Farewell To The East End

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

My thanks and gratitude to:

Terri Coates, the midwife who inspired me to write these books, Dr Michael Boyes, Douglas May, Jenny Whitefield, Joan Hands, Helen Whitehorn, Philip and Suzannah, Ena Robinson, Mary Riches, Janet Salter, Maureen Dring, Peggy Sayer, Mike Birch, Sally Neville, the Marie Stopes Society.

Special thanks to Patricia Schooling of Merton Books for first bringing my writing to an audience.

All names have been changed. ‘The Sisters of St Raymund Nonnatus’ is a pseudonym.

In 1855 Queen Victoria wrote to her daughter Vicky, the Crown Princess of Prussia, who was expecting a baby:

What you say about the pride of giving life to an immortal soul is very fine, but I own I cannot enter into all that. I think very much more of our being like a cow or a dog at such moments, when our poor nature becomes so very animal and unecstatic.