Renamed Public Assistance Institutions, they continued under the control of county councils.

It was not until the 1948 National Assistance Act that the last traces of the Poor Law disappeared, and with them the workhouses.

[4] Subsequently, until the end of the 20th century and early years of the 21st, there were still many people who had lasting memories of life in the workhouses, some as young adults, others who had been born there or sent as orphans.

[5] Worth based her book on the lives of such people, many of whom she met through her work as a midwife in London's East End during the 1950s and 1960s.

— David Kynaston in Literary Review[7]Worth's book made me cry in a railway carriage... — Matthew Parris in The Spectator[8]