The Secret Life of Dorothy Soames

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The Secret Life of Dorothy Soames Page 24

by Justine Cowan


  And so, when I was eleven, my mother traveled across the Atlantic Ocean to Brunswick Square in an attempt to understand her past—just as I would forty years later.

  MY MOTHER’S EFFORTS to isolate herself from the painful memories of her childhood had been so successful that she made a startling discovery—the Foundling Hospital as she knew it had shuttered its doors just a decade after her departure. Its closure had become inevitable as the chasm between society’s increasingly progressive views on child development and the callous practices of the Foundling Hospital widened. In 1918 Parliament passed the Education Act, heralding a new commitment to quality education for children. The measure abolished fees in state elementary schools and raised the age at which children could quit school from twelve to fourteen. Further improvements were sidelined by the Great Depression of the 1930s, but World War II refocused England’s attention on its children.

  A further impetus for change arose from Operation Pied Piper—the government-led mass evacuation that Lena had attempted to use as leverage to reclaim Dorothy. The nation concluded from the experience that separating children from their mothers could wreak significant and lasting psychological damage. Of course the British government had been taking illegitimate children from their mothers for centuries, but with Operation Pied Piper, children of all classes and backgrounds experienced the trauma of parental separation, and the nation finally took notice of its effects.

  It was also a ripe time for the field of child psychology, which flourished in the postwar era as researchers began disseminating ideas that would fundamentally change society’s views on how children should be raised. Anna Freud, through her work with children separated from their parents during World War II, recognized the role that the family structure plays in helping individuals endure extended periods of stress. Donald Winnicott, one of Britain’s first medically trained child psychoanalysts, put forth the idea that a mother instinctively knows how to care for her child without the need for expert advice. And John Bowlby (the same John Bowlby who, unfortunately, also believed unmarried mothers to be mentally ill) revolutionized the field of child development with his attachment theory.

  These cultural shifts laid the foundation for what was to come, but a tragic event would be the tipping point in the demise of the Foundling Hospital. On January 9, 1945, less than a year after my mother had left, a twelve-year-old Welsh boy was murdered by his foster parents in Shropshire. While the boy had not been a ward of the Foundling Hospital, the institution’s future was swept up in the onrush of public scrutiny of the treatment of unparented children in England.

  Despite the ongoing war, the boy’s death garnered a significant amount of attention—so much so that the crime led the minister of education, the home secretary, and the minister of health to create a commission to protect children who weren’t being raised by their parents.

  For a change, this commission would be headed by a woman—Dame Myra Curtis, an educator and civil servant. Instead of being appointed by virtue of their social connections, members of the commission would be medical professionals, educators, civil servants, and clergy, more than half of them female. In other words, for the first time in two centuries, the practices of the Foundling Hospital would be scrutinized by women.

  Since King George II signed the royal charter for the Foundling Hospital, the opinions of women on how to care for children had virtually been ignored. The Ladies of Quality and Distinction without whom the Foundling Hospital might never have existed, who signed the first petition pleading with the king to care for foundlings, were ultimately sidelined in favor of male governors. These men would go on to opine as to the proper methods of child-rearing without soliciting female input, and would reject countless pleas for reunification, believing their care to be superior to that which could be provided by a child’s mother. And in the end it was a commission comprised primarily of women that would finally bring this dark chapter of England’s history to a close.

  The scope of the commission’s inquiry was broad, not limited to the Foundling Hospital but extending to foster care, group homes, and institutional care in general. It also considered the care provided to children who were homeless, disabled, or mired in the criminal justice system.

  The Curtis Report, as the commission’s findings were dubbed, was particularly critical of institutional care, rife with observations that were hauntingly similar to my mother’s descriptions of life at the Foundling Hospital. The report criticized admission procedures that often caused children to experience “misery, bewilderment and fear,” such as requiring newcomers to discard their clothes, take mandatory baths, and don identical uniforms.62 Dressing the children alike perpetuated the stigma of poverty and suppressed individuality, the report found. The commission also noted that little attention was paid to recreation, and that children were allowed few personal possessions or toys. Lacking access to newspapers, pocket money, or rudimentary information about life outside of the institutions in which they were placed, the children frequently emerged without knowledge of the basics of sex and reproductive health, or even how to use money. As a result, they had difficulties developing an ability to look after themselves or fit into society at large.

  Staff, the report found, was inadequately trained, or had no training at all, and paid little attention to the children. While many of the children were well cared for in terms of food, clothing, and accommodation, they frequently showed a “longing for caresses from strangers” that was “in striking and painful contrast to the behaviour of the normal child of the same age in his parents’ home.”63 Highly critical of the assumption that girls should be trained as domestic servants, the report remarked that “nothing could justify the lack of care which seemed often to be shown in choosing employment best suited to the abilities of children deprived of normal home life, since the right kind of employment must be one means of compensating them for their loss.”64

  Its hundred and ninety-five pages chronicled countless other problems: too much isolation, lack of intellectual stimulation, failure to even consider allowing children to see relatives who “with encouragement might take an interest in them,”65 and the enforcement of the stigma of poverty and shame. In short, it was everything my mother had described, chronicled in detail. For the first time, what she experienced at the Foundling Hospital was categorically and unequivocally condemned.

  The report’s conclusions were stark. Institutional care should be phased out, replaced with a system in which children would be put out for adoption, raised in private homes, or placed in smaller group settings with other children of various ages “under the care of a trained and sympathetic house mother or house mother and father.”66 Whatever the setting, the report recommended that “every orphan or deserted child coming within the range of public care should have a legal guardian to take the major decisions in his life and to feel full responsibility for his welfare.”67

  Most striking to me was that the report was commissioned in March 1945. Just eleven months after Dorothy Soames left the Foundling Hospital, practices that had been in place for two centuries began to unravel. For the first time, foundlings were allowed to go to their foster parents’ homes for holidays, visits that would last as long as three weeks. Newcomers retained their given names, a sign that they would no longer be hidden in shame. Efforts were made to reunite mothers and children; appeals appeared in the Daily Telegraph, and a staff member was appointed to contact mothers to ask if they wanted to see their children.

  Soon daily life at the hospital would bear little resemblance to the world in which my mother had been raised. Trained teachers were hired, kind-hearted and affectionate professionals who provided attention and tenderness to their charges. Children who had never been touched except in punishment received hugs, words of encouragement, and good-night kisses as they were tucked into bed each night. The dormitories were no longer so stark, as children were allowed to have toys and other belongings. In 1949 the strict segregation of the sexes was
abandoned, and girls and boys began to receive mixed education.

  My mother was overjoyed when she learned of the changes that came to the Foundling Hospital shortly after her departure:

  I can well imagine how exciting it was for my contemporaries when they were finally allowed to walk freely to town on weekends, unsupervised with pocket money to shop and visit the cinema; taught to ride bicycles and allowed to breeze around the countryside free as the wind; to be freed from the antiquated brown uniforms they had worn day after day, year after year, to be provided with modern clothing; to have a voice, to receive respect and affection.

  “Gifts taken for granted by most parented children were at last bestowed on the children of the Foundling Hospital,” she observed.

  Still, the changes did not go far enough to satisfy what experts now recognize as the essential needs of children, and in 1954, two hundred and fifteen years after it had been granted a royal charter, the Hospital for the Maintenance and Education of Exposed and Deserted Young Children closed its doors. To mark the end of an era, its name was changed and a new policy was adopted: “to lay great emphasis on the home atmosphere for the children—primarily, of course, by restoration to the mother, and secondly by adoption and thirdly (and principally) by the choice of suitable foster parents.”68

  Today Coram no longer houses any charges, instead providing a range of direct services to vulnerable children and their families. One of the largest independent adoption agencies in the United Kingdom, the charity assists with approximately one in ten adoptions. But the institution views its role as much broader than placing children with permanent families, and its programs focus on nurturing children from their earliest days. As I read descriptions of Coram’s offerings—early intervention practices to help children overcome trauma, the emphasis on keeping siblings together, the inclusion of sex education in its outreach programs—I wondered whether they had been developed as a response to lessons learned from the institution’s history. Whether Coram simply evolved with the times or did the difficult work of institutional accounting, the arcane treatment that my mother endured had been firmly left in the past.

  ALTHOUGH MY MOTHER was never allowed to see all of the files chronicling her life at the Foundling Hospital, her inquiries nevertheless brought unexpected and satisfying results. When she arrived at 40 Brunswick Square, she was met by J. G. B. Swinley, the director and secretary of the Thomas Coram Foundation for Children, as the institution was called before its name was shortened a second time. My mother was greatly touched by the visit, deeming it “the first time a Foundling official had acted with regard toward me.”

  Mr. Swinley was patient, taking the time to listen to my mother and hear about her life at the Foundling Hospital. They entered into a true dialogue, and she asked him why he thought the Foundling Hospital had closed, describing his response in an uncharacteristically breathless tone: “because it was realized that children needed LOVE!”

  It was “an extraordinary statement for a former Foundling to hear,” she concluded.

  The conversation left such an impression that my mother was moved to send Mr. Swinley a donation. I found a copy of the letter she received in response tucked within the pages of her manuscript, the amount of the donation hidden.

  20th June, 1977

  Dear Mr. and Mrs. Thompson,

  How very kind of you to send us a cheque for XXX. We are extremely grateful.

  I am so glad your visits here and to Berkhamsted were worthwhile. The more I hear about the Berkhamsted days, the more admiration I feel for those who like you not only survived them, but have made a success of their lives. That time seems to have been the nadir of the Foundling Hospital’s history.

  Yours Sincerely,

  J. G. B. Swinley

  Director and Secretary

  Encouraged by the kindness she received and the news of the reforms, my mother continued her dive into the hospital’s history and soon learned of another development to which she hadn’t been privy—the creation of an association of former foundlings called the Old Coram Association. Founded in 1947, the organization had been bringing foundlings together to meet and share their stories for decades by the time my mother discovered its existence.

  And so, in 1998, when I was thirty-two, and unbeknownst to me, my mother made yet another journey to England:

  It was with a mixture of excitement and nervousness that I walked across the leaf scattered grass of Brunswick Square Gardens on October 18, 1998 to attend the Charter Day luncheon at 40 Brunswick Square in expectation of meeting at least a few of the girls from school. . . . The sky was overcast and I was glad of the slight drizzle on my face—I have always felt more alive in the cold moisture of the English climate. I was mindful that it was probably through that very door at number 40 that my mother parted with me when I was two months and one day old.

  I expected that on entering the front door I would be politely ushered to the staircase going down below where undoubtedly the luncheon would be held in a basement room. After all, I thought without rancor, hadn’t we Foundlings been shut away out of sight for most of our childhood? I had no reason to believe that our standing had been elevated.

  Instead, after exciting recognitions and joyful hugs in the hallway with a couple of “girls” from school, I found myself propelled on the UP staircase. The handsome wooden staircase I was told was salvaged from the boys’ wing of the old London Foundling Hospital. We passed historic paintings on the walls on our way up to the next floor where I was warmly welcomed by several other contemporaries, including my partner in crime, Margaret! All the while we animatedly caught up with each other’s lives and commiserated in good humor about our travails at school, the leather straps and canes, the traumas with Miss Woodward and the swimming pool, and what we got away with. I was dizzily transported back to my Foundling days and my Dorothy Soames persona.

  The former foundlings were ushered into a room rich with antique furnishings, paintings, and a beautiful, ornate plaster case ceiling. The crowd of some one hundred men and women mingled before taking their seats at long tables with white tablecloths.

  What solace it must have been to reconnect with those who had been lost to her and could truly understand her past. But further surprises were to come. As my mother took her seat that night, she gazed toward the head table and found that seated among the executives of Coram administrators and other honored guests were several former foundlings. She hadn’t expected to see them sitting in positions of honor, and was even more surprised when they stood up and delivered eloquent speeches.

  As my mother listened, she felt unimaginable joy. Finally, she reflected in recounting the enchantment of the evening, “my fellow Foundlings had a place and a voice!”

  It was in reading these words that I realized the full import of this second trip to London—the impetus for my mother to put pen to paper for the first time and attempt to tell her story, finally baring the secrets that had haunted her for a lifetime.

  It wasn’t only her fellow foundlings who had found their voices at last.

  MORE THAN THIRTY years had passed since the day I’d found my mother in a dimly lit room, filling a notebook page with a name that was now familiar to me, like that of an old friend. I had promised Bernice—or Isabel, as I thought of her—that we would visit, and so, for the third time, my husband and I made our way back to England. But this time, as the plane approached London’s Gatwick Airport, I felt calm, with a sense of belonging, as if I were going home.

  After a quick stop at Coram and the Foundling Museum, where we were met with generous smiles and warm hugs from the staff members we had met on our previous trip, we boarded a train to Berkhamsted to spend the afternoon with Lydia Carmichael, the head of the Old Coram Association and my mother’s former classmate.

  As we walked outside the train station, a woman in her eighties bounded toward me, her eyes lively and her cheeks crimson from the cold air. “You must be Justine!” she exclaimed as she threw
her arms around me. “You look just like your mother!” I smiled, no longer bothered by the comparison, feeling even a hint of pride.

  We spent the afternoon walking around the old hospital grounds, just a few minutes from Lydia’s home. She hadn’t always lived in Berkhamsted, Lydia explained, but an opportunity arose and she had decided to move back.

  She didn’t mind being so close to the source of so many painful memories. “I used to be ashamed of my past,” she shared. “We all were. But now, I shout it from the rooftops! I’m proud to be a foundling.” Indeed, she had become a celebrity of sorts, speaking to school groups and civic organizations, sharing stories of the Foundling Hospital’s past with anyone who would listen. She has appeared on television and met several members of the royal family, including the Queen, the Duke of Edinburgh, Prince Charles, and the Duchess of Cambridge.

  As we wandered around the grounds, Lydia, who had kept the name given to her by the Foundling Hospital rather than revert back to her birth name, shared stories all too familiar to me—how the children had stolen carrots from the Victory Garden, and marched when Miss Woodward died. Lydia showed me the room where they held their midnight feasts, their dormitory (now a classroom), and Miss Wright’s office. But we decided not to venture down the steep flight of stairs that led to what had once been the bomb shelter, thwarted by a sign warning of asbestos contamination.

  “Those nights were terrifying,” she recounted as we peered down the ominous stairwell. “It was mad, you know. Mad! We had such a long way to go to get to the shelter. The sirens would go off, telling us the Germans were coming, but we had to queue up first, all thirty of us in our dormitory, to use the loo! What were they thinking?! Not about us, that’s for certain.”

  I asked whether she knew where my mother had been locked up by Miss Wright. She couldn’t remember, but did recall a girl who had been told to stay in a classroom as punishment. The staff had forgotten about her, and although the door was unlocked, she stayed there until the following morning, fearful that she would be punished if she left. The next day, she was instead punished for remaining in the classroom all night.

 

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