EC was evidently consulted in her capacity as a midwife by James II on the failure of his wife, Mary of Modena , to bear a child. Cellier said the queen was fertile, and advised a visit to Bath; she therefore claimed credit for the birth of the baby who later became known as the Old Pretender. She also worked on a new area of social statistics: rates of maternal and infant mortality in London, and the numbers of babies abandoned by their mothers. This research went into her two last publications.

CPT looked for various ways to make money to support the family because Thomas was repeatedly denied a government posting, and his mental troubles pushed her into the role of family breadwinner. She was by turns a schoolteacher, a nurse, a midwife, an herbalist, and a farmer.

Ann Ford quickly began using the talents God had given me in private performances as a singer: at home, and in other fashionable houses in London and Bath. Her published letter to Lord Jersey includes a remarkable defence of singing in public for a young woman, as not only potentially virtuous and innocent, but a professional activity, to be looked upon in as favourable a light, as a surgeon or midwife. After she broke off her relations with Jersey, her father grudgingly supported, she said, her aim of earning her living by music, but both Jersey and his wife Lady Jersey refused her their patronage.

A number of social advances were initiated on MS 's page: the Disablement Incomes Group , which helped to provoke Sir Keith Joseph to introduce a national constant attendance allowance, an association for housebound mothers of small children which developed into the Housewives Register (later the National Women's Register), also the Pre-School Playgroup Association , the National Council for the Single Woman and her Dependents , and the National Association for the Welfare of Children in Hospital . She calls these only the best-known of a whole range of do-it-yourself organizations which have affected legislation, influenced medical and education practices, or just made life a little easier or more enjoyable for some section of the community to which her women's page was midwife.

Soon after her marriage, SS was practising as a midwife in Bridgwater, though some people thought her too young.

She was practising midwifery in London by about 1610, and probably received her licence from the bishop of London not long afterwards. In 1634 she was chosen joint leader of a group of sixty midwives banded together to petition against the appropriating activities of the man-midwife Peter Chamberlen , who represented a family uniquely powerful in their profession.

JS practised as a midwife; she had been in practice for above thirty years when she published her book.

EN was for years a Profess'd Midwife in London.