by Patsy Whyte
The first time I saw John was at Cadonas, and then only for a few seconds. I loved going to the fair, but I shouldn't have been there at all, without permission and on my own. But I managed to sneak away from the rest of the children from the home. They were playing on the beach and never knew I was gone.
I was watching a man trying to knock all the tin cans down at one of the many booths scattered about the fair. It didn't bother me very much I had no money to spend. I was never given any anyway, so I was used to it. So I contented myself soaking in the exciting atmosphere which I loved. The hustle and bustle, the chaos and colours and smells and music were such a contrast to the rigid predictable existence which was my daily experience at the home.
The man was disappointed not being able to knock the tins down at the first go and dug ever deeper into his pockets. He was determined to go home with some kind of prize, no matter how cheap and tacky. I moved on to a shooting gallery and stood hypnotized by the small yellow ducks moving endlessly across the back of the booth in perfect time. But no one seemed to be able to hit the required number of ducks to win the prize, a giant teddy. Two pellets hit the mark easily, but the third one always seemed to go astray. No one seemed to notice, or care.
Suddenly, the spell was broken by a tap on my shoulder. On looking around, a young teenage boy thrust a small rag doll into my hand. I was taken aback by the stranger's action.
"I'm your brother John", he said.
He walked off and was quickly lost from view, swallowed up in the milling crowds. It was all unexpected. I didn't know what to make of it as I looked at the rag doll he must have won as a prize. How did he know me? How come I had a brother I never knew existed up until this moment? No one ever mentioned him before.
The questions kept coming as I made my way home still clutching the doll which I placed carefully down on the pillow on my bed. I thought we didn't even look alike. My hair was brown and his was ginger in colour. My nose was turned up and his was straight. But it was still a nice feeling, knowing I had two brothers instead of just the one.
I kept the meeting secret because I was afraid of getting into trouble. It was bad enough going to the fair in the first place. But, if the house mother knew I also met my brother, even although it was John who found me, I would surely have been punished more severely. So I kept quiet about the whole affair, not even mentioning anything to Billy.
It would be another four years or so before I saw John again. He turned up out of the blue one afternoon along with Billy while I was in the playroom. They both wore black blazers and looked really smart. I noticed how tall they were. It was the first time I'd seen Billy since he left the home some three years previously, when he was 13. Now he was all grown up and a fine young man.
I was over the moon seeing them and very happy Billy had also found John, who was his older brother. John grew up in Craigielea Children's Home and knew nothing about any of us. I was delighted to be able to meet him properly at last. When we first met at the fair, John only spoke four words to me. Now we had the chance to get to know each other and to make up for all the lost time.
As I held on tightly to both their arms, chatting away to my two brothers on either side of me, it was a really nice feeling. For the very first time, I felt I had a real family. But that special precious moment of joy was to be short lived. A member of staff burst into the playroom demanding they both leave immediately because they never made an appointment to see me.
John tried to explain they were both in the army and on leave and had to go back to rejoin their units in the morning. But the member of staff was having none of it. My heart sank as they reluctantly turned and left the playroom. I felt a deep sense of loss as I watched them walking down the driveway and disappearing out of the gates. How I had longed for such a moment which now was so cruelly snatched away from me. It would have been nice spending just one hour of one afternoon with them both. But it wasn't meant to be. Depression settled over me for days afterwards.
John and Billy were sent off on active service to Northern Ireland. When I left the home a few years later, I didn't know where they were stationed and had no way of finding out. I was never to see them again until many years later. By then, both had settled down far away from Scotland with families of their own.
No one thought it was important to tell me how to get in touch with them, or with any of my other brothers and sisters. There were three younger brothers I never knew I had. I also knew nothing about James, the oldest of all my brothers, or Gina, who was to die before I ever got the chance to meet her. Eventually, I found Lottie again, but only after knocking on many doors.
But the sadness which formed such a large part of my life while growing up in the home was nothing out of the ordinary. The consequences of tragedy were all around me, every single day. You smelt it. The bedroom I shared with three other girls always stank of pee every morning. It was the same with the little boys' room and the big girls' room. You couldn't escape the smell at the breakfast table either.
Children who slept without any pyjama bottoms in soaking wet beds simply put on their clothes in the morning without washing. Then they came down to breakfast as usual. It was all part of the routine, just like the house mother's impatient thoughtless order.
"Put your hands up all those who wet the bed!"
Meekly, hands rose slowly as if trying to escape her steely gaze. But it was no use. There was no hiding from the piercing eyes or the embarrassment they now deeply felt. Next came the expected pronouncement.
"All those who put their hands up are going to bed early tonight",
she said, without neither hint of compassion nor understanding.
There was only acceptance of the punishment meted out with such dismal regularity. The children I lived with all had deep emotional problems and impossible mental scars. But there was no one they could turn to for help. They came from all over the country to find themselves among total strangers. If the routine was rigid and disciplined, they soon found the environment of the home devoid of any meaningful love or support. Sometimes they stayed with us for only a few weeks or months and then they were gone. Others stayed for years.
Margaret was quite typical, having found her mother lifeless one morning with her head stuck in the gas oven. Sarah discovered her mother hanging from the stair banisters when she came home from school one afternoon. Others lost one or both parents in car smashes or watched helplessly as their mother died slowly of cancer.
I was also like them until only a few months before, always wetting the bed every single night. But, unlike the other children, my bed wetting was deliberate. It was either that or face the ghost of the previous house mother. Billy told me he saw her coming towards him when he raided the pantry one night. I was terrified for months afterwards.
The toilet was a long way off at the other end of the home. To get to it, you went down a small flight of stairs past the big girls' room, then down a long, winding staircase leading to the cloakroom. The toilet was next to it. I wasn't brave enough to venture down there on my own in the dark. So I preferred the punishment I knew would be coming in the morning.
Life only got worse for the bed wetters, as the house mother delighted in calling them. I was settling down to sleep one evening. Just as as the last rays of the setting sun were creeping out through the small attic window in my room, she suddenly barged in unannounced carrying something in her hands. She made a bee line over to where Margaret slept, which was in the bed opposite to mine at the bottom of the room.
"Now, all bed wetters will wear this", she said, sternly.
As she leaned over Margaret lying in bed, the house mother swiftly pulled back the covers, folded a large white square cloth into a triangle and then ordered her to lift her bottom up from the mattress. Then she quickly slipped the cloth underneath and secured it by means of two safety pins. Margaret was now wearing a nappy. I couldn't believe it, a young girl forced to wear a nappy. I was shocked.
"It's only babie
s that wet the bed. Until you stop wetting the bed, you'll wear a nappy at night", said the house mother, in a mocking voice.
Then she left and went from room to room and put a nappy on all the other children who wet the bed. Margaret pulled the bed covers tightly into her body, buried her face deep in the pillow and never uttered a word. I felt extremely lucky to have escaped the humiliation because I was no longer scared to go to the toilet at night on my own.
If the house mother thought punishing the bed wetters by treating them like babies would work, she was wrong. It didn't. Those children still woke up every morning soaking wet. After a few weeks of the nappies, they went back to wearing nothing except their pyjama tops. They were wakened up in the middle of the night and led down the stairs to the toilet, naked from the waist down. When they came back, they climbed into soaking beds knowing another punishment awaited them in the morning.
Chapter Eight
The usual route home from primary school took me through a small area of grass covered waste ground used for the dumping of old cars, tyres and other junk. It was a dirty forgotten place where every kind of litter was discarded on a daily basis, including dozens of sweetie wrappers dropped by kids using the waste ground as a short cut.
One afternoon, as I was walking home through the waste ground with my brother Billy, we saw a young looking man with black curly hair who was standing next to one of the abandoned cars. The man was crouched down with a bicycle pump in his hand and was furiously pumping air into the ground instead of the car tyre a few inches away. Beads of sweat dripped off his face as he cursed and grew redder with each passing second.
I asked him what he was doing but he just ignored me. I couldn't understand why he was pumping air into the ground instead of the tyre. Billy and I started to giggle. The giggles gave way to fits of laughter and the man still carried on as if we were invisible.
After a few minutes, Billy started to get bored and tried to pull me away, but I wasn't having any of it. I didn't like being told what to do. Besides, this was so funny and I couldn't stop laughing. So he gave up and left me to make his own way home.
A few minutes later, even I had had enough. So I turned away leaving the man still pumping the ground furiously. I saw Billy in the distance, still dawdling up the road.
Suddenly, without warning, I was pinned to the ground, barely able to take in what was happening. A dark mass lay on top of me and strong filthy hands were around my neck, choking the life out of me. I couldn't move or struggle as my body felt crushed under a huge weight. In my mind, I was screaming but no sound left me as I struggled for breath.
Seconds turned into an eternity as time slowed down to a crawl. I was moments away from blackness. Then, from some point far away in the distance, I became aware of a thumping noise, and then a woman's voice, screaming frantically "Get off her!" over and over.
The vice-like grip around my neck loosened slightly and the weight pinning my body shifted. From the swirling confused mist of semi-consciousness, I saw a thick heavy broom handle moving in a lazy arc through the air in slow motion. As it drifted in and out of view, I heard a dull thump, thump, thump and the weight on top of me lessened each time. I caught glimpses of Billy, who seemed to be punching and kicking out at something.
My focus sharpened and suddenly there was no more weight on top of me. I recognised the lady helping me up. The lady just recently moved into the green painted house nearby, which overlooked the waste ground. Sometimes I talked to her two daughters, Rhoda and Rhonda, who were a year or two older than me. They were missing their father a lot who was away working in Africa.
I was in deep shock. My legs were wobbly and my throat hurt so much I couldn't talk. The lady helped me the 100 yards or so to the home, encouraging me all the way with gentle words of kindness and support. A few seconds after ringing the front door bell, the house mother appeared. The lady explained what happened and the house mother told me to go through and play with the other children. She barely acknowledged or registered any concern over the incident or showed me any sympathy whatsoever, simply calling the police.
The police appeared a short time later. In a shaky voice, which was still hoarse and barely above a whisper, I told them as best I could exactly what happened, which they noted down in their notebooks. All the while, the house mother just stood there, silent, never saying a word.
Next day, the incident was the talk of the school playground because the man lived in the same area as some of the kids. They saw him being lifted by the police. In the weeks following, the house mother never mentioned anything at all about the attack or asked me how I was coping. Life at the home just carried on as normal as if nothing had ever happened. A few weeks later, I heard from kids in the playground the man appeared in court and was jailed.
I often thought what would have happened if I had been walking home alone that day, or if the lady had not been looking out the window at just the right time. I was thankful for the bravery she showed, using the broom handle to save my life. I was also grateful to Billy, who without a moment's thought for his own safety, launched himself at the man. Without them both, I probably would have been killed.
* * *
In 1964, Aberdeen was virtually brought to a standstill when it was hit by a typhoid outbreak, which at the time was the largest in modern British history. The city felt under siege for weeks as more than 500 people became infected with the dangerous bacteria, later traced to a can of contaminated corned beef from Argentina which was sold in a local supermarket.
It was only days after my ninth birthday when the first victims became ill with the disease and movement everywhere was restricted. Like other institutions and buildings across the city, the home with its 18 kids, was put under quarantine. It meant no school, no church, no visitors, as we were locked up behind the steel gates for weeks.
But it turned out to be so much worse for us than that. On rainy days, we were confined to the playroom, which was no more than an extension tagged on to the back of the main building. It was a dismal place with yellow painted walls and a bare lino covered floor.
There was no form of heating in the playroom, or curtains on windows, or chairs to sit on, or pictures to brighten up the walls. Broken toys and board games with pieces missing lay scattered across the floor providing the only stimulation. So we quickly became restless and bored and fights and quarrels broke out with monotonous regularity over the smallest sleight or triviality.
On one occasion, I got into an argument with my cousin Eddie and ended up bursting his nose. One of the children ran out of the playroom to report us and a member of staff stormed in.
"Right, you two, bed!" she roared, not interested in who was responsible for starting the fight or why.
Some children handled the tension more easily than others. I had been brought up in care from a small child and was now so conditioned by rules, regulations and restrictions that I expected little out of life. There were never any visits from any surviving parent or relative to look forward to for me.
But others looked forward to such visits. It was all that kept them going. Now they found themselves in the same situation as me for the very first time. Once they enjoyed a good family life on the outside until some tragedy took everything away. Now the typhoid epidemic robbed them of even the little family contact they had left. So it was much harder for them.
The quarantine restrictions dragged on day after day and then week after week. The monotony was broken only when meals were served. We were shouted through from the playroom, or from the playground if the weather allowed us to go outside. Each day ended with a couple of hours watching television followed by bed.
But Sunday was different. Our souls still needed saving and since we couldn't go to the church, the church came to us. The house mother organised and led a church service in the dinning room, complete with prayers and hymn singing. She even recorded the service on a tape recorder. I never knew why she did this. The service lasted an hour-and-a-half and
was followed by dinner. Then we were all thrown back into the playroom once more.
The typhoid outbreak began some time during the second week of May and by the beginning of June, more than 50 people a day were being admitted to hospital suspected of the disease. Routine operations were cancelled at many hospitals where wards were cleared out and turned over to treating cases. Some hospitals were even turned into temporary typhoid hospitals and nothing else.