How does it feel to find yourself abandoned by the mother
who gave birth to you, at just three months old?
No Mother No Home has just been
released as a book to tell the true story of one child`s painful experiences as
she had to grow up within the gates and walls of an
institution. She was given away and abandoned at the Foundling Hospital, in the early part of the twentieth
century.
She, along
with all the other children was made to feel it was her sin to be born illegitimately and placed by her `proper` mother
into the Foundling
Hospital system.
`The air was
filled with dark noises of distress and my first shrieking despair was quickly
turning to numb bewilderment. As soon as I found myself, along with many other
children, being led away by strange adults I knew deep down that I didn`t want
to go to wherever it was they were taking me.
Every other
boy and girl screamed, called out for `mummy` or was shocked into numb silence
as somebody big and strong grasped me by the arms and began chopping off all my
hair!
The indignity
of being treated like a rag doll with no will of my own only grew worse, nobody
heard, nobody cared for me as their own child. I had made the mistake of being
born illegitimately, in the nineteen twenties, my mother could no longer care
for me and the Foundling
Hospital would be my only
home. `
No Mother No
Home creates the whole feel of the Foundling
Hospital experience for
other children too.
The Foundling
Hospital was formed in 1739, by Thomas Coram, as one of England`s first
children`s charities to bring a strict regime, an education, a roof and food to
all those children abandoned by their mothers because they were born out of
wedlock. This heartrending account shows how it felt for the children who were
made to feel guilty because there was no father around and their mother had to
give them away. But there was one other alternative for the unwed mother in the
early twentieth century, and this book also looks at adoption.
No Mother No Home is
currently available through my website: www.twinlightbooks.co.uk
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