They gave handy hints such as not having heard them move around, or milk bottles piling up outside the door. Then you were to say to yourself: aha, there must be a dead person in there. The notion that in bedsitter-land you wouldn’t know who lived in the same house, or how frail they might be, was very hard to accept. I think things have got much better. Social workers, who have got such a bad time over the deaths of children released from care back to families who were violent, also have the care of the elderly and it’s not always easy. There’s a very cheerful social worker who has her hands full with the area round where I live. I’m not sure what her title or job strictly is, because they call her the Welfare, the Town Hall, the woman from the madhouse, Old Nosey Parker, the Labour, the Social Services, the Warder, the Warden and the Minder. They are half-afraid of her in case she will change their lives in some unacceptable way, like giving them a Home Help or putting them into sheltered accommodation.
