Can she finally put herself first, in order to find love?
Peggy Cassidy is a milly, working in the Belfast linen mills to just about get by. But Peggy also has another job – a secret one. She works as a handywoman – an illegal midwife, tending to the women of her community in their time of need.
When Peggy is offered the chance to leave Belfast to receive formal midwifery training in Dublin, it sets off a chain of events that will change her life forever.
But amongst her middle-class colleagues, Peggy must keep the truth about her past secret at all times. If the realities of her life in Belfast are revealed, she could lose everything she has worked for.
And when she meets a well-to-do doctor down in Dublin, she must make a decision: should she protect her family and her history? Or can she let herself fall in love?
The first book in a heartwarming new historical romance series, for fans of Dilly Court, Anna Jacobs, Rosie Goodwin and Call the Midwife.
Purchase Link – https://mybook.to/IrishMidwife
Author Bio –
Seána Tinley is an Irish author of saga historical romance. She also writes regency romance as Catherine Tinley.
After a career encompassing speech and language therapy, Sure Start, being president of a charity, and managing a maternity service, she now works as NI Country Director for a leading UK charity.
Seána was appointed as chair of the Romantic Novelists’Association in August 2024.
Social Media Links – https://lnk.bio/seanatinley
EXTRACT
Belfast, 1935
As well as being a milly (Belfast mill worker), Peggy Cassidy (17), is an apprentice handywoman (uncertified midwife), being trained by her Aunt Bridget. Handywomen also sat with the dying and laid out the dead. Despite the practice now being unlawful, many handywoman continue to work all around Belfast. After being reported by Dr Sheridan, Bridget is lifted and questioned by the police, and has a stroke a few hours later. On her deathbed she gives her life savings to Peggy, telling her to go to Dublin and train as a proper midwife.
The black ribbon was on the door, the curtains all closed, and the undertaker had been spoken to. Peggy and Sister Mark had washed and dressed poor Aunty Bridget in her Sunday best – a service that handywoman Bridget Devine had performed for many a poor soul over four and a half decades.
Now the wake was properly underway – even though most of the callers would come later, after the mills closed. Peggy herself was of course still a ‘milly’ – one of the hundreds of girls from the area who worked in the cotton and linen mills dotted around the city. Peggy was special though, for she was still only a half-timer, despite having finished school. Three days in the mill, three days working with Aunty Bridget. Sundays a day of rest. Until now.
What would happen to the women, now that Aunty Bridget was gone? She supposed Mrs Clarke and the other handywomen would pick up the extra responsibilities. While she had been making progress, Peggy wasn’t yet ready to work independently at births, though she could still sit with the dying and help lay out the dead.
The notion of training as a midwife in faraway Dublin was so ridiculous she barely passed any remarks on it. Her life was here, and she would dearly love to be a handywoman, not a milly. But with Bridget gone she couldn’t continue to work as a handywoman, for local women wouldn’t want somebody half-trained. She bit back a sigh. And it had been going so well.
Dr Fenton and Dr Sheridan were to blame. Standing with her hands in the sink washing yet more teacups, Peggy felt a wave of anger ripple through her. She had never hated anyone, but right now she hated the two faceless doctors who had reported Aunty Bridget, leading to her death. There was no doubt at all in Peggy’s mind about the cause of Aunty Bridget’s stroke, for she had seen for herself how aged and strained her aunt had looked on returning from the police station.
Da and Gerard had gone to work as usual – the family couldn’t afford for everybody to miss a day – but Peggy, Antoinette, and Sheila were all off, getting ready for the evening when hundreds would come to pay their respects.
Once the undertaker had returned with the coffin, Aunty Bridget was placed within, rosary beads laced around her fingers. She looked like herself, which was nice, for not all the deceased did. Chairs and candles were placed around the front bedroom where she lay, and a picture of the Sacred Heart moved up from downstairs to hang on the bedroom wall.
Taking turns to sit with Bridget – who was never to be left alone – Ma and the girls moved furniture, adding a line of borrowed hard chairs along the wall of the living room, and setting out rows of sandwiches and scones on the living-room table, all covered with clean tea towels. Father Fullerton’s housekeeper had loaned them three large teapots, and there were kettles and pots for boiling the water.
‘Joe, Joe, leave the chile alone!’ Joe was annoying wee Aiveen, and Peggy picked her up to comfort her. ‘Now go and fill the coal bucket out the back, like you were told. And check there’s plenty of newspaper in the outhouse!’
He went – grumbling, but he went. To distract her, Peggy sang a wee song to Aiveen, who stopped crying to listen, thumb going to her mouth. As she sang, Granny Doyle’s precious clock struck nine. Aunty Bridget had been gone a little over nine hours.
Oh, why could the clock not be turned back? If Aunty Bridget hadn’t been lifted. If the doctors hadn’t reported her.
If, if if . . .
Ma was washing more dishes. ‘Have you thought about what Aunty Bridget said to you, Peggy? About going to midwife school.’
‘Sure, I couldn’t do that. It’s impossible.’
Ma stopped and turned to face her, wet hands on hips. ‘And why could you not?’
‘Well for one, we could never afford it. And if you think I’m going to waste Aunty Bridget’s life savings on a fancy course, you’re mad.’
‘That’s exactly what you’ll do, my girl, for that’s what she said the money is for. Anything else would be nearly theft, and we don’t hold with thievery!’
‘But—’
‘But nothin. Me and your Da wouldn’t have the first notion about these things, but I bet Sister Mark could find out how to go about it. I’m going to talk to her later. You can’t go yet, for I need you in the house. But maybe when you’re twenty or twenty-one. Now brush that floor, and give me no more of your nonsense.’
Silenced, Peggy did as she was told. Her heart was thumping at the very notion of it. The whole idea was ridiculous.
It’ll never happen, she told herself. It couldn’t.
Fear and anxiety raced through her at the notion of leaving her home and family behind, and going to a place where she knew nobody, and nobody knew her. And that was even before she considered the preposterous notion that she could train as a midwife in some sort of fancy hospital with stuck-up girls whose parents didn’t work in mills. She was a milly, and that was that.
‘Mrs Cassidy! Come quick!’
‘Lord save us, what’s wrong now?’ Ma bustled from the kitchen, Peggy and Sheila right behind her. One of the neighbours was at the front door, her face flushed. As they passed through the living room Peggy scooped up Aiveen without even thinking about it.
‘You’ll never believe it. Thon Dr Sheridan is in the McGeoughs’ house!’
‘What? I knew they had a different doctor to the rest of us. I didn’t realise it was Sheridan though. The nerve of him!’
‘Exactly.’ She glanced up towards the McGeoughs’ house. ‘Wheesht! He’s coming out!’
They stepped outside, and Peggy followed. If the evil Dr Sheridan was there, she wanted to look into his face.
Peggy watched as two men walked down the street. So that was Dr Sheridan? How dare he appear on Aunty Bridget’s street, bold as brass, and her lying in her coffin upstairs? And who was the younger man with him – the one who looked like a young film star? Thankfully her neighbours were equally curious.
‘Who was the young fella, Mrs McGeough?’
Mrs McGeough had joined them. ‘That’s Dr Sheridan’s son. He’s gonna be a doctor too. Why, what’s goin’ on?’
As the women explained Dr Sheridan’s contribution to Aunty Bridget’s death, Peggy kept her eyes fixed on the young man as he walked away. Oh, he has it all, doesn’t he! Wealth, good looks, a fine future taking money off people that can’t afford it . . . The jolt that had gone through her just now when their eyes met must have been disgust.
‘Away on back to the Malone Road or wherever you’re from,’ she muttered to his retreating back, ‘and leave me and my aunty Bridget alone.’
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