Farewell To The East End

IT IS FINISHED

The exodus of the traditional Cockney people affected the Sisters’ practice, especially when the docklands became ‘smart’. Newcomers did not know, nor particularly want to know, about the nuns. The National Health Service and the fashion of going into hospital to have a baby reduced their midwifery practice considerably. The advent of the Pill in 1963 brought it to an end altogether. Women, for the first time in history, had control over their own fertility, and the birth rate plummeted. Throughout the 1950s the Sisters had delivered around 100 babies per month. In the year 1964 that number had dropped to four or five.

The Sisters, who had done so much to help the very poor in the slums of Poplar, were no longer needed.

They had come to Poplar in 1879, when there was virtually no medical or nursing care, and their dedication and self-sacrifice had saved the lives of thousands of poor women. They were known and loved by everyone living in the area, but in the brave new world of modern technology, the nuns suddenly seemed absurdly old-fashioned. The history of these heroic women was forgotten.

This may seem a sad outcome. But the Sisters were first and foremost a religious order living under monastic vows in the service of God, and they did not look at it that way. A century earlier they had been called to nurse the sick and deliver the babies of those who could not afford medical attention. This vocation they had faithfully carried out for nearly 100 years. If the poor no longer needed them, they had fulfilled their mission and they were well pleased. ‘It is finished,’ were Christ’s last words from the cross. A life’s work fulfilled and finished is a triumph.

The nuns closed their nursing and midwifery practice and turned to other work – drug abuse, shelter for the homeless, working with the deaf, helping Asian women to integrate into British life, and in the 1980s they started working with AIDS patients. They continue to do these and other tasks into the new millennium.

In 1978 Nonnatus House was closed after ninety-nine years of service to the people of Poplar. The Sisters removed to the Mother House, to await God’s calling for work – they knew not what or where. They left quietly and with no fuss. Perhaps only the local clergy and a handful of older people were aware that they had gone.

And here my tale ends, with the closure of Nonnatus House.

THE END