The Forgotten Children

This is the story of a generation swept away, under the carpets of time.By Sophie Risker

PREENED, IMMACULATE rectangular hedges surround the sandy-stoned homes these days, each decorated with white washed, carved porch verandas. The lawns, mowed to

perfection, more like Astroturf pitches than grass, are speckled with yellow daffodils. The windows, framed by luxurious curtains contain centre pieces of pot-pourris sitting on polished window sills. It's hard to imagine now that these Stepford Wives exteriors once hid sinister interiors.

Running through the meadow near her home, drooping buttercups in her soily fingertips, she couldn’t wait to get home and surprise her mother with the handmade bouquet she'd spent the day col-lecting. But when she returned home and presented the little, yellow flowers to her mother all pleased with herself, they were ripped from her hands into the bin. This was Annie Cooley’s first memory of her mother. Pulling at her tattered, grass stained dress Annie’s mother dragged her confused five-year-old daughter down the steps of their cramped back-to-back in Pitsmoor, to a place which was to become Annie’s new home for the next ten years.

Annie and her two sisters and two brothers had been sent to The Fulwood Cottage Homes in 1931.

"I remember being taken to a building surrounded by fields and a lady took my hand and led me away. As I walked with this woman I looked over my shoulder to my mother, trying to read her face in hope of an answer to what was happening. But she stood by the black iron gates, her face expressionless, just watching in silence as my lip began to quiver. And then I was inside."

The Fulwood Cottage Homes’ gates opened for the very first time in 1905 after the construction of the semi-detached cottages was completed. The 21 out-buildings which compiled the homes sat waiting, 294 freshly made beds anticipating the arrival of children as young as two-days-old. It was to become a place where scenes like Annie's would be replayed over and over again as mothers and fathers aban-

doned their children in hope that the homes would offer them a better life. These build-ings scattered amongst 22 acres of roll-ing fields, overlooking the Mayfield Valley, com-piled the Fulwood orphan-age. It's here that Annie was

introduced to her new life as an abandoned child and to her new ‘mother’, Miss Smalley. A woman which Annie, even 84 years later still seethes with inside when she talks of.

"She didn’t like me from the beginning," Annie says. This wasn't a woman to whom Annie was delivered to replace the disappointments of her real mother but a woman who deliberately wanted to make Annie’s life

a misery. After fastening herself into the navy blue cotton

pinafore she'd been ushered away with and tugging some long white socks up to her bruised knees, Annie joined the others for supper. Catching a glimpse of her reflection in the pantry window Annie thought she'd never looked so smart.

"I thought: ‘Maybe my new home will be OK’. And for a couple of days it was."

Seated around the long pine table with the 13 other children that lived in her house, Annie was the newest member occupying the first chair on the right hand side of the table. Opposite sat the oldest girl who over the years had made her way from Annie's seat, moving round the table chair by chair as one member left and another arrived, a pecking order conveyer belt, from childhood to adolescence.

On the fourth day Annie had gotten used to the suppertime routine. She waited for her food, her legs dangling off the wooden chair swinging with pride as she waited to see the results of the potatoes she'd helped Miss Smalley peel. As plate by plate was placed around her, the smell of beef gravy filled the room

The ‘family’ of house number 13 in 1930, Miss Smalley circled.Annie came into the homes just after this photgraph was taken.

The only photograph Annie owns sitting with

her mother. Also in the photo are Annie’s

two brothers Robert and Daniel.

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and Annie waited until her turn came. Looking down Annie was sure there had been a mistake.

"Miss Smalley these are potato peelings?" A pile of thick, pallid soil encrusted peelings sat on Annie’s plate, not the golden crispy roast potatoes every other child was wolfing down.

"That’s right. What do you expect?” Miss Smalley scowled. “You peeled the potatoes all wrong didn’t

you?" Annie's legs stopped swinging and one by one Annie was forced to eat her supper. Annie never peeled the potatoes too thickly again.

On another occasion Annie recalls sitting around the same table waiting, a fear brewing inside her empty stomach of what her ‘mother’ would humiliate her with today. When Miss Smalley returned empty handed and sat down at the table to eat with the other children, Annie sat, saying nothing. But the rumbles of her stomach told her otherwise.

"Mother, do you know what happened to my sup-per?"

"Oh well you don’t use utensils in your house do you? You’ll have to go and get an orange crate and a jam jar to have your supper in, that’s what you have in your house isn’t it?" Stepping down from the table Annie did as she was told and rejoined the other children. She could feel the eyes of the other girls burning through her skin with sympathy and embar-rassment as Annie tried to salvage what food she could, as her supper spilled through the gaps in the orange crate.

Annie was the perfect victim for Miss Smalley’s

abuse because she never had visitors. While other children spent time with relatives Annie sat up in her room waiting looking out of the window onto the gates, hoping one day her mother would come. And one day she did. She came back to the black iron gates. Annie knew she cared really, despite what Miss Smalley said. But as Annie looked closer, her mother was stumbling through the grounds, struggling to hold herself up, shouting and swearing. In the same second it had taken Annie’s heartbeat to thud in ex-citement at the site of her mother, she was gone. She was escorted off the premises. That was the last time Annie saw her mother.

Not having to cover up any bruises Miss Smalley’s psychological abuse turned violent. Annie remembers the milk-can routine all too well.

"Every day I would help my mother wash out the heavy, metal milk-cans ready for the milkman the next day." But sometimes Miss Smalley just wasn’t satisfied with Annie’s cleaning. "She would pick up the can and swing it across my head, screaming at me." Miss Smalley split Annie’s head open three times, and each time she would get sent to the home’s nurse to get cleaned up.

She would pick up the can and swing it across my head,

screaming at me

When the nurse would ask Annie what had hap-pened she would say: “I fell down the stairs.” But the nurse would look at Annie’s beaten head, blood trickling down her face, catching in her little eyebrows and shake her head.

“Are you sure you did it?” She would ask and Annie would nod. But the nurse knew different, Annie was sure of it.

Amongst the heavy cloud of abuse handed out by Annie’s ‘mother’ is a little ray of tenderness, when Annie speaks of her Sunday school teacher, Mrs Allison. Annie remembers sitting in class and Mrs Al-lison saying: “Now I want you all to learn this for next week, it's on Sunday 26th, you won't forget now will you girls?”

“I won't it’s my birthday!” Annie said, never ex-pecting anything. But the next Sunday Mrs Allison handed Annie a card. This was the first act of kind-ness Annie remembered in her modest five years of existence. Afraid of losing this feeling Annie brought the card everywhere with her, so Miss Smalley would never find it. "I hid it under my pillow, even down my knickers." But one day Annie left the card under her pillow while she went to school.

When she ran home for supper, her plate sat in front of her, scattered with tiny shreds of paper,

“ “

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remnants of a birthday card. She could just make out the writing, 'Love Mrs A.' Annie didn’t get any dinner that night because she was a 'beggar.'

Annie made many friends at the home- one in par-ticular was Barbara Kingston.

"One night we decided we were going to run away." Annie and Barbara tied their linen bed sheets togeth-er and flung them out of their second story window down to the paving below. "We were going to wait until everyone else was fast asleep and then we were going to go for it." But the next sound they heard was the 7.00am alarm. "We’d fallen asleep!" On their way to school, the gate porter walked over to the two young girls, a ball of white linen in his hands. Heads hanging, he handed them the sheets.

"Next time you’re planning to run away, make sure you tell me so I can come with you." He smirked.

When Annie tries to recall her worst memory from the homes it’s odd that she struggles for an answer. Perhaps there were just too many to pick out one, perhaps she has blocked it out of her mind, or per-haps she is just now immune to pain and considers all of her childhood experiences normal. Yet more shockingly amidst her grim experience she jumps to her fondest memory. Not one of the home’s trips to Withernsea, or singing in the Christmas concert, not even the day the Salvation Army came to visit with presents. Annie’s happiest moment was the day Miss Smalley had a miscarriage.

"She never came back. It was the last we all saw of her and I knew she could never touch me again."

Annie rarely saw her siblings while she lived in the homes despite them only being a few hundred metres away. "My youngest sister, Joan I hardly ever saw. She was kept in one of the houses in the far corner. It's where they put kids who had something wrong with them. But we didn't know that at the time. She had kidney disease, like what I’ve got now. She didn't last long. I can remember her saying: 'Annie will you get me some water?' And when I came back with a glass she asked for another one and I got cross with her. She died that morning.”

She never came back. It was

the last we all saw of her and knew she could never touch

me again

Despite Annie's childhood she shows no anger, ha-tred, blame, nothing towards her real mother for that day when she left her.

"I was only five at the time so I didn’t know my mother really. She means nothing to me, when I think of her I just feel numbness, she means just about as much to me as the lady who lives ten streets down."

Annie went into the Fulwood Cottage Homes in 1931 at the age of five and at 15 she'd made her way

“ “The children gathered round the pine table of house number 13, Miss Smalley sitting in the chair

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across to the last seat at the long pine table. It was her time to leave.

Annie left the homes in 1941 and went into service working for a business couple, like many young girls her age.

And in some strange irony or perhaps just grasping at an opportunity to show how care systems should be run, Annie went on to manage a successful old people’s home for 25 years in New Lodge, Shef-field.

"I just want to look after people." She says a warm smile stretching across her tired face.

MANY CHILDREN like Annie found themselves in her position as pauper parents were forced to work and reside in workhouses, casting their children

aside. These perilous workhouse conditions were deemed unsuitable for young children and so were born Cottage Homes, scattered throughout Brit-ain, places which were supposed to offer a much safer and happier upbringing.

One of the largest workhouses in Britain was Sheffield's Fir Vale workhouse, or more recognisably known today as the Northern General Hospital. Of the thousands of staff working at the hospital and thousands of visitors who pass its doors seeking treat-ment every day, little know of its gloomy background. It’s only the older generations, reluctant to receive treatment if it means re-entering its doors, who know all that it entailed.

The Northern General began life, in the days before free medical care for all as a workhouse. Situated in the country, the Fir Vale workhouse was said to be one of the largest institutions in the country. It was far away from the sounds and smells of the town or more conveniently out of sight. It was formally opened on 22nd September 1881 and comprised of six departments. The main building provided beds for paupers, a school for 200 children, a main hospital block accommodating 366 patients and a block for fever patients was built, separated from the other buildings by a road and a wall. Along with the vagrant’s ward situated a quarter of a mile away from the other buildings, was the asylum. It is here that 200 men and women consid-ered insane were held away from the rest of society. However, many of these people were labelled ‘mad’ as a means of silenc-ing them because of their disappointing behaviour, most of which would be com-pletely acceptable behaviour today. Until the Mental Deficiency Act of 1913 was repealed in 1953, Local Authorities were allowed to certify as ‘insane’ any unmarried pregnant and therefore 'immoral' women. Often these women had their babies taken away from them for adoption and sent into orphanages like the

one at Fulwood. Unless their families were willing to take care of these women they remained 'in care' and became institutionalised and sadly in most cases after much brain-washing and ‘treatment’ actually devel-oped mental illnesses.

The Fir Vale workhouse was a machine of self-suffi-ciency, a miniature world in which the lower classes

could live without causing a disturbance to society. The women would be employed to help in the laun-dry rooms, kitchens and assist with the nursing of the sick and the making of uniforms for the inmates. The older more infirm women would look after the younger children in the nursery before the decision was made to remove them. The men were employed in the grounds helping to provide a further supply of food grown for the needs of the inmates. The men would also undertake general labouring jobs and the cutting of wood. The vagrants in return for their keep would have to chop a certain amount of firewood be-fore they went on their way. Even as late as the 1960's as many as between 60 – 90 vagrants were still being given a bed for the night.

DATE NAME AGE OFFENCEREMARKS BY

MASTER

27 Oct

1903

11 Nov

1903

21 Dec

1918

Michael

Sweeney

David

Scholes

Gregory

Clement

24

-

49

Returned from

funeral drunk

Returned from

absconding over the

wall this afternoon

Returned 3:15am

Not to go to any

more funerals

Cautioned

Sent to mental

ward

Extract from Punishment Register: Fir Vale Institution,

1903 – 1920 (Sheffield Archives: CA510/1)

Fir Vale Workhouse, Sheffield, 1903

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Over the years the name of the workhouse has changed: 1906: Sheffield Union Hospital and Fir Vale Institution 1930: City General Hospital and Fir Vale Infirmary 1967: Northern General Hospital

Today very few workhouse records remain in exist-ence. After the demise of the workhouse system, au-thorities decided that given the stigma attached to the system, all records should be destroyed. They 'wiped the slate clean' for those who had been inmates. Their motives, though well meant, created a sad loss for both our social and family history. The ones at Fir Vale are thought to have been burnt in the 1970s.

By the middle of the nineteenth century the Poor Law Commissioners (a body established to provide relief for the poor) decided to move children out of the perilous workhouse conditions and into their own children's homes.

The idea was then taken up by a number of organi-sations in Britain, amongst the first being the Princess Mary's Village Homes for Little Girls, at Addlestone in Surrey in 1871. Usually built in rural locations, these home schemes were based on the idea of a ‘village’ of small houses, often set around a green or along a street, with each home accommodating ‘fami-lies’ of between 12-30 children. As well as houses and a school, larger home sites would include workshops, an infirmary and a chapel.

For Poor Law unions, these homes offered pauper children an alternative to the physical conditions and ‘malign influence’ of the workhouse accommodation. Between 1874 and 1878, encouraged by Mrs Nassau Senior, the first female poor-law inspector, the unions of West Derby, West Ham and Bolton experimented with home accommodation. They erected orphanages on workhouse sites in these areas, each house accom-modating around 50 children. Further homes were built in South Wales at Neath in 1876, Swansea in 1877, and Bridgend in 1879.

However, these homes isolated children from the real world in which they would eventually have to

make their way and were a breeding ground for infec-tious diseases such as ophthalmia and ringworm. So

in 1893 J. Wycliffe Wilson, Chairman of the Shef-field Board of Guardians established scattered homes which placed small groups of children in ordinary houses dotted around the suburbs of Sheffield. Un-like previous home sites which usually had their own schools, the children in scattered homes attended or-dinary local board schools and were more integrated into society.

The Ecclesall Board of Guardians de-cided to collect, from the previous homes which had been built, children in their care and construct the Fulwood orphanage to have them there under the new scat-ter program. The first children were transferred from the old homes to The Fulwood Cottage Homes on 30th Sep-tember 1905. Many of the records which registered the arrival of children into the Fulwood orphan-age are unavailable. Annie’s entry lies under the archive category of 1905-1927 but remains a closed document to the pub-lic until 1st January 2012.

From 1905 onwards the Fulwood Cottage homes supplied ac-commodation and if one can say 'care' for over 2,200 children until its closure in 1960. Each dormitory housed 14 boys or girls with one mother between them. Both were separated by a strip of land, which today is a memorial area in re-membrance of all the children who lived at the home. However, no plaque, bench, or even tree stands to commemorate the children. The area is a convenient-ly invisible memorial.

The first superintendent to work at the homes left after one year and after that Mr Alfred Deacon and his wife Eleanor took up the positions and stayed for 20 years. Under his control boys were trained in gardening, tailoring and shoemaking. Mr Deacon at-tempted to get many of the boys into the army or navy but most of the time failed with the majority ending up working in the mines.

The girls underwent sewing and knitting classes and were encouraged to help with the cooking, although

GIRLS SEWING & KNITTING ROOMS

LODGE

BLACKBR

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AD

SUPERINTENDANT’S HOUSE

ISOLATIONHOUSE

BOYS STORETAILORS & COBBLERSASSEMBLY

HALL 1913

LAUNDRY 1933PLAYING FIELDS

COTTAGE

Above: The cottages as they are nowBelow: The cottages in 1929

Map of the homes

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as Annie illustrates this was not always a pleasant experience. Many of the girls like Annie went into do-mestic service in the Ranmoor and Fulwood districts where they were much sought after.

After the closure of the homes as an orphanage in 1960 the site went on to have a somewhat interesting future. Immediately after the orphanage’s end it was

reborn as a girl’s ap-proved school under the name ‘Moorside’ or as local mothers referred to it, ‘a place where naughty girls went’ when threatening misbe-having daughters. In the early 1980s, Vietnam-ese boat-people were housed in the buildings. These were illegal immi-grants or asylum seekers who had made their way to England in home-made, rickety boats and needed to seek refuge. In 1988, the site was converted to modern residential homes with almost all of the origi-nal buildings surviv-ing. Now picturesque cottages lying amongst Sheffield’s moors, they have masked their past well. Once buildings which one hoped never to come into contact with, are now desired by up-market families.

TURNING THE CORNER into the drive way, your heart

begins to beat erratically and you wonder if its 81 years of pumping will be able to deal with this experi-ence. As the car grinds to a stop beneath the gravelled drive way, you squint behind your glasses not even sure if you want them to focus and reveal where you have brought yourself back too. But then it's right in front of you, the stone buildings standing in exactly the same place as they did 100 years ago, the build-ings you once called 'home'. You don't know why but you expected it to be different but as you struggle out of the car the scene around you slips into black and white and everything appears just as it was in 1935.

Looking around the car park you wonder if anyone has bothered to turn up as the only sounds to be heard are that of distant sirens from the city centre. Then you spot your banner across what used to be the church hall. It reads 'Welcome back!' A sickly feeling

churns inside you - the same feeling you felt walking up these same stone steps as a six-year-old boy.

You are Ernest Hudson, former Fulwood Cottage Homes orphan and organiser of the homes’100th an-niversary reunion.

It’s September 19th, 2005 and the church hall is the only building which has avoided the interior make-over of smooth plastered magnolia walls. This build-ing still has the dark oak benches and the stagnant smell of dusty bible pages hanging in the air. Then comes the tapping of walking sticks on the stone steps outside as one by one the ex-members wonder through the church doors.

We would just run to meet each other, give each other a

quick peck on the lips and run away feeling naughty

and embarrassed

Faces do not meet each other with friendly smiles but expressions of uncertainty as eyes try to figure out if they have spotted a forgotten companion. An hour after the meeting time and the church hall is dotted with 11 or 12 people. But nobody is disappointed at the turn out. For many people even the thought of returning to a place they have tried so hard to put behind them would have caused too much pain.

Gathered in twos and threes, groups of pension-ers shake frail hands and it seems that everyone is meeting for the first time, not surprising considering the amount of children that passed through the iron gates. But as time goes on despite being strangers the ex-members are comfortable with each other in the knowledge that they have all shared The Fulwood Homes experience.

Old men and women begin to swap and compare anecdotes of their times in the homes. At first, no one feels comfortable in revealing their personal horror stories just yet. They feel it more appropriate to begin the reunion grasping onto any sort of fond memory they can.

"It's true, the home did have an ‘Oliver Twist’ characteristic about it, always cold and bleak." Begins 79-year-old Hilda Featherstone as she leans into the group. "Strangely, I remember those times like an old movie. Everything in black and white, except for that huge green strip of grass that separated the boy’s side of the compound from the girl’s side." She smiles sheepishly as she’s suddenly whisked back to being a 14-year-old girl. "I would run to this strip at half 11 on a Friday night where I would meet Alf. He was my Fulwood romance." She giggles like a little school girl. "Oh yes, I was quite a catch in my day." Her now crooked fingers fluff her limp, silver hair. "We wouldn't even speak we would just run to meet each

“ “

Above: The cottages as they are nowBelow: The cottages in 1929

7

other, give each other a quick peck on the lips and run away feeling naughty and embarrassed. It didn't last long though. One of the mothers found out and we both got a good hiding."

Hilda's story sparks more memories for the men. A tall matchstick of a man named Derek Hibbard stoops to the level of the rest of the group.

"I remember that wall near the strip too." Excite-ment brewing behind his grey eyes. "We weren't allowed to climb down it because it led to the YMCA football field. But I went down loads of times. It was worth being found out, because if the players were short you could get a chance at playing with a real team. Although as much as I tried my golden oppor-tunity never came."

It’s not long before the group pause as they realise they’ve exhausted any memories of the home which could be considered ‘good’.

So Derek continues: "I remember Miss Millner in room three. She was a witch. She would beat us around the head senseless. She hit me round the head with a bloody cast iron frying pan once and it broke. I always wondered what was wrong with me." Derek's sallow cheeks shake as he gives a nervous chuckle and it seems he has opened the conversation to a competi-tion of who had the worst mother.

But Ms Bull had no sympathy and he got a sound beating with a wooden paddle. He got this every

day for three years

"Oh, but what about Ms Bull, we used to call her Pitbull? Never to her face, mind you, if we knew what was good for us." Says Kenneth Bolton, a rotund man with a bulbous nose covered with broken veins after years of too much cherry. "I remember my dorm-bud-dy Malcolm, Malcolm Rhymer I think it was. He’d come in because his house had been bombed in the Blitz in 1942. His mum and dad had gone with it. He was dragged into the homes but he wet the bed, prob-ably because he was having nightmares about being bombed again. Poor kid. But Ms Bull had no sympa-thy and he got a sound beating with a wood paddle. He got this every day for three years, I left in 1946 but I'm sure the evil Pitbull keep on to the bitter end."

"Do you remember the superintendent's wife Mrs Johnson?" Says Derek and a resounding agreement comes from Hilda.

"Oh yes, very slender ‘matronly’ looking woman. I remember one day I saw her laugh and I thought it was going to show up on the Richter scale. Although it has to be said despite her looks she never laid a finger on me."

"It's a damn shame," says Derek "that the morons that dished out all they could get away with have prob-ably passed on now. I bet they all died in their bloody sleep sat in a velvet arm chair."

"Well," says Kenneth holding his head high: "I still think my idea is best, we all gather at these bastard’s grave sites and talk this over at great length and I’ll supply the many cases of beer needed." Everyone couldn’t agree more.

Such a mixture of atmospheres filled the room that day, a sense of celebration at the coming together of shared childhoods yet at the same time a looming funeral sort of atmosphere as people mourned memo-ries they had kept buried away for so long.

Even when the orphans exchange their horror stories, bizarrely they do so in a light-hearted manner. Today if we knew of such treatment in an institution it would spark outrage. But the happenings of The Fulwood Cottage Homes took place in a time when the word 'abuse' was unheard of. Did this group of people as young children even know that they were being 'abused'? Did the ‘abusers’ even realise what they were doing would be considered 'abuse’? I won-der even as pensioners, if they feel that what hap-pened to them was acceptable or just part of what they consider life.

The hidden memories which lie beneath the Ful-wood luxury dwellings are just some of the well kept secrets that hide behind buildings all over Sheffield and other cities around the country. Delving deeper into pleasant exteriors a story can be found beneath every wall.

The unexpected pasts of generations which will soon no longer exist, have been conveniently and completely forgotten. If we just look closer, these stories can once again be revealed.

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Girls hard at work in the

sewing room

The children were brought outside

durig the summer months

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Bath time at the homes