The Girl in the Letter
Page 30
‘Well, that’s nonsense. It wasn’t your fault; none of it was your fault. If it was anyone’s fault, it was mine.’
They both fell silent then. Sam could hear Nana’s breathing on the other end of the phone.
‘Nana, I need to talk to you about something. My new boss at The Times wants me to include us in this piece about Kitty. You and me. Write about how St Margaret’s has affected us all.’
There was a long silence as Sam stood looking down at her shoes. A tear dripped onto them and she wiped her face with the back of her hand.
‘Well, how do you feel about that idea?’ Nana’s voice was faint.
‘I don’t know, Nana. I’m scared, I guess, but I’m also tired of hiding away. I kind of feel as though in some way I need to do it. But I can’t do it without you with me.’ Sam bit her lip as tears streamed down her face.
‘Then I think we should.’ Nana’s voice was soft. ‘We owe it to those girls to be brave. We owe it to Ivy.’
‘Really, Nana, are you sure?’ Sam could barely get the words out.
‘Yes, my darling, I’m sure.’
Author’s Note
Whilst St Margaret’s is totally fictional, it is an amalgamation of lots of homes and stories I have read about in my research, and the workhouse conditions portrayed within in it are, tragically, real. Admittedly they were reserved mostly for the Irish mother-and-baby homes, but some of the homes known to have existed in the United Kingdom embraced similar abuse.
Indeed, in her book The Baby Laundry for Unmarried Mothers, Angela Patrick speaks of being sent to a convent in Essex in 1963 that was ‘run like a Victorian workhouse’ and where, after eight weeks, she was ‘forced to give up her son’. I believe there are still thousands of women in the UK who gave up babies and have kept that secret locked inside them – away from their husbands, subsequent children, and closest friends – because the sense of shame that these highly profitable institutions relied upon to function stays with them to this day.
Babies being taken from their mothers against their will first came to my attention when I read an interview with Steven O’Riordan, who has campaigned for many years for justice for the hundreds of thousands of women incarcerated in Ireland’s Magdalene laundries.
After reading of the ‘harrowing physical and psychological abuse’ that the Magdalene women endured for decades, I wondered whether an apology made on 19 February 2013 by the then Irish Taoiseach (prime minister) to the Magdalene women went far enough. Not one of the nuns or priests who inflicted terrible suffering has been made to apologise; they remain tucked away safely out of the media glare. And it also occurred to me that those abusers who have subsequently died would have done so warm in their beds, their consciences utterly untroubled.
But what really resonated was that it was not ‘evil nuns’ that enabled the systematic abuse of thousands of women and children to take place. Nuns were the face of the institutions, but it was the wider communities in which these young girls lived that really allowed these atrocities to occur: the parents, the uncles, the doctors, the local government solicitors and adoption agencies – everyone who turned a blind eye.
And whilst the Magdalene stories have started to receive their rightful attention, most people are unaware that these institutions also existed in the UK.
Mother-and-baby homes first appeared in England in 1891. By 1968, there were a total of 172 known homes for unmarried mothers, the majority run by religious bodies. Many young women were pressured by their parents or social workers into giving up their babies against their will, with an all-time peak in 1968 of adoption orders granted in England: 16,164 in all.
Indeed, whilst the abuse that was so prevalent in Ireland was less common (although not unheard of) in the UK, what was undeniable was the pressure that was put upon young unmarried mothers to have their babies adopted. Information about welfare services, housing and financial help that could have enabled them to keep the babies was intentionally withheld from them so that they felt they had no choice. The experience traumatised many of these women to such a degree that they have suffered years of mental and/or physical ill health ever since, and many were unable to have more children.
In reference to the drugs trials, there is no evidence that these ever took place in the UK, but trials in Ireland are widely reported – see Sources below. As with the abuse at the homes, I suspect no one has ever really been brought to account for these drugs trials, and it is that lack of accountability that provided the inspiration for The Girl in the Letter.
Sources
Books
Sue Elliott, Love Child. Vermilion, London, 2005
Angela Patrick with Lynne Barrett-Lee, The Baby Laundry for Unmarried Mothers. Simon & Schuster, London, 2012
Nancy Costello, Kathleen Legg, Diane Croghan, Marie Slattery and Marina Gambold with Steven O’Riordan, Whispering Hope: The True Story of the Magdalene Women. Orion, London, 2015
Ann Fessler, The Girls Who Went Away: The Hidden History of Women Who Surrendered Children for Adoption in the Decades Before Roe v Wade. The Penguin Press, New York, 2006
Nancy Newton Verrier, The Primal Wound: Understanding the Adopted Child. Gateway Press, Baltimore, 1993
Sheila Tofield, The Unmarried Mother. Penguin Books, London, 2013
Films
The Magdalene Sisters, Momentum Pictures, 2002
The Forgotten Maggies Documentary, Steven O’Riordan Productions, 2009
Philomena, 20th Century Fox, 2013
Websites
www.motherandbabyhomes.com
News articles
‘Irish care home scandal grows amid allegations of vaccine testing on children’, Telegraph, 9 June 2014
‘Thousands of children in Irish care homes at centre of “baby graves scandal” were used in secret vaccine trials in the 1930s’, Daily Mail, 6 June 2014
‘Special Investigation – vaccine trials on children worse than first thought’, Irish Examiner, 1 December 2014
‘Nun admits children involved in medical trials’, Independent, 9 June 2014
Acknowledgements
As Ivy wrote, I do not know where to begin.
Firstly, I would like to thank my mother for making up stories for my little sister Claudia and me at bedtime. She would invariably fall asleep halfway through – due to the exhaustion of being a working mother – then, much to our amusement, wake up with a startle and continue with a totally different story. Now, more than ever, I treasure those memories. Thank you also to Mr Thomas of St Lawrence Junior School, who introduced me to my first page-turner, reading a chapter of Roald Dahl’s Boy to St Lawrence Junior school every Monday morning.
Thank you to my husband, Steve, who I told about an idea I’d had for a novel one fateful evening. Fast-forward several years (and two babies, one dog, two house moves) to me crying down the phone that I’d been offered a two book deal. Thank you for your unfaltering belief in me, for taking the girls out every weekend so I could write, for endlessly talking plots, keeping me focused, dusting me down after every draft. I could not have done it without you, baby, baby, baby. I love you.
Huge thanks also to Helen Corner-Bryant at Cornerstones Literary Consultancy who saw some potential in my first ramblings and put me in touch with the brilliant Benjamin Evans. Thank you Ben for caring so much about the book and going above and beyond to teach me the art of storytelling. Thanks also to the gorgeous Suzanne Lindfors who spent days copywriting an early draft in the hope it might catch an agent’s eye. It worked, I hit the jackpot when Kate Barker took me on, working on the book with me for a year, with no guarantee of a deal. Kate, you changed my life that day, you are my fierce protector and you have become a true friend, so thank you.
Thanks also to Sherise Hobbs at Headline, for making the wait so short, for being so thoughtful yet determined to always get the right result and, of course, for being the best editor a girl could wish for. Thank you also to Georgina Moore, Emily Gowers, Phoebe Swinburn, Viviane Ba
sset and Helena Fouracre at Headline. So many books to look after, yet you always make me feel that mine’s got your undivided attention. Thank you also to Caroline Young for my beautiful book cover.
Thank you to Polly Harding for always understanding me, to Sophie Cornish for teaching me true grit and for holding my hand through everything for as long as I can remember. Also to Claudia Vincenzi for having my back for all time and making me laugh till I sneeze. Thank you to my lovely brother-in-laws Mike Harding, Simon Cornish and Stuart Greaney for putting us all back together and to Penny & Paul Vincenzi for showing us all what it is to be brave.
Thank you Claire Quy, Sophie Earnshaw, Sophy Lamond and Laura Batten for being all the therapy I ever need and also to Clodagh Higginson/Bridget for your incredible help with all things reporting and for loving me just the way I am. Thanks to Sue Kerry for being researcher extraordinaire, for the childcare and for sharing your experience of working in Sussex Police. Thank you to Chris Searle at Chimera Climbing for all your technical input. Thanks to Rebecca Cootes for being the calm in my stormy tea cup and for screaming in the playground when I sold my book. Thanks to Esra Erdem and Emily Kos for all your invaluable help with my babies and to the lovely Laura Morris for all of Merlin’s walks. Thank you to Rachel Miles, Kate Osbaldeston, Sophie Cornish, Steve Gunnis and Honor Cornish for reading the early drafts and for your extremely helpful feedback. Thank you to Nicole Healing for all your social media expertise and friendship.
And last but not least, to Grace and Eleanor – as JG Ballard so beautifully put it, ‘The pram in the hall is the greatest motivator of all’. I love you beyond words, you are my loves, my life, my inspiration.