Fascinating Strong Matriarchs

The Stepney Doorstep Society by Kate Thompson is a powerful account of the lives of the matriarchs living in the East End of London. It is mainly set during World War II, with a dip into both the thirties and the post war years.

It was the women of the East End that ran the show. They were not necessarily large in stature but they were strong personalities. They had to be. They lived through the Depression of the 1920’s and 1930’s and also World War II. “I just had to get on with things. I wasn’t brave… I just had no choice.” They put on their big-girl pants and tackled life head on.

The women looked out for each other and for each- others’ children. It was proper community living as they were in and out of each-others houses too. They were “rich in love, poor in the purse.”

With World War II came opportunities for women. They got out of the home and into the factories, only to be relegated to the home again when the men returned from war. “The war brought out the strength in women.”

We see that “individually these women were tough. Together, they were terrifying.” When there was a wrong, these women stood up for what was right. They marched against Oswald Moseley’s Blackshirts in the 1930’s.

We learn that “infant mortality rates were… high and there was a heartbreaking saying offered up to a mother when a new baby arrived: ‘Has it come to stay?’” Within the community women acted as midwives, helping others birth babies.