Ted was born in October 1933 and was fostered in Saffton Walden. He attended the Foundling Hospital School at Berkhamsted. After completing his National Service in the RAF, he worked for several jewellery companies. He lived in Herefordshire until his death.
Early Life
‘Now the Mitsons as I said were a very loving family and I kept in contact with them and I’m still in contact with the one surviving member. All my siblings, I’ll call them my siblings because they were the only ones I had. They’re dead, but my eldest brother’s widow lives in reading and she has a daughter who Angela and I see from time to time. But let’s go back over the Mitsons. I was going to illustrate to you how I fitted in to this family. The best way I can illustrate it is, I was considered by all the family to be a member and when my father died, well my brother ran the business. When my mother died, there was only a small estate, but when anything was wound up, I got one fifth. So, that was how my brothers and sisters saw me and, a full member of the family.’
Into the World
‘When I was 15 I went to live with the Mitsons … and Saffron Walden was a very small town – it’s grown a bit – probably about, a small market town about 5,000 population. And everybody knew everybody else. And I joined the local youth club and, inevitably, my contemporaries at the youth club began to query, “Well look, your brothers and sisters are called Mitson, why are you called Finney?” Now you have to realise in 1948 there was still a lot of stigma about illegitimacy. So I was aware and was not, not willing to admit to people that I wasn’t related to or even what the circumstances were. Well we had, we had identity cards in those days and I went to local – I think it was like the local labour exchange – and took my identity card. “What can I do for you young man?” I said, “I want to change my name.” He said, “Well, what you want to call yourself?” I said, “I want to call myself Mitson.” He said, “What, Edward?” So I said, “Yeah.” So he wrote me out a new identity card, wait for this, “Edward Finney hyphen Mitson.” Overnight the little bastard had become rather posh because people think double barrel names are posh. So that’s how it all started.’
School Life
‘…there was the girls’ side and boys’ side and there were sliding doors that were never opened, so we could hear the girls, and they could hear us. Then one memorable day, Mr White realised that there was a boy on this side with a twin sister on that side and it was their birthday. … he arranged for these partitions to be opened. He said it’s nonsense, it’s their birthday and they’re not together. So this was opened, and then after that it was always open, but he started it. … And then later, we were actually allowed into Berkhamsted on our own. But this was, well it was probably again after the war, this was when I was about 12 or 13, we could go into Berkhamsted on our own. I’ll tell the story against myself, I got into trouble one day and the headmaster at that time was a Mr Lee, and he pinned me down and he said, “You were late back, do you know why?” I said I didn’t know what the time was. He said, “what do you mean you didn’t know what the time was?” I was about 12. Anyway I said, “I can’t tell the time.” “What do you mean?” oh he made me feel a right fool, “But, why can’t you tell the time?” And I think, going back, that it was to do with, I happened to be either in the school infirmary or I wasn’t in the lessons when they did time. And I never learnt. But of course I didn’t need to know the time really, because our lives were so well regimented that you just, you know, if anyone asked you to sort of jump your only question was, well how high? It was that sort of arrangement.’
Search for Birth Families
‘…because the original deal, as you know, that the Foundling Hospital would have struck with my mother, was okay, she didn’t relinquish her legal rights to me, but they would never reveal to me who she was and they changed my name to protect me from her trying to trace me, also to protect her from me trying to trace her.‘
