John was born in 1936. He attended the Foundling Hospital School at Berkhamsted from 1942 until 1952, by which time it had formally become a part of Hertfordshire county council education system, and accepted day pupils from the local community. He began playing the clarinet at school, and on leaving music continued to play a big part in his life, with his musical skills gaining him a place in an army band when he came to do his National Service. He continues to play to this day, playing his ‘second instrument’, the tuba in the West Silver Band. He met his wife Kay while working in his first job in a radio and musical instrument shop, and they have been married for over 70 years.
Into the World
‘I’d been brought up with… in a school with five hundred other children, two hundred and fifty of them boys, very close proximity to the boys in my year, which was about twenty to thirty boys. We lived in very close proximity, but we never made close friendships. We were never encouraged to, and I won’t say that we didn’t want to, but it just didn’t seem, there was seen no necessity to. You were just there and you had to protect your corner, it was survival within quite a harsh relationship. When it came to living with- with my wife, I just found it very, very difficult. In fact, I’m- I’m amazed that we, that I got married but… and when it came to children, I think that was even worse, because I couldn’t pick them up to cuddle them. I just felt it wasn’t the right- you shouldn’t do things like that, you shouldn’t, you know, it wasn’t the thing to do. And there was no logical reason, there was no sexual reason why I shouldn’t do it. It was just, you shouldn’t do it. With no inner explanation to me, why. By the time grandchildren came along actually, it had changed. I had become more used to this close proximity with children, and I could pick children up, and my grandchildren, and give them a cuddle. Didn’t do it very often but it was easier. So it, it’s all about barriers somehow or other. It’s a barrier against living, what most people would think, was a normal life. But it’s, it’s not just, it’s not just the experience of the early life, it’s the institutionalised experience which, which is a problem.’
Reflections
‘I do have an inferiority complex. It may not be that obvious, but I think deep down, I believe I’m not as good as other people, and that sounds ridiculous because I know I am, so whether- perhaps it’s not that I believe I’m not as good, there is this concept still underlying that I’m not as good as other people. I actually think that that is the driving force behind me, to prove I am. That’s why I do what I do, that’s what I’ve, although I’ve been retired now for over ten years, I’ve never, ever stopped doing things. I work hard at music, to make sure I can play these pieces absolutely spot-on, and I will spend hours on one little thing to get it right. And it’s the driving force. I’ve got to be as good as other people.’
School Life
‘I think… during my school life, I went from… from one extreme to the other, I went to school in 1942 when the school was being run really as if it was still back in the 18th century almost, not- not quite as bad, but with the Curtis Report, the two education acts, the ’47 and the ’48, I think it was, education acts, the school found it necessary to change the way it operated. I understand that when the inspectors went into the school in 1947 they were really quite appalled to see boys wandering around in uniforms as if they were still in the Edwardian era, the school being run on these very military lines, and I think that was almost a wake-up call to the Foundling Hospital. And this really brought, it brought a succession of headmasters, and these were really being brought in I think to… to really change the image. By 1949, a headmaster had joined the school who came from Bedales which was a co-educational school, and he was really quite appalled at what he found, and he came in and with all the best will in the world, he actually took all the brakes off immediately. So the children, they were straight into ordinary clothes, they were allowed to do whatever they liked. Those sorts of changes had a remarkable effect, and in fact, we just, really we went wild. And I don’t think, you know, it was a good time in many ways, but it was also a time when you weren’t sure what you were supposed to be doing. This, the headmaster allowed us to break the wards up into little sections, we could have curtains, we could have wardrobes which we didn’t have before, which really were all very good things but it didn’t really help for the discipline of the school, so I… it was almost too much of a culture shock to the children themselves, and the children found themselves getting in, into- into mischief. So there, there were these great changes and I think it’s, it was this transition from the very regimental, disciplined environment to this very relaxed one, which, while feeling good about it, you know, was not, it was difficult to understand what was happening, and even at 14, it, it was, it was difficult because we, we had no concept, again, of what was normal. We didn’t know.’
Search for Birth Families
‘It was wonderful, really, because there was an immediate acceptance. She did one strange thing… We had, we had a photograph taken of us together, and while I had, because she was in the chair and she didn’t get up very well, I knelt down by her, and when I knelt down, she put her hand behind my neck, here, and felt the back of my head, and then she said, “Oh, yes, you’re my son.” We used to spend hours in, talking about everything and anything. Strange enough, I told her very little about life in the school, and she quite often would ask me, “Do you hate me because I did it?” And I always said to her, “On the contrary, you did the only thing possible and the best thing for me”, and that is quite true. I grew to respect her, I grew to accept her as somebody very special, and I suppose… I suppose yes, I grew to love her in my own way, in a sense. I was very fortunate that I’d had the opportunity to meet her and the fact that she had accepted me was tremendous. So many of the, the former pupils managed to find their mother and are not accepted, and to me, that must be one of the worst things that could possibly happen, because, you know, it’s… This, this business of rejection, is, is something which is really difficult, I think, for people to understand. But there is this constant feel of rejection, and if you’ve lived your life to a certain age and then suddenly met your mother to be rejected again, must be devastating.‘
