Helen was born on 14 April 1912. She went to the Foundling Hospital at its original site in Bloomsbury and moved with the school to Redhill shortly before leaving to work in domestic service. Since retiring, she travelled the world and lived to the age of 101.
Reflections
‘You missed out cuddles and kisses, you had no love at all. You were just brought up nicely, and that was that, but I suppose that that does affect you, you get a cold feeling in there, and you think to yourself, well, you have got nothing to give, because nobody has given to you, what you would like, you know, cuddles, naturally, when you’re young.’
Into the World
‘And we never learned anything about sex. Never lear– mentioned the word. So we were as innocent as we went in, and we came out. So we could have gone wrong, which was wrong then, because that’s what we were in there for in the first place, so they should have taught us something, but they didn’t.’
School Life
‘Then we’d… go to camp, have a camping holiday, about six weeks. In the summer. And we were in these big marquees. They were… about twenty to thirty of us in one big marquee, you know, we’d sleep on the floor, fold our beds up in the daytime and make them all uniform. And we used to go around the country and country walks, learn all about the flowers, and… have a wonderful times. Was free to do what we liked.’
