Shadows of the workhouse

Very good. No childbirth stories, but about people Jennifer Worth met while a midwife, especially people who grew up in and around workhouses.

I had a little difficulty with the parts that were certainly fictionalized, e.g., dialogue between people from decades ago presented word-for-word, as opposed to simply being summarized (e.g. "We discussed issue X and decided Y."). It was not an insurmountable problem, though, and I enjoyed the vast majority of the book.