Other people's babies, that's my life,
Mother to dozens and nobody's wife.
Sir Alan Herbert 's lyric has a sub-title-A Song of Kensingtion Gardens - which places it in time and space - and class, for full-time servants began in the middle classes. Now of course the Nanny who sat by the year has been all but replaced by the baby-sitter who sits by the hour. In even earlier days they sat by the lifetime - their memories as trustworthy as the fly-leaf of the family Bible.
A light-hearted look in fact and fiction at the English Nanny by ERIC EWENS
Produced by MAURICE LEITCH