ABSTRACT
Although the struggle for professional status among midwives has been well documented,1 there has been little detailed research into other aspects of midwifery, such as the education and training of midwifery pupils, the work of midwives once qualified and their role within the developing maternity services, and their relationship with the women they cared for. Recently, some of these issues have received the attention of researchers, many of whom have found oral history methodology to be vital to their work.2 However, while much of the emphasis has been on either the working lives of midwives or their relationship with women as mothers, little attention has actually been paid to how a woman became a midwife: that is, to the construction and development of the professional persona and the body of knowledge upon which this was based.
