the community knew someone who was killed in that tragedy, but it wasn’t spoken about afterwards for fear it would lower morale, particularly to a community already suffering the worst that the blitz could throw at them. They just got straight back on with their daily lives. It does make you wonder though, how many of them suffered from flashbacks and mental health issues resulting from the inability to speak about it.

I think we have much to learn from these resourceful women - they had little in the way of material possessions but they were happy, making the best of what life had thrown at them, they were definitely made of strong stuff!

From the street markets and the pedlars plying their wares, to the children playing hop scotch in the street, to the aroma of oxtail stew, if you enjoy social history, you’ll love this one.

*Thank you to Netgalley and Penguin Michael Joseph for my ARC. I have given an honest unbiased review in exchange *

[Paula Bardell-Hedley · Rating 3 out of 5]

“The Blitz was Hitler’s attempt to bring Britain to heel. He believed it would have such a devastating effect on civilian morale that the Government would be forced to negotiate peace terms. But he underestimated the British character – and particularly that of our matriarchs.”

The old cliché: ‘They don’t make ’em like they used to’, perfectly describes the indomitable matriarchs of the East End – our capital’s historic (some would say infamous) heart of wider East London, north of the River Thames.

These women ruled the old slum areas of the city, coming into their own during the First and Second World Wars when the men were sent away to fight. From Stepney to Shoreditch, they were the go-to ‘aunties’ who dispensed advice, held communities together and kept spirits up with pots of strong tea.

“Poverty breeds resourcefulness”, says author, Kate Thompson, and this was unquestionably true of Beatty, Hettie, Babs, Girl Walker, Dr Joan, Old Boots, Mrs Dudgeon and all the other “redoubtable working women” who lived through times of immense hardship but never forgot the meaning of familial love.

The slums were England’s version of a modern-day favela or shanty town – squalid, overcrowded sections of the city inhabited by people living in extreme poverty. Slum is thought to be an East End slang-word meaning ‘room’, which in 1845 evolved to ‘back slum’, meaning ‘back alley’ or ‘street of poor people’. It is often used as a derogatory term and has negative connotations, especially when employed by town planners or wealthy land-grabbers to delegitimize urban areas in the hope of repurposing them for money-making ventures.

Every street in every East End borough had a head female. Long before the welfare state came into being these women acted as defenders and enforcers who observed a strict code of honour which, according to Thompson, “included brute force, love, hope, humour, imagination, solidarity and resilience.” They were its chief protectors, matriarchal minders if you like.

By the time the author met, befriended and recorded their remarkable stories, many of these women were nonagenarians, even centenarians, though age had not dampened their grit and ebullience. Their recollections of forcefully requisitioning the London Underground during the Blitz, crawling from beneath bricks and rubble after nights of heavy bombardment, driving the British blackshirts (Oswald Mosley's British Union of Fascists) from Whitechapel during the Battle of Cable Street and standing up to the Kray-twins are, quite frankly, hair-raising, but they were equally doughty when it came to feeding large broods of children, standing in as mid-wives and holding down two or three jobs to keep the wolf from the door.

The Stepney Doorstep Society is a melange of invariably inspiring and often surprisingly joyful tales; an unvarnished social history of the individuals who held the local populace together during Britain’s darkest hours. Eminently readable, it is an important record of the unsung but hopefully never to be forgotten beaproned guardians of old working-class London.

Many thanks to Penguin UK - Michael Joseph for providing an advance review copy of this title.

[Amethyst Nyx · Rating 5 out of 5]

Not my usual choice but absolutely LOVED it!

I never write reviews, but felt compelled to write one for this book. I love history, especially British Women's history and this is why I was drawn to this book. I know little about the war although proud of our efforts I wouldn't usually pick up a book about it or London for that matter. This book has opened up a whole new genre for me and there is so much to learn from these woman, I held my hand to my heart while reading this book and wish I could see the stories of so many on the big screen like Dr Joan. I read a book recently by Jenni Murray about 21 Great Women, I would love to see Kate Thompson wrote something similar but about the stories of our lesser known or unsung heroes.

[Joan · Rating 5 out of 5]

Absolutely wonderful book. True stories of women and kids in London’s East End during WWII and after. They really did win the war, holding families together, raising huge families of 9, 10, 12 or more kids on next to nothing. But everyone pitched in and worked together, pooling what resources they had. No one was better off than anyone else, a true community spirit that is gone today. Amazing.

[Kelly Furniss · Rating 4 out of 5]

A very interesting insight through memoirs in to the lives of London's East End women before, during and after the Second World War. Such diverse chapters, some were horrifying and others quite uplifting. At the start I found my attention wondering but then in other chapters I was engrossed.
Ultimately what this book portrays is the strength and community spirit of these ladies through the poverty and hardship.
I really enjoyed the snippets of recipes and remedies and the photographs included.
What really brought the story alive was when the author caught up with the ladies in their later years, it really made me smile and feel quite emotional.
A book I would recommend.

[Denise · Rating 4 out of 5]

What a thoroughly enjoyable book to anyone interested in life in wartime Britain. The Stepney Doorstop Society is a fascinating read is based on first hand accounts from women of the East End and a great insight to their hard lives. An excellent read that makes you appreciate the life we have now.

[Heather Copping · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is no story but very true real life accounts of life in the East End of London.
Several accounts will stay with me for a long time. Girl Walkers evacuation recollections, things were not as rosy as sometimes portrayed. Beatty and her time growing up as a young Jewish girl and the Cable Street riots. Dr Goldie, a hard working doctor who looked after anyone who needed her help (she reminds me of "Call the Midwife "). She was known as the sixpenny doctor as that was all she charged or sometimes nothing at all. The Bethnal Green tube disaster I found to be very moving, it sounded so very terrible, some of these stories have never been told before and they make you feel so very sad.
This is an evocative read of East End life told through the lives of women, who through the years were the mainstay of the household, the family and the area they lived in. There was laughter and tears and I think they had to have humour to survive.
I think this book should be in every school so children can learn from these ladies (and men) what really happened in the past. There was great resourcefulness of these people, they were poor but they were happy. I think we have a lot to learn from these people.
I would recommend this book to anyone who enjoys social history or likes reading wartime sagas as this will show you what really happened.

[Claire Turner · Rating 3 out of 5]

An enjoyable read; although I found the narrative somewhat difficult to follow at times, it seemed to flit from place to place without much warning.
That aside, this story is about women with gumption - and my take from this leads me to say, it was gumption in the bucket loads that was needed to keep their neighbourhood from collapsing.
My family have lived in the Welsh Valleys for generations and as far as I know none were ever subjected to the plight these girls faced. I've never ventured as far as the East-End of London and found the depiction of life back then a struggle to come to terms with.
The thought of war makes me shudder and with news of what families are enduring in Ukraine right now, I can only hope they find a means by which to survive the desperate days they are faced with.
I can only admire these women and remain thankful for the life I have enjoyed.

[Karen · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a wonderful book about five central women who were the ‘backbone of their tight-knit matriarchies’. In a world consumed by money, greed, social media and instant gratification, it was refreshing and humbling to read tales, through memoirs, of these women who overcome poverty and adversities such as the dark days during the Second World War.

In addition to hearing tales about these brave, strong women, the author also adds historical facts and figures and other comments which are also interesting.

I highly recommend this book to anyone interested in life in the East End of London during (and just after) the war.

[Jessica · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book is eye opening & a book I couldn’t put down from the second I started it. It takes you back to a time of war and suffering. It allows you to understand how war effected not just men, but children & women alike. If your interested in stories about the past & how they lived then I definitely recommend that you read this book. The way which this book was written allowed me to imagine exactly what times would be like and it was like I was living in those times. It made me appreciate all I have in my life and reminded me how lucky we are that we don’t go through the same daily struggles that these women & children did. This is a book of women empowering each other & it reminded me that we all need to stick together and be there no matter what. I loved this book and I will be certain to recommend to all friends & family.

[Fiona · Rating 4 out of 5]

A fascinating insight into the lives of London’s East End women, before, during and after the Second World War.
Clearly, a well researched account and written in very accessible language, this book examines the tremendous contribution women made during this period of great hardship, tragedy and social change.

My thanks to TBConFB, the publisher and the author for this copy. The stories and the women will stay with me.

[Shreedevi Gurumurty · Rating 5 out of 5]

A powerful story of the unsung, remarkable women who held London's East End together during two World Wars. Minsky, Gladys,Beatty,Joan, Girl Walker.While the men were at war,these women ruled the streets of the East End.Brought up with a firm hand in the steaming slums and teeming tenements,they struggled against poverty to survive, and fought for their community in England's darkest hours.But there was joy to be found.From Stepney to Bethnal Green, Whitechapel to Shoreditch,the streets were alive with peddlers and market stalls hawking their wares,children playing outside, and food.I learnt a lot about the importance of discipline, responsibility, humility and loyalty to one another that leads to finding a common good.Sacrifice can be good for us.We are more alike than different, and how we act toward each other is as important as anything else we aspire to do.For the East End women:Respect,Tolerance,Pride and Cleanliness were cherished virtues,as it should be.Have an iron first in a velvet glove.Back then there was a lot of unfairness in how women were treated,especially for unmarried mothers.These women saw their lives for what it was,not how they'd like it to be,and they got on accordingly without overthinking.We've always long known that strong families and communities are the basis for great societies.These women didn't have to be taught this, they knew intuitively.The institutionalised help we see today like counselling,didn't exist then so women relied on their neighbourhood aunties and go-to women to help with pregnancy, childminding, marital strifes, rent payment issues etc and they returned the favours often.Many children hard grafted at a young age to put food on the table.These people didn't have riches,but they had a wealth of love and pragmatism.The East Enders had an indomitable spirit that served them well during the Blitz.Unfortunately, postwar suburbanisation and council luxury slum redevelopment saw the tight knit community being eroded as people moved away and kept to themselves.However, there's always hope for our fractured and disconnected communities to band together again and keep going onwards for each other.

[Karen Wherlock · Rating 5 out of 5]

My Mum and her family lived in London as long as anyone can remember and I grew up listening to her stories of strong women and neighbourhoods, where everyone knew and took care of everyone else. In one generation these communities were wiped out by bombs, and good intentions gone wrong, and it has left a gaping hole in society. This book keeps the stories alive by putting the women who survived extreme poverty, 2 world wars and gentrification, firmly at the centre of the history of East London. The likes of this generation won’t come around again, but we must remember them because, by doing so, we can remember what we’re capable of being for each other.

[Vicky · Rating 3 out of 5]

A tribute to those forgotten, unnamed, heroines of those desperate times. There are heart-warming stories in here and I can but hope I would have the courage and determination shown by these pillars of that society.

My grandma was a 'nipper' in London during the war. Her mother refused to let her be evacuated. She always said, even to me, 'You're safer with family.'

An enjoyment.

[Reuben Wood · Rating 2 out of 5]

I'm really surprised at the high rating of this book. I'm even more surprised that this was written by a professional author and went through professional editing!

I wrote a little example paragraph of what it feels like reading every page of this book to vent my frustrations: You'd have to have your head in a hole not to notice something was going on here, Betsy, thirty-six, a proud matriarch - tough as nails, full of love and pride, poor as dirt. They don't make them like this anymore, not now we have the welfare state. Betsy was angry, her mouth a thin slit, her knuckles form a ball around her broom, turning white. 'Don't you talk to my girl like that ever again!' she cried and punched her neighbour in the face. Her punch, from pushing her wheelbarrow every day, was stronger than a freight train. Her nippers cried out triumphantly, crowding around her. 'Yes, mum!' That's why Betsy was the matriarch.

The whole thing is a mess of repetition and tired cliches; every single time we are introduced to a new woman, we have to be reminded that they were poor, tough, but full of love, but really, absolutely dirt poor - even if they were the local butcher AND money lender. Anytime there's a fight, lips turn to thin, white slits, knuckles ball into white fists and we are reminded just how strong this strong tough matriarch was. Stronger than any woman that lives today. Because we didn't have the welfare state back then. So people had to work. Not like today. Because today we have the welfare state.

There are other annoying bits, like in the final chapter Hettie is described as having brown eyes then less than 20 pages later her eyes are blue. I went back and checked to make sure I wasn't imagining things, but there it was. Very frustrating and sloppy for a nonfiction, based on interviews with real women.

It's a real shame because the first story in the preface had me fighting back tears on the train. I've been living in the East End for the last four years now and my maternal great- and great-great-grandmother lived and died in the East End during the era focused on in this book. Except the story I am told of my maternal lineage is a far cry from what is told here. Full of commonplace, societally-sanctioned domestic and sexual abuse, war trauma, poverty trauma, etc. etc. My great-grandmother has only ever been described to me as an angel - but she had no voice, no autonomy, and her husband was a stern abusive man who certainly ran the household. When visiting her as a child, I remember we had to watch the clock to make sure we left before he came home as he wanted nothing to do with us - I believe because me and my brother were born out of wedlock.

The harsher, darker realities of being a working-class woman in the first half of 20th-century Britain are vaguely touched on. They're skirted around here and there, particularly in the later chapters, but often still seen through the rose-tinted glasses of the "strong matriarch." There was a scene that I found particularly disturbing, of a retelling of a story told by a now nonagenarian describing a conversation she overheard her mother, the local backstreet abortionist and wife of a gangster, having with a tearful neighbour. This neighbour was begging her to speak with her gangster husband so that he could have a word with the neighbour's husband and tell him to stop - and I've paused writing here, because I'm still upset that this word was never once used in the book - to stop raping her nightly. This scene was told to illustrate that the women back then had their own ways of sorting things out (I think??) and not to illustrate that women had so little autonomy over their own bodies, that they couldn't tell their husbands no, I don't want to have sex right now, and instead they had to go to their neighbour, crying, begging, to get the men to sort it out between themselves. It's horrific.

I don't think this book needed to talk about these things, but it was particularly offensive that Thompson clearly had an agenda with her writing and framed all these stories in a rosy, cheerful kind of way - not allowing them to just speak for themselves. I think this book would have worked much better as a collection of interviews - not as an almost fictional retelling spun as factual, nonbiased, nonfiction. But the writing was sloppy, the agenda obvious and the rape, abuse and violence swept under the rug and ignored. Quite British I suppose.

[Dawn Brookes · Rating 4 out of 5]

A thoroughly engaging and well-written history of the plight of women during WWII and beyond. The social histories of the women involved were researched in depth and their stories told in a manner that brought them to life through the pages of this book. I was drawn in to each chapter in a different way, some chapters were horrifying, such as the Bethnal Green tube disaster and back street abortions and some were uplifting such as those covering the lives of many of the incredible women who adorn the pages. I particularly loved Dr Joan and will be reading the biography covering her life.
Having lived and worked in the East End from 1980-1982 at the London Chest Hospital in Bethnal Green the stories of the matriarchs resonated with me. The reality of developers cutting through the history of the East End (covered in a later chapter) also resonated deeply as this hospital too, has come into the hands of property developers in spite of surviving two world wars!
The stories rang true and I understood the need to portray the women as matriarchs and demonstrate their strength in a positive way as they deserve this. My only criticism, and its a small one, is that some of the women may have been romanticised slightly. There were parts of the book, such as those where any hint of ambition was quashed by the strength of the matriarchs and vigilante justice meted out to any who didn't conform were only fleetingly addressed.
On balance, the book shows the strength of these marvellous women in spite of the hardships endured and that was its purpose. Highly recommended for anyone interested in the East End, war years or matriarchs as I'm sure such stories would be true in any big cities of the era.

Thank you to TBC and publisher for a copy of the book. This review is my true opinion of the book.

[Kristine · Rating 5 out of 5]

I am drawn to anything WWII-related - whether it is historical fiction or true memoirs. This is the first book I've read on the English side (I've gone through a decent share of continental Europe accounts). It's not just "a" true story, it is a beautifully woven set of many true stories of the incredible women of the East End. With my love for London and my husband's family from the East End (his nan is one of the evacuees children and tells us a little about it sometimes), I hold this book quite close to me. These women's stories should be so much more well known. Their stories should be part of our history books. We all know the women had to step into men's employment whilst they were away at war, but there is so much more about what they did and overcame that I never knew about until reading this compilation. The author writes it in such a way that brings it all back to life again rather than just a dull outsider retelling of interviews she had.

And the bluntness of these women who are still with us today to tell us all the things we are doing wrong. I mean, they're all 100 years old or knocking on that door and lived pre-welfare system where your street helped you out and you could make magic out of nothing! They have such important lessons to teach us and we should not be so ignorant to keep ignoring them. And they've all outlived their husbands by miles - that's saying something.

And as I decided to pick this up just as we celebrated International Women's Day, it was even more treasured as I read it. The fact that this was my first time considering some of the events of WWII from these women's perspective is exactly why we still need International Women's Day.

[B. Fleetwood · Rating 5 out of 5]

Kate Thompson's well written account of the real-life experiences of women in the East End is a fascinating insight into how a London community survived war time Britain. They did more than survive - these strong-minded and gutsy women stood up to thugs, brutish landlords and even those who ran London Transport (opposing the ridiculous rule that the local people could not take refuge in the Underground stations during air raids, when hundreds were being killed above ground).

Fighting for women’s rights and demonstrating a wonderful camaraderie, the author does not fall into the trap of painting the Stepney Doorstep Society with ‘rose-coloured’ shades. Indeed, many of these characters were far from saints, capable of mistreating others who differed from them or came from the wrong area or faith group. They could also behave like ruffians, even inciting riots (the story of the poor German parachutist unfortunate enough to bale out over this area is a sobering one indeed). The resulting realism, both stark and intriguing gave me the sense that I had met with Beatty, Girl Walker, Minksy and all the other women in the book.

The work that has gone into this piece of social history is extraordinary. The information from interviews, historical records and national statistics are all skilfully interweaved to provide a profound and engrossing read. I am most grateful to the author and Penguin books for an advance copy of this great book and I can highly recommend it to anyone interested in how world events impact on a small tight-knit community. Five stars from me.

[Julie · Rating 4 out of 5]

A very interesting and insightful book into a lost era. I read it because my cousin recommended it to me after reading it in her book club. Our grandmother was from Stepney and our parents cockneys. Sadly our grandmother died very young after having four children and living in poverty. Our grandfather who also died before we were born was listed as a scavenger. Two generations before they were business owners in Scotland but came down to make their fortune in London. This book tells of the dreadful time in the war and as a mother I can’t imagine either keeping the children with me through the bombing or sending them away, as my father was. They were tough women out of necessity and lived very hard lives. Their attitudes are what got them through and all being in the same boat meant they all just pulled together. There is something very appealing to the way they lived, but I am sure unless we were to go through similar hardships and struggles it won’t be repeated. We have a lot to learn from these amazing women. I loved the photos in the book it really brought them to life. A great history book of otherwise unseen women.

[Linda Fallows · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book is a real treasure. Although difficult to read at times, due to the traumatic details of the lives of the women written about, it was also a fascinating insight into the lives of women during the Second World War in the East end of London. The bravery, humour, and pragmatism of these women shines through on every page. Many of the details written about are things we would not normally think about, but which profoundly affected the lives of the women of the East end. Things like how to feed seven children on one piece of scrag end of meat, or how the Eastenders stayed safe ( or not) in the air raids.
I had to take a break several times during the reading of this book because the traumatic details overcame me, but I also found myself laughing out loud at some of the antics of the women and children. I would heartily recommend this book to anyone interested in wartime Britain, but also to anyone who likes to read about the day to day life of the strong matriarchs of Britain past.

[Luisa Jones · Rating 4 out of 5]

3.5 stars for me. This was an entertaining read and the story of these women deserves to be told. Our generation can’t begin to imagine what life was like during WWII in the poorest parts of Britain, and it’s good to be reminded of the hardships people faced.
My main reservation about this book concerns the way the author paints a rather rosy picture of these women who used their fists to bully others into submission, as well as the gangsters who were called upon to prevent marital rape (if you had the right connections, of course).
I can’t help but feel the author makes the East End out to be far kinder and more welcoming than it actually was for many people.
Moreover, Thompson claims that these women lived to such a great age because of rationing and hard work, conveniently skating over the fact that many of their husbands died comparatively young.
Still, she knows how to tell a good tale, and there were some quite moving moments. Overall it’s a worthwhile read, especially as a starting point to move on to explore more deeply.

[Jennifer · Rating 5 out of 5]

I absolutely loved this book, it’s a lovely looking hardback book, focusing on Minksy, Gladys, Beatty, Joan, and, Girl Walker, the “unsung and remarkable women who held London's East End together during not one, but two world wars”.
This book tells these women’s stories. It was an engaging and insightful read, and I was captured by, and involved in these women and their lives from page one until the last page. The added bonus of photos of the women in the book added to the feeling that you really knew these amazing women and their families.
I was amazed and awed at the accomplishments of these ordinary matriarchs of their families, fighting poverty and war but still striving for better for their communities. The book is full of moving stories, and I recommend this book to everyone, to learn about the effects of the wars from a different perspective, that of the women, the “back bone of the East End”.

[Jennifer · Rating 5 out of 5]

I absolutely loved this book, it’s a lovely looking hardback book, focusing on Minksy, Gladys, Beatty, Joan, and, Girl Walker, the “unsung and remarkable women who held London's East End together during not one, but two world wars”.
This book tells these women’s stories. It was an engaging and insightful read, and I was captured by, and involved in these women and their lives from page one until the last page. The added bonus of photos of the women in the book added to the feeling that you really knew these amazing women and their families.
I was amazed and awed at the accomplishments of these ordinary matriarchs of their families, fighting poverty and war but still striving for better for their communities. The book is full of moving stories, and I recommend this book to everyone, to learn about the effects of the wars from a different perspective, that of the women, the “back bone of the East End”.

[Ursula · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book has an extraordinary impact.

It's a very well-researched social history which often reads like a novel when it relates the anecdotes from Kate Thompson's informants. We get to know these women like friends as they return time and again to tell us more about their lives. The researcher uses techniques from fiction to bring the stories to life; direct speech, descriptive phrases and a full palette of emotions.

The sections which give us the background history to events and situations are very welcome as they add context to the stories and personal experiences. The two types of writing flow around one another seamlessly.

Two sets of photographs and a preface which introduces Kate Thompson's writing style are real assets rather than mere decoration. I would have liked to see a simple map of all the London boroughs mentioned because I'm not familiar with the geography, and I imagine this would be useful for any reader who is not a Londoner.

[Shar · Rating 5 out of 5]

I thoroughly enjoyed this book – clearly, the author loves her subject and researched in depth. The book is based on the women of the East End during the war years – it is a thorough view of how these women coped during what was a living nightmare, their thoughts and actions, they were the glue that kept life together during that difficult time.

The author has recreated their lives using interviews from women of the East End who lived through the experience of not only WWII but also poverty and hardship.
A valuable read on many levels – including women in history, the true cost of war on the lives of the ordinary people and the resilience of the human spirit against all odds.

I did have some issues with my kindle version, words/letters were missing but it did not diminish the quality of the work.

Thank you to Netgalley and the publisher Penguin for allowing me to read this book in exchange for my honest opinion and review.

[Cassandra MADEUP BookBlog · Rating 3 out of 5]

This was a very well researched tale about the women of the east end during war time.

These incredible women were fascinating to read about, and i found myself wishing to meet them time and again, yet at the same time this book makes me feel as if I already have, describing and telling tales of their lives in a way that makes me feel as if I was there with them.

The pictures throughout made it all feel very realistic, as if I had been transported their to talk to them about what happened in that difficult time.

This isn’t a simple recreation, and a lot of thought and research has clearly been done to make this an honest representation of the women of the times lives and trials.

I thoroughly recommend this to anybody who is interested in Historical tales, beautifully written and thoroughly engaging, I read this fast than I thought I would because I couldn’t put it down!

[Pnina Savery · Rating 5 out of 5]

Remarkable book! This fascinating read is based on first hand accounts from women of the East End who the author directly interviewed. These true stories of women who battled against all sorts of hardships, including poverty, the Blitz in World War Two, and much more beyond, are incredibly inspiring. This book is full of pearls of wisdom and advice for life, alongside historical facts and well-researched events. I was shocked to learn of some of the atrocities that occured in the East End that are not very well-known at all, but the pride the women interviewed have in their background and communities is amazing. My own great grandparents lived in the East End, and it was wonderful to learn more about what their life must have been like. The book is well written and very easy to read, with the characters coming to life through their own memories. A must read for all!

[Kathy Monroe · Rating 5 out of 5]

This was an amazing book. Tales of women in London during WWII and how they 'held down the fort' so to say. How they had to go out and work to support their families as many men were away in the war. How these hard working and hard core women had to work together as a community to help each other through. The author interviews these women who, at the time of the book, were in their late 80's through 101 years old!!! Their strength of character, their loves, their losses, things they had to do to survive, bring a lost part of history right to you. I was amazed at how much I learned from their stories and how they help me look at older folks with more compassion and with more of an eagerness to find out about their stories myself. This was a very enlightening book that I highly encourage anyone to read...it's not just for women to read.

[Booklover BEV · Rating 5 out of 5]

A TRUE STORY. WW2 when the women took over the mens work. this book takes you through true accounts, from bethral green,whitechapel, shoreditch, bow,hoxton,aldgate cockney east end london. Kate tells it how they know it, harrowing accounts from these women, you get taking on a journey through this book. all women all different with stories that will make you gasps, laugh and cry while reading. this book has everything from remedies,words of wisdom,recipes and photos, all wrapped into one book. Girl walker,Beatty,Jessie Smith,Babs and Minksy all of you women that have made this amazing read and the fantastic author for writing it all i can say is " BLESS EM ALL" i loved it and it is my favourite read so far this year.

[Helen · Rating 4 out of 5]

4- 4.5 stars

Wonderful social history book covering the life and experiences of the East End matriarchs and their families, during the blitz

Well structured and written with so many first hand accounts of life in those times - some jaw dropping, some heartbreaking and some truly inspirational stories. I particularly loved and learned from the accounts of the tube shelters (including The Bethnal Green Disaster where 173 people were crushed to death and the subsequent 'no news' coverage to prevent the enemy hearing about it) and the Battle of Cable Street. These women lived through incredible hardship during terrifying times and the author has done a sterling job of recording their memories for posterity.