Jennifer Worth - Call The Midwife - A True Story Of The East End In The 1950S

I once asked Len if he had been called up in the War.

“Nah, ’cos of this Franco-job,” he said, pointing to a leg wound that had rendered him unfit for military service.

“Were the family in London all through the war?” I asked.

“Not bleedin’ likely, beggin’ yer pardon, nurse,” he said. “Wouldn’ let Jerry get Con an’ the kids.”

He was shrewd, well informed, and above all enterprising. In 1940 Len had observed the failed strategic bombing of the air bases and ammunition fields. He had seen the Battle of Britain.

“An’ I thought to meself, I though’, that slippery bugger Hitler, he’s not goin’ to stop there, he’s not. He’ll go for the docks next. When the first bomb fell on Millwall in 1940, I knew as how we was in for it, an’ I sez to Con, ‘I’m gettin’ you out of this, my girl, an’ the kids an’ all.’”

Len didn’t wait for any evacuation scheme to come into operation. With typical energy and initiative he took a train from Baker Street out of London to the west, into Buckinghamshire. When he thought he had gone far enough, he got out at what looked to be a promising rural area. It was Amersham, which is almost a London suburb these days, on the Metropolitan Line. But in 1940 it was truly rural, and remote from London. Then he quite simply trudged around the streets, knocking at doors, telling the householders he met that he had a family he wanted to get out of London, and had they got a room they could let to him?

“I must ’ave called at ’undreds of places. I reckons as how they thought I was mad. They all sez no. Some didn’t speak, jes’ shut the door in my face and said nuffink. But I wasn’t goin’ to be put off, not by no one. I just reckons as how someone’s goin’ to say ‘yes’ some time. You jes’ gotta stick with it, Len lad, I says to meself.

“It was gettin’ late. I’d spent the whole day trudgin’ round, ’aving doors shut in me face. I can tell you, I was feelin’ down, an’ all. “I was goin’ back to the station. I tells you, I was that depressed. I went down a road of shops with flats above ’em. I shan’t never forget it. I hadn’t knocked at any flats, only houses that looked like what they’d got a lo’ of rooms in ’em.

“There was a lady, I shall never forget her, goin’ into one o’ the doors next to a shop, like, an’ I just says to her ‘you haven’t got a room I could have, have you lady? I’m desperate.’ An’ I tells her, an’ she says ‘yes’.

“That lady was an angel,” he said reflectively. “Without her, we’d be dead, I reckons.”

It had been a Saturday. He had arranged with the lady that he would pack up his household on the Sunday, and move in on the Monday. This they did.

“I told Con and the kids we was goin’ on ’oliday to the country.”

He simply told their landlord they were moving out. They left all their furniture and only took what they could carry.

The accommodation the lady gave them was called the back kitchen. It was a fairly large stone-floored room on the ground floor leading to a small backyard with access both to the flats above, and to the shop at the side. It contained a sink, running cold water, a boiler, and a gas stove. There was a large cupboard under the stairs, but no heating, and no power point for an electric heater. There was, however, an electric light and an outdoor lavatory. There was no furniture. I don’t know what Conchita thought of it all, but she was young and adaptable. She was with her man and her children and that was all that mattered to her.

They lived there for three years. Len made a few trips back to London to collect what furniture and essential bedding he could bring on his barrow. Very soon his mother came to join them.

“Well, I couldn’t leave the old gel back there for Jerry to get, could I now?”

Apparently his mother passed most of the day and each night in an armchair in a corner. The older children went to school. Len took a job as a milkman. He had never handled a horse before, but it was a docile old creature that knew the round, and with native quickness Len soon learned, and whistled his way around the roads. The children came with him when they could and felt like King of the Castle sitting up behind the horse.

Conchita looked after her children, and did the lady’s washing and cleaning. It was a good arrangement all round. Two more babies were born. It was when they were expecting the ninth baby that the local evacuation authorities decided Len’s family needed more room, and they were allocated two rooms, a kitchen and bathroom.

It sounds pretty grim today - just two rooms for three adults and eight children, but in fact they were lucky. The times were hard, and one sees on old newsreels pathetic pictures of train loads of East End children with labels and a small bag being shunted out of London. Thanks to their father, the Warren children were not separated from their parents throughout the entire war.

Len and Conchita’s children were beautiful. Many of them had raven black hair and huge black eyes like their mother. The older girls were stunners, and could easily have been models. They all talked in a curious mixture of Cockney and Spanish when together. With their mother they spoke only Spanish; with their father, or any other English person, pure Cockney. I was very impressed by this bi-lingual facility. I wasn’t able to get to know any of them very well, principally because their father never stopped talking, and entertaining me with his chatter. The only girl I did have contact with was Lizzy, who was about twenty and a very skilled dressmaker. I have always loved clothes, and became a regular client of hers. Over several years she made me some beautiful garments.

The house was always crowded, but there was never any discord as far as I could see. If an argument arose among the younger children, the father would say good-humouredly, “Nah ven, nah ven, le’s ’ave none of vis,” and that would be that. I have seen internecine fighting between siblings, especially in overcrowded conditions, but not between the Warren children.

Where they all slept was a mystery to me. I had seen one bedroom with three double beds in it. Presumably the two bedrooms on the upper storey were the same, and they all slept together.

In the last month of Conchita’s pregnancy I visited weekly. One evening Len suggested I had a bit of supper with them. I was delighted. It smelled good and, as usual, I was hungry. I was not at all squeamish about eating food cooked in the boiler that had been used in the morning for washing the baby’s nappies, so I accepted with pleasure. Len said, “I reckons as ’ow the nurse would like a plate, like. You get ’er one, will you, Liz love?”

Liz piled some pasta on to a plate for me, and gave me a fork. It was only then that Conchita revealed her peasant origins. All the rest of the family ate from the same dish. Two large shallow bowls, the old-fashioned toilet bowls that used to be found in every bedroom, were filled with pasta and placed on the table. Each member of the family had a fork and ate from the communal bowl. I alone had a separate plate. I had seen this once before when I was living in Paris, and had spent a weekend with an Italian peasant family who had moved to the Paris area to try to find work. They all ate from a single dish in the middle of the table in just the same way.

The time came for Conchita’s confinement. There were no dates to go by, and therefore no certainty when she was due, but the baby’s head was well down and she looked near the end of term.

“I’ll be glad when we gets this baby out. She’s getting tired. I won’t go to work no more, the lads can do the job. I’ll stop here, and look after Con and the kids.”

This he did, to my amazement. In those days no self-respecting East Ender would demean himself by doing what he would call “womens’ work”. Most men would not lift a dirty plate or mug from the table, nor even pick their dirty socks up off the floor. But Len did everything. Conchita lay in bed late in the mornings, or sat in a comfortable chair in the kitchen. Sometimes she played with the little ones, but Len was always watching, and if they got too boisterous, he firmly took them away and amused them elsewhere. Sally, the girl of fifteen, who had left school but not yet gone out to work, was there to help him. Nonetheless, Len could do everything - change nappies, feed toddlers, clear up messes, shopping, cooking, and the endless washing and ironing. And all this was accompanied by singing or whistling and unfailing good humour. Incidentally, he was the only man I have ever met who could roll a fag with one hand and feed a baby with the other.