Call the Midwife: Fact and Fiction An analysis of the BBC televison series

Midwifery has become a long lost art in the realm of giving birth. In the 1950’s, midwifery was considered an invaluable occupation, before advancements in technology ultimately privatized and moved the site of birth into the hospitals. A transition from home births to hospitalized births became increasingly prevalent all over the world. But midwifery still exists today, and so do the midwives who work hard to carry on the holistic way of delivering the next generation of newborns. Recently a BBC television show Call the Midwife recreates the scenes that were typical of the 1950’s midwife. But are the procedures, equipment, and general situations depicted in Call the Midwife true to the actual history of midwifery? Before we get into that, I would like to first establish that the Call the Midwife T.V. series was based of the memoirs of Jennifer Worth, who was a midwife during the 1950’s in London. Her impressive efforts served as an invaluable source of history and her loss in 2011 won’t be forgotten. Her book can be found here, and for information regarding Jennifer Worth’s memoir check here. Moving forward, I will begin my analysis around the equipment of the show.

The medical advancements throughout the 1950’s are referenced in Call the Midwife, most notably in scenes from season 2 where nitrous oxide gas was used to help laboring mothers relieve their pains similarly to a modern day epidural shot. The scene is referenced in the video below: Despite technological advances, it was unrealistic for midwives to carry every single tool to help out for every contingency. Midwives in Call the Midwife and in the real history traveled via bicycling and it wold have been difficult to always carry a gas and air machine to every job. Health even after birth was also important, and midwives weighed newborn babies to measure health. The scale in the historic picture to the right and the screen shot from Call the Midwife (above) bear a strong resemblance. This serves as some evidence of the historical accuracy of the show.



Most midwives in the 1950’s would also carry the standard Pinard horn to check the baby’s heart rate in utero. A video in the next section will address this in the historical context, but below is a screenshot of a scene from Call the Midwife depicting the use of a Pinard horn. These instruments are still used today, specifically in developing nations.

Even in the pilot episode of Call the Midwife, the training that midwives go through is very similar to historical artifacts found online. Other procedures from Call the Midwife can be seen in this historical training video for 1950’s midwifery: Tools such as the Pinard horn at 12:00 and procedures such as the urine test at 10:50 are all present in the BBC television show. So far, Call the Midwife proves to be a fair representation of actual historical midwifery in the 1950’s. In fact, only one thing blatantly stands out as questionable: the influence of the male technocratic practitioner.

Upon further research, there was one documented historical case where a midwife was granted access to use a car in certain medical situations. However, Call the Midwife depicts midwives who rely on bicycles for transportation. Ultimately this was the only real discrepancy I could find, and this was the only documented case of midwives using another form of transportation. Below a midwife was given a car from the local authorities to help provide nitrous oxide gas to women in need of it: This is contrasted to Call the Midwife’s version, where the male doctor played by Steve McGann actually drives a car to the midwife in need of assistance in a scene from season 2 episode 2. This intervention of the male practitioner in a way represents the slow takeover by the patriarchal technocratic trend that switched the birth site from home to hospital bed by the 1970’s. Perhaps this was was done on purpose to show the rising dominance of male-centered hospitalized birth.

Overall, Call the Midwife does an excellent job of representing the 1950’s midwife to a great degree of accuracy. Based off of my research, everything from the equipment, to the procedures, to the actual age of the babies themselves were authentically presented in Call the Midwife. Yes, even the actual babies shown being born in the scenes of the television show were only a couple days old. The equipment and procedures involved in testing the soon-to-be mothers were all similar to the the 1950’s medical science behind midwifery were present throughout Call the Midwife. The BBC hit TV series will hopefully draw attention to the women who practiced the dying art that once was the standard for delivering the next generation of human beings into the world.