In 2002 I received a letter that shocked me to the core. It was from the Child Migrant Trust. By now a frail old woman, Joy Broom had sent a letter to Sarah Womack, a journalist working for the Guardian newspaper, after reading an article Sarah had written about child migration. Joy explained that she and her late husband Roy had tried everything over the years to find the little boy who had been snatched from their arms, including placing advertisements in the ‘Where are you now?’ sections of newspapers in different states of Australia. She had heard stories of brutality in Australian institutions and wondered if I was still alive. She felt somehow that she had failed me and was still haunted by the memory. She asked in the letter, ‘John was an orphan. Didn’t he deserve a family life?’
Sarah put Joy in touch with the Child Migrant Trust and, in a heartfelt letter to the Trust, dated 31 May 2002, she wrote:
John had started calling us Mummy and Daddy and my daughter Wendy of the same age referred to him as her new brother. He had his own room and his own toys. He told us he was unhappy at the Home and mentioned the cruelty of the nuns. Even basic food like tomatoes, biscuits, cakes etc. he had not eaten before he came to us. Rather reminiscent of Dickens Oliver Twist. After John was given oats I noticed the remains of the nuns breakfasts one morning: bacon and eggs, fruit etc. For a special treat we had made for him a large Easter egg with our present inside. He never received it. When we asked the nuns about it they told us the mice had eaten it (the gift as well?).1
1 I have seen a photo of the nuns and dozens of children, including me, around a football-sized easter egg. I believe that this was Joy’s easter egg present to me, although I didn’t know it at the time.
The letter rekindled dormant memories of the saddest time of my life –memories I would have preferred remained buried forever. Phoning Joy was difficult as she was quite deaf and the telephone interfered with her hearing aid. Within days she sent me a letter. She told of the family’s heartbreak when I disappeared that day in 1954. She related how the family had searched the world, as the only thing the nuns had admitted was that I was somewhere overseas. Joy thought it was because they were Protestants that they were so helpless and she was sorry the family couldn’t have done more to protect me.
She remembered me as a loving child and told stories of Wendy and me and how Wendy had cried when she lost her brother. Each letter, each story stoked my memory and my past came tumbling back. Missing pieces of a jigsaw puzzle were finally falling into place.
It wasn’t enough – I wanted to know more and asked her many questions in my letters or over the phone. As the truth emerged, I became more and more angry. I sent to the Sisters of Nazareth at Hammersmith a copy of Joy’s letter to the Child Migrant Trust, demanding an explanation from the Sisters. They replied that German bombs had destroyed their records in Southampton, but that it was wonderful that Mrs Broom had kept in touch with me all these years. It seemed remarkable that they couldn’t explain to me what had happened in 1954 because their records had been destroyed in 1941. It sounded far too convenient. They mentioned an adoption register where the names of children adopted out of their homes had been recorded, although this document too seemed to have disappeared. They regretted that I didn’t enjoy my time with them in England.2
2 In my anger I wrote to the Sisters of Nazareth suggesting as compensation they set up a small education fund, which would be of benefit to my grandchildren so they would know why they were receiving this extra help. The Sisters didn’t answer, and I regretted asking as I know from experience it takes a cool head to achieve a successful outcome in any negotiations. I decided to turn the case over to towards healing, a national Catholic organisation who are experts in achieving reconciliation. they too had no success and after about a year the matter was dropped.
Disgusted, I wrote to the new English Cardinal, expressing how utterly gutted I was about the Sisters of Nazareth’s response and the role of the English Catholic Church. He didn’t reply. I felt somehow cheated that Cardinal Hume had passed away, as I felt that he would have been more compassionate and honest and perhaps would have directed the Sisters of Nazareth to respond more openly.
By now my mind was consumed by anger, but there was nowhere I could turn. I began writing page after page of furious drivel, emptying my head onto paper, and then burned each page as a way of exorcising the demons that had begun to emerge. I couldn’t understand what would motivate ordinary Christian people to deny a child the chance of a decent family life, deciding instead to send that child to an overseas orphanage. They were playing God, incarcerating me to save my soul, but surely they couldn’t expect that God would smile on their work. My own idea of Christianity was badly shaken but not destroyed. I tried to understand why the nuns failed to grasp the extent of the pain and suffering they inflicted on innocent children unlucky enough to have fallen into their hands. I felt that my life and soul had been kidnapped and wondered how many other children had suffered the same fate.
I decided to write my story but, first, I knew I would need to expunge my anger and pain, so I began to research the story of child migration. This journey would take nearly four years and benefitted me beyond my imagining.
About eight months after my first contact with Joy, I took my two daughters, Joanne and Belinda, to the meet their English family for the first time. The girls had been writing to their cousins and aunties since they were small children, so they had some idea of their overseas family. The family resemblance was staggering. Liz’s little daughter Ellie and Joanne looked like twins, and Uncle Billy’s granddaughter Emma looked like Belinda. Unfortunately, my mother had passed away two years before, dying halfway through mass on New Year’s Day in 2000, in the same church where I had first seen her nearly 20 years before. She died in the arms of the family doctor. The parish priest called for the church bells to be tolled as a mark of respect, the first time the bells had been rung part way through a service in the 400-year history of the church. If my mother could have written her own script, this would have been it. She is buried with her husband, Fred, in a church cemetery on a hill just outside Selsey.
We travelled south to Southampton to catch up with Joy and Wendy. My sister Susan came with us – I felt like I was about to enter uncharted territory again and I would need all the emotional support that I could get.
Joy had told me in one of her letters that the family had moved house soon after I was sent to Australia. Their old home in Bugle Street seemed sad and empty and she felt that a new house would help her forget the pain – it was as if she and Roy had suffered the death of a child but there was no burial, no closure. I had become a ghost who haunted their lives and in their minds I was still a fragile, frightened seven year old that had never grown up – I had never had the chance.
I brought a small gift: the official Australian 2000 millennium gold coin. I wanted something precious and rare – but there was nothing in this world that would ever be good enough for this woman who had once reached out to save me. I wondered how I would react once I was face-to-face with her and I feared that our meeting would leave me feeling almost indifferent and sterile, like I had felt when I first met my mother. We had exchanged recent photos, so we knew what to expect.
I tried to imagine what this encounter would mean for Joanne and Belinda. Would it affect them in any way?
Joy and Wendy had prepared a special ‘welcome home’ lunch. They were waiting at the front of the house when we arrived. Joy was quite overcome. Tears welled in my eyes as she held my arm and declared to pedestrians passing by in the quiet street, to the world, to God Almighty: ‘My boy’s back. I’ve got my boy back.’
She repeated this over and over, as tears flowed down her face. This was indeed a true mother–son reunion and, like a weeping child, I fell again into her comforting arms. We held each other on the side of the footpath for a long time in sadness for all those missing years.
Joy still regarded me as her only son and I felt a bit like the prodigal son who had just returned home after a lifetime of banishment. She was so sorry that Roy wasn’t here to see his boy. I could still recognise Wendy, although she had only been six years old when I last saw her. After lunch she opened the family album and the photos took me back to the happiest time of my childhood. There was Roy standing proudly by his big black car, the same one he used to pick me up from the orphanage. There were photos of the old house where we lived – photos of a loving family together. My head was spinning.
Joy said maybe it was for the best that I had been sent to Australia, as I had done so well. I told her that it wasn’t really fair for her to say that –many child migrants had not fared well from their experience.
‘You gave Wendy a university education, mum. Would you have done the same for me?’ I asked.
‘Oh yes,’ she said, ‘you were very bright as a young child.’
‘Who knows what I might have achieved in England if I was raised by you,’ I told her.
We talked about the child migration scheme and I related to Joy and Wendy what I had found out – how I felt that good people had used false argument to justify policies that led to cruelty and abuse. I could have had a mother and father, but those were hypocritical times. I tried to be fair in my account and tell it to the best of my knowledge. I wanted Joy to know the truth, as she too carried deep scars.
Joy explained how other families in Southampton had desired to adopt children from the same orphanage but had run into trouble with the nuns. A couple she had known wanted to adopt a boy. She still remembered his name: John Holloway. At age six, he was put on the same ship as me and sent to Castledare. We grew up together until he was sent to the Clontarf orphanage five years later.
Joy managed a wry smile when I told her how the British parliamentary inquiry in 1997 had essentially exonerated the British government and how the Australian senate inquiry did the same for the Australian government in 2001. It was always someone else’s fault.
‘You were only eight years old when they stopped sending children,’ she whispered. ‘They could have sent you back to me if they wanted to.’
I explained, trying hard to contain my anger, how I felt that I had been part of a social experiment and was exploited by a whole system under the guise of it being both legal and charitable. Joy paused for a moment while she absorbed my comments.
‘They should have left you behind. You had a loving family. For more than a year that Mother Superior tricked us into believing we could adopt you. You had no other home, no hope. No-one else cared about you. I remember afterwards, they walked into our shop looking for donations. What cheek!’
She paused again to gather herself: ‘You had a loving family,’ she said, as tears again welled in her eyes.
‘The officials at Australia House in London would have known that, mum,’ I quietly replied. ‘I was frightened and scared. I told them everything I knew about my new family and begged them to listen. They knew I didn’t want to leave England, but that was no excuse for the people at Australia House. I’d been earmarked since the age of six months and I’d been promised to Australia by the nuns. There was no way they would let me go.’
Joy asked, ‘What drove those nuns to do this awful work. Surely they were human beings too. How could this be God’s work?’
‘That’s a question they’ve never been able to ask themselves,’ I suggested. ‘If they had, they would have apologised to us both by now.’
I had been taught as a child that the basic meaning of Christianity was to share each other’s pain, yet the Catholic Church had created pain.
The old adage that time heals all wounds was never true for Joy or me or my troubled mother. It merely dulled the pain and fogged the memory but the scars will never heal. Yet, to me, Joy stood like a beautiful beacon of light. For 48 years she had kept the flame of hope alight for the little ‘orphan’ boy who lived inside her heart. She and I continued to write to each other every month until her death in 2005. She signed off her long letters with ‘Fondest love, Mum Joy’.
The British child migration scheme has now passed into history. It was an era of incredible ignorance, cruelty and inhumanity. Too many children lost their country, their culture and their families. Some lived and died never knowing who they really were. Too many of my friends still live without knowing their identity or their story. Some of us still feel a deep sense of shame and humiliation at having being used and exploited by our government and the churches. Child migration was set for failure when lawful checks and balances became the first casualty in the mad scramble for children. The Australian government’s insistence on institutionalised childcare – a system that was rapidly becoming discredited in countries such as Canada, North America and the UK –created enormous disadvantage for the children who ended up in the orphanages.
When I look back and weigh up all the things that happened to me, the good and bad, I have to agree with Joy that it was indeed fortuitous that they sent me to Australia. It could have been some other corner of the Empire where Britain dumped its unwanted children – a corner in which the pursuit of truth and justice for child migrants would never be allowed.
My life has been incredibly full. It is a journey of discovery for both me and my family. I have been blessed with a beautiful Australian family and a strong and supportive family in England, from Liverpool in the north to Chichester in the south. My two daughters, who have travelled with me for part of my life’s journey, have gained from the generosity of my English family and have a strong connection to England. They have also benefited from my experience as a child migrant – one who was determined to never repeat the mistakes of the past.
Today I admire and respect the charitable works of the Christian Brothers in Australia, who have gone back to their roots, educating and supporting the communities in which they work, as well as the Sisters of Nazareth in England, who continue to care for the sick and the elderly, as they have done in the last 150 years. I acknowledge and appreciate these organisations’ genuine efforts towards reconciliation and reparation for their victims. They cannot be solely blamed for what happened.
I have no regrets about my life or any animosity towards those who sent me to Australia. I see clearly that they were misguided and believed the government spin of the time. I believe they were captivated by self-interest to serve a higher goal in the service of God. I realise, too, that they genuinely thought, for the most part, that they were helping British orphans who needed the Christian charity offered freely by Australia.
From Tommy I learnt to appreciate the real meaning of freedom of expression. It was he who gave me the strength and confidence to challenge and question and, in effect, gave me back my life. It was in his classroom that I realised that we are each dealt a hand from life’s deck of cards. Some throw their bad deal back onto the table; some play their hand and hope for luck. Others choose to make their own luck. Tommy once said that the human spirit is real and resilient and can lead us out from the worst of life’s disappointments.
Australia has been good to me. It has rewarded my endeavour and hard work and enabled me to grow and prosper. It allowed me freedom of expression and tolerated my protests without locking me up –even when I pushed the envelope a bit too far at times in the search for a fair go.
All my Tardun friends, except some of the Maltese migrants, had lost their families, but we stuck together through it all, sharing the best and the worst, and enduring a tough and unsympathetic world. We supported each other through our strange journey and we developed rich bonds of friendship. We attended to each other’s pain and were there at parties, weddings and funerals. Today, we gather together twice a year with our Australian wives, girlfriends and children to share our achievements, and to reminisce and have fun. We rarely speak of our past in negative terms and we make light of some of our worst moments. We respect each other – a respect that we earned from our shared experience.
We are like Shakespeare’s band of brothers, described in Henry V before battle
We few, we happy few, we band of brothers;
For he to-day that sheds his blood with me
Shall be my brother.