Jess > Jess's Quotes

“No,” said Hermione shortly. “Have either of you seen my copy of Numerology and Gramatica?”
“Oh, yeah, I borrowed it for a bit of bedtime reading,” said Ron, but very quietly.”
― J.K. Rowling, Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban

“Their devotion showed me there were no versions of love there was only... Love. That it had no equal and that it was worth searching for, even if that search took a lifetime.”
― Jennifer Worth, The Midwife: A Memoir of Birth, Joy, and Hard Times

“Now and then in life, love catches you unawares, illuminating the dark corners of your mind, and filling them with radiance. Once in a while you are faced with a beauty and a joy that takes your soul, all unprepared, by assault.”
― Jennifer Worth, Call the Midwife: A Memoir of Birth, Joy, and Hard Times

“But life is made of happiness and tragedy in equal proportions, and we will never change that.”
― Jennifer Worth, Call the Midwife: Farewell to the East End

“Life turns on little things. The momentous events in history can leave us untouched, while small events may shape our destinies.”
― Jennifer Worth, Shadows of the Workhouse

“I have a theory that all human babies are born prematurely. Given the human life span – three score years and ten – to be comparable with other animals of similar longevity, human gestation should be about two years. But the human head is so big by the age of two that no woman could deliver it. So our babies are born prematurely, in a state of utter helplessness.”
― Jennifer Worth, Call the Midwife: A Memoir of Birth, Joy, and Hard Times

“In the Russian Orthodox Church there is the concept of the Holy Fool. It means someone who is a fool to the ways of the world, but wise to the ways of God. I think that Ted, from the moment he saw the baby, knew that he could not possibly be the father. ...Perhaps he saw in that moment that if he so much as questioned the baby's fatherhood, it would mean humiliation for the child and might jeopardize his entire future. ...Perhaps he understood that he could not reasonably expect an independent and energetic spirit like Winnie to find him sexually exciting and fulfilling.

...And so he decided upon the most unexpected, and yet the simplest course of all. He chose to be such a Fool that he couldn't see the obvious.”
― Jennifer Worth, The Midwife: A Memoir of Birth, Joy, and Hard Times

“I am forced to the conclusion that modern medicine does not know it all.”
― Jennifer Worth, Call the Midwife: A Memoir of Birth, Joy, and Hard Times

“The Pill was introduced in the early 1960s and modern woman was born. Women were no longer going to be tied to the cycle of endless babies; they were going to be themselves. With the Pill came what we now call the sexual revolution. Women could, for the first time in history, be like men, and enjoy sex for its own sake. In the late 1950s we had eighty to a hundred deliveries a month on our books. In 1963 the number had dropped to four or five a month. Now that is some social change!”
― Jennifer Worth, Call the Midwife: A Memoir of Birth, Joy, and Hard Times

“I remember one old woman we pulled out of the rubble. She wasn’t hurt. She gripped my arm and said: ‘That bugger Hitler. ’E’s killed me old man, good riddance, ’e’s killed me kids, more’s the pity. ‘E’s bombed me ’ouse, so I got nowhere ’a live, bu’ ’e ain’t got me. An’ I got sixpence in me pocket an’ vat pub on ve corner, Master’s Arms, ain’t been bombed, so let’s go an’ ’ave a drink an’ a sing-song.’” There”
― Jennifer Worth, Shadows of the Workhouse

“Twenty-five years later, a shy young girl called Lady Diana Spencer became engaged to marry Prince Charles, heir to the throne. I saw several film clips of her arriving at various engagements. Each time when the car stopped, the front nearside door would open, and her bodyguard would step out and open the rear door for Lady Diana. Then he would stand, jaw thrust forward, legs slightly apart, and look coolly around him at the crowds, a mature Jack, still practising the skills he had acquired in childhood, looking after his lady.”
― Jennifer Worth, Call the Midwife: A Memoir of Birth, Joy, and Hard Times

“I did not regard it as a moral issue, but as a medical issue. A minority of women will always want an abortion. Therefore it must be done properly.”
― Jennifer Worth, Call the Midwife: Farewell to the East End

“Nothing binds people more strongly than the same sense of humour, and the ability to laugh together.”
― Jennifer Worth, Shadows of the Workhouse

“And ‘woman’ in the slums is capable of taking on almost superhuman responsibility, from a very young age, that would crush most of us. Today they live in luxury — look at all the giddy young girls around us — they have no memory of how their mothers and grandmothers lived and died. They have no understanding of what it took to raise a family twenty or thirty years ago.”
― Jennifer Worth, Shadows of the Workhouse

“Sister Evangelina shared this robust humour. Before an enema: “Now then, Dad, we’re going to put a squib up your arse, shake your insides about a bit. Got the jerry ready, Mother, and the clothes pegs to clip on our noses.” Laughter would continue about how he hadn’t “been” for a fortnight, and there must be a turd inside as big as an elephant’s. And no one was the slightest bit embarrassed, least of all the patient. No,”
― Jennifer Worth, Call the Midwife: A Memoir of Birth, Joy, and Hard Times

“We who live comfortable, affluent lives in the twenty-first century cannot begin to imagine what it must have been like to be a pauper in a workhouse. We cannot picture relentless cold with little heating, no adequate clothing or warm bedding, and insufficient food. We cannot imagine our children being taken away from us because we are too poor to feed them, nor our liberty being curtailed for the simple crime of being poor.”
― Jennifer Worth, Shadows of the Workhouse

“Most houses had a wireless, but I did not see a single TV set during my time in the East End, which may well have contributed to the size of the families.”
― Jennifer Worth, Call the Midwife: A Memoir of Birth, Joy, and Hard Times

“The young can be very lovely, but the faces of the old can be truly beautiful. Every line and fold, every contour and wrinkle of Sister Monica Joan’s fine white skin revealed her character, strength, courage, humanity and irrepressible humour.”
― Jennifer Worth, Shadows of the Workhouse

“We must all commit Sister Monica Joan to our prayers. We must seek God’s help. But I will also engage a good lawyer.” I”
― Jennifer Worth, Shadows of the Workhouse

“The Poor Law Act of 1834 started the workhouse system. The Act was repealed in 1929, but the system lingered on for several decades because there was nowhere else for the inmates to go, and long-term residents had lost the capacity to make any decisions or look after themselves in the outside world. It was intended as a humane and charitable Act, because hitherto the poor or destitute could be hounded from place to place, never finding shelter, and could lawfully be beaten to death by their pursuers. To the chronically poor of the 1830s the workhouse system must have seemed like heaven: a shelter each night; a bed or communal bed to sleep in; clothing; food – not lavish, but enough, and, in return, work to pay for your keep. The system must have seemed like an act of pure Christian goodness and charity. But, like so many good intentions, it quickly turned sour.”
― Jennifer Worth, Call the Midwife: A Memoir of Birth, Joy, and Hard Times

“I sells ladies fings, and vis nun, she comes up to me stall an’ afore you can blink an eye, she picks up a couple of bread an’ cheeses, tucks ’em in ’er petticoats, an’ is off round the Jack Horner, dahn ve frog an’ toad, quick as shit off a stick. I couldn’t Adam an’ Eve it, bu’ vats wot she done. When I tells me carvin’ knife wot I seen, she calls me an ’oly friar, an’ says she’ll land me one on me north and south if I calls Sister Monica Joan a tea-leaf. Very fond of Sister, she is. So I never says nuffink to no one, like.”
― Jennifer Worth, Shadows of the Workhouse

“Today, antibiotics are as common as a cup of coffee. In the 1950s they were relatively new. Today, over-use has reduced their efficacy but in the 1950s they really were a miracle drug. Sister Monica Joan had never had penicillin before, and responded immediately.”
― Jennifer Worth, Call the Midwife: A Memoir of Birth, Joy, and Hard Times

“For the working class, life was nasty, brutish and short. Hunger and hardship were expected. Men were old at forty, women worn out at thirty-five. The death of children was taken for granted. Poverty was frankly regarded as a moral defect. Social Darwinism (the strong adapt and survive, the weak are crushed) was borrowed and distorted from the Origin of Species (1858) and applied to human organisation.”
― Jennifer Worth, Shadows of the Workhouse

“I was in a Highland Regiment, as you know — the Scots Guards — and I’ll tell you something: there is nothing in the world like the sound of the bagpipes to raise a man’s morale, to lift his spirits, and give him strength. However tired and thirsty we were, the bagpipes at the front of the column only had to strike up and within seconds you felt your feet lift off the ground, your step lighten, your spirits rise, and every man-Jack was marching strong, in rhythm to the pipes.”
― Jennifer Worth, Shadows of the Workhouse

“No men were allowed, and a nurse who smuggled one in would be dismissed if she was caught. Student nurses could not marry. All this was to repress our sexuality, yet we were dressed up like sex kittens. With exquisite irony, in today’s permissive society, when anything goes and nurses can do whatever they like sexually, the uniform has changed beyond all recognition, and the average nurse now looks like a sack of potatoes tied in the middle, often wearing trousers rather than sexy black stockings.”
― Jennifer Worth, Shadows of the Workhouse

“Total neglect of women in pregnancy and childbirth had been the norm. Among many primitive societies, women menstruating or with child, or in labour or suckling the child, were regarded as unclean, polluted. The woman was isolated and frequently could not be touched, even by another woman. She had to go through the whole ordeal alone. Consequently only the fittest survived, and by the processes of mutation and adaptation, inherited abnormalities, such as disproportion in the size of the pelvis and the foetal head, died out of the race, particularly in remote parts of the world, and labour became easier. In Western society, which we call civilisation, this did not occur, and a dozen or more complications, some of them deadly, were superimposed on the natural hazards: overcrowding, staphylococcal and streptococcal infection; infectious diseases such as cholera, scarlet fever, typhoid and tuberculosis; venereal disease; rickets; multiple and frequent childbirth; the dangers from infected water. If you add to all this the attitude of indifference and neglect that often surrounded childbirth it is not hard to understand how childbirth came to be known as “the curse of Eve”, and how women could often expect to die in order to bring forth new life.”
― Jennifer Worth, Call the Midwife: A Memoir of Birth, Joy, and Hard Times

“You have to imagine what it was like to be on the receiving end of vicious antagonism: sneering, contempt, ridicule, slights about one’s intelligence, integrity and motives. In those days, women even ran the risk of dismissal for their opinions. And this treatment came from other women, as well as men. In fact, “in-fighting” between various schools of nurses who had some sort of training in midwifery was particularly nasty. One eminent lady – the matron of St Bartholomew’s Hospital – branded the aspiring midwives as “anachronisms, who would in the future be regarded as historical curiosities”. The medical opposition seems to have arisen mainly from the fact that “women are striving to interfere too much in every department of life”.* Obstetricians also doubted the female intellectual capacity to grasp the anatomy and physiology of childbirth, and suggested that they could not therefore be trained. But the root fear was – guess what? – you’ve got it, but no prizes for quickness: money. Most doctors charged a routine one guinea for a delivery. The word got around that trained midwives would undercut them by delivering babies for half a guinea! The knives were out.”
― Jennifer Worth, Call the Midwife: A Memoir of Birth, Joy, and Hard Times

“Three Bs – Bullshit Baffles Brains,”
― Jennifer Worth, The Complete Call the Midwife Stories: True Stories of the East End in the 1950s

“Whoever heard of a midwife as a literary heroine? Yet midwifery is the very stuff of drama. Every child is conceived either in love or lust, is born in pain, followed by joy or sometimes remorse. A midwife is in the thick of it, she sees it all.”
― Jennifer Worth, Call the Midwife: A Memoir of Birth, Joy, and Hard Times

“These older generation mothers knew that they were absolutely indispensable at times like these, and it gave them a great sense of fulfilment, an ongoing purpose in life.”
― Jennifer Worth, Call the Midwife: A Memoir of Birth, Joy, and Hard Times