For some children, being left in the hands of strangers resulted in neglect, physical and mental cruelty and abuse, some of it sexual, at the hands of their foster parents. In the worse of cases, the helpless evacuees would die at the hands of those who were supposed to keep them safe. These stories make very difficult reading, but they need to be told in order to provide a full picture of the British evacuation experience.
In some instances, evacuees did not even survive the journey to their destination unscathed. Pauline Burford’s sister, Sylvia, was the only evacuee to die during a Channel crossing from Guernsey to Weymouth:
My mother and I (I was four years old) sailed on an English ship but my sister Sylvia and brother Brian were separated from us, going on a different boat with their school classes. None of us knew which boat the others were on. Father saw us off then went back to work at the Guernsey prison.
Sylvia, seven years older than myself and five years older than Brian, had been rather ill after a tonsillectomy. She was really too ill to travel and it should never have been permitted by the medical authorities, and my mother had not been allowed to travel with her. Sylvia was prone to stomach upsets and the boat had no stabilisers as is usually the case today.
Due to her seasickness and of course the aftermath of the operation, she haemorrhaged and became dangerously ill. She kept calling for her parents and wondering why they didn’t come. I understand that she died in hospital in Weymouth two days after landing, having been carried off the ship on a stretcher. My mother had no sooner arrived at her parents’ home in Rugby, Warwickshire, when the police called with the sad news of Sylvia’s death. Leaving me with a grandmother who wasn’t at all welcoming, she hurried back to Weymouth with my grandfather for identification and burial.
My father was given special permission to go to Weymouth for the funeral but then was not allowed to return to Guernsey. As he was English born, he would no doubt have ended up in a German prison camp, probably Biberach, where many British born residents were interned.
Sadly my parents’ ways parted after that due to the problems of accommodation in the Rugby home and the need to seek work in wartime. The effects of these traumas have remained in the background all my life and obviously left my mother traumatised right up to her death in the 1980s.1
Beryl Blake-Lawson, a First Form pupil at Westcliff Girls High School in Southend-On-Sea when she was evacuated to Chapel-en-le-Frith in Derbyshire, recalls how one of her friends had a fatal accident whilst returning to her billet:
There was one tragedy. One day, running down the hill from Bank Hall for lunch at her billet, Christine Markham, it is assumed – tripped and fell against the stone wall – and was found by two senior girls. It was a great shock to them as she had broken her neck and was dead.2
On 8 November 1941, the Hull Daily Mail reported the tragic news of the death of a Hull evacuee which occurred within hours of the youngster’s arrival in the market town of Driffield in the East Riding of Yorkshire:
Alfred George Parsons, aged 4, and his brother were evacuated to Driffield and later to the sick bay at Filey for treatment. A nurse said that she found Alfred with his nightclothes on fire in the corridor. From another child she learned that he had pulled aside the fireguard, placed paper on the fire and his clothing become ignited.
Recording a verdict of death from shock following extensive burns the Coroner said, ‘I do not think it can be reasonably suggested that there was any negligence – however it is recommended that in places and institutions where there are children, fixed fireguard should be in place’.
It was the parent who lost her life as tragedy befell Brian Russell’s family when they were evacuated to Cheshire:
I was just two and a half years old when my brother and I were evacuated from Guernsey with my mum, Miriam. Dad had said we should leave and he went to join the Army. Mum and I arrived in Stockport but within three weeks, Mum died of meningitis.
Dad was allowed some leave to sign her death certificate, but could not look after my brother and I because he was in the Forces. My brother and I were then placed in a Children’s Home in Styal, Cheshire, where we were separated. This caused me great distress at such a young age.
Apparently I was asking for my Mum all the time and my brother said that I went berserk. After we had been in the home for two months, Dad managed to persuade his brother, who had married a Dorset woman, to look after us. They looked after us and fed us, but there was no affection whatsoever.3
Jenny Horne’s parents lost their infant son during the evacuation – to somewhat unusual circumstances:
My parents, Verna and Marshall Edmonds, were evacuated from Guernsey to Cheshire. With them were my three year old brother, Glen, and my Aunt, Brenda Mould, who was in her teens. Tragically, Mum and Dad lost Glen because a local farmer gave him unpasteurised milk to drink. Mum and Dad had not planned to have more children until the end of the war, but the loss of Glen changed their minds. They went on to have my brother Pete in 1944 and I was born after the war when they returned to Guernsey.4
Maurice McCall died a few months after arriving in Portland. He had been playing with friends in a worked out quarry when a large stone fell on his head from twenty-five feet above him.5
On one occasion, the Cheltenham Chronicle informed its readers of the death of Helen Margaret Whittaker. ‘Helen was balancing on a plank placed on top of a sheep pen then fell onto the iron rail round the pen, then onto the concrete floor. In spite of everything that could be done, the child died the next morning. The girl’s father said that he had not seen either of his daughters since they left London six months ago.’
Numerous evacuees died through drowning, and on 29 May 1941 the Hartlepool Mail reported on two Sunderland evacuees who had drowned in the Tees at Eaglescliffe: ‘One fell in when playing on the riverbank, the other grasped the branch of an overhanging tree and made an attempt to reach him. The branch gave way and both were carried away. One of the boys had only arrived the previous day.’ Perhaps uncertain of new surroundings, Helen Parsons also drowned soon after her arrival – in this case in the mill lade at Port Elfinstone, Aberdeenshire, where she had only been for five days.6
Two Glasgow children drowned when they were swept out into the Solway from the Gretna shore, near the mouth of the River Sark. They had been in the district for twelve days.7 A month later, the drowning of another Glasgow evacuee was reported in Dundee:
Mrs McCracken of Glasgow and her children have been resident at Knockbrex for four weeks. On Wednesday, Campbell McCracken aged two years and seven months was reported missing. A search was made through the woods and along the course of the burn which runs through the estate to the shore. The body of the boy has been found at the mouth of the burn which was in heavy flood.8
When these incidents were reported in the press, the Government feared they might affect morale and cause parents to panic by bringing their evacuated children home:
There should be greater supervision in these areas to see that children do not suffer … supervision is absolutely essential. Here is a case which I saw in the Daily Record today. Two little Glasgow children who were evacuated a fortnight ago were drowned yesterday.
Fancy that type of news coming to the father of children who have been evacuated. It is bound to arouse in the minds of every mother in Glasgow the thought that her child might be in danger and it will have the effect that many children will be brought back from these evacuation areas into Glasgow.9
Even though vehicle ownership was far lower in the war years and this factor, along with the lack of fuel due to rationing, meant fewer cars and lorries on the roads, the risks to children from civilian traffic was just as great as that from the armed forces. In Cirencester, by way of illustration, Barbara Andrews was killed whilst walking with her mother. A goods lorry, covered with a tarpaulin, was travelling in the same direction as Barbara and her mother when ‘the tarpaulin sheet billowed out and wrapped itself around Mrs Andrews. It swung her round and the three-year-old child was flung under the rear nearside wheel of the lorry, which passed over her.’10
Evacuee Charles Farmer, aged seven, was killed whilst posting a letter in Honiton, Devon: ‘He and his sister were billeted with a Mrs Turner who told the coroner that the boy went to post a letter for her at the bottom of the road and ran off whistling and singing. That was the last time she saw him alive. He died almost instantaneously when he was crushed by a lorry against a wall at the junction of Mill Street and King Street. The driver said it was necessary for him to manoeuvre the vehicle close to the wall near the letterbox.’11
A gun is, of course, a deadly weapon – and never more so than when in the hands of a child. On 1 July 1940, the Gloucester Citizen published news of one incident involving an evacuee: ‘Ten-year-old Leslie Whitaker, of Bermondsey was accidentally shot dead by L …, aged 13, when they went to a cherry orchard to scare birds. L … found the gun in a shed. It went off whilst he was reloading it and killed his companion.’
Just seven days after arriving in Market Harborough, another boy was shot in similar circumstances:
Michael Moscow, aged 6, had been staying with his brother at the home of Mr Neil, the village postman. The two boys went into an outhouse where they found a gun which was used for shooting birds. The elder brother was playing with the gun when it exploded and Michael received a wound at the back of the head. He died within a few minutes.12
Although the majority of evacuees received loving care from their wartime foster parents, others did not. In some instances, children even endured physical and mental cruelty at the hands of unsuitable hosts. In some cases, this may have been the result of the authorities being overstretched, with the result that billets were not always fully vetted before children were placed there. Even if an official did visit, it may have made no difference, as Sheila Whipp recalled: ‘When a Billeting officer visited any of my foster homes, he never asked me if I was happy or even spoke to me. It was as if I didn’t exist.13
In the event that an evacuee was ill-treated, they were often ‘rescued’ because a neighbour observed the situation and contacted the authorities. In other cases, teachers noticed bruises and marks then gently questioned the child.
The authorities organising evacuation often failed to appreciate the psychological repercussions of evacuees being moved into the homes of strangers. Faith and Stella Shoesmith, aged six and nine respectively, were evacuated from Lowestoft to Glossop, Derbyshire. Faith remembers the harsh treatment the two sisters received in their billet:
We were the last to be picked and grudgingly collected by a Mrs Jessie Woods. Our stay was very unhappy as she treated us like slaves. Every Saturday we had to clean all of the bedrooms from top to bottom and we also had to polish the hall floor on our hands and knees. Mrs Woods inspected our work thoroughly afterwards to make sure that we had done a good job. We were not allowed into the dining room, and if we wanted to go upstairs, we had to ask permission. I would say ‘Please may I go upstairs?’ or ‘Can I please go upstairs?’ but it was always wrong and Mrs Woods would stand and laugh at us. We had to mind our manners, stand with straight backs and walk a certain way!
Our Dad had joined the Army. Mum was in Lowestoft and every now and then she would send us parcels of sweets but we never received them. She did visit us when she could, and always brought sweets and toys with her. Our one victory was that we found a large square tin of biscuits hidden behind Mrs Woods’ wardrobe. Every week when we cleaned her bedroom we helped ourselves to one biscuit.14
Eventually, after about two years Faith’s and Stella’s mother found accommodation in Sherwood and removed them from their foster home. Likewise, Philip Doran’s experiences with Mr and Mrs Burgess led to him being removed from their home, also by his mother:
It was my job to go and buy the potatoes and vegetables from a farm about half a mile away. The farmer was a kind old man who always presented us with three or four windfall apples, a rare treat.
One day, I was sent along on my own; as it happened, on this particular day the farmer was not around so his wife dealt with me but she didn’t supply me with any windfalls. My best friend, Joe Ducket, had been evacuated to a farm some distance from me. On my return from the farm with the vegetables, I passed Joe’s house, he was sitting on the garden wall eating an apple. After a brief chat, Joe gave me the core of his apple to finish off on my way home. As I got to Mrs Burgess’s house I had just finished the core and threw the remains into the hedge. I was unaware at the time that Mrs Burgess had witnessed this. I walked up the path and handed over the potatoes and vegetables; Mrs Burgess asked me where the windfalls were, I replied that the farmer had not been there and his wife had not given me any.
Mrs Burgess exploded with rage and started to punch me like a woman possessed; all her pent up resentment seemed to come out in that moment. She was screaming, ‘I saw you eating the apples coming up the road, you little liar!’ By now blood was streaming from my nose and mouth; I knew I had to get away. I made my escape and ran back to Joe’s house, he got me a flannel and helped me to clean up but the blood continued to flow.
I asked Joe to find me some paper, an envelope and a pencil. Together we went down to the canal and I wrote a letter to my Mother, telling her of the unhappy episode. As I wrote, blood dripped onto the paper, proof if it was needed that I was telling the truth. I didn’t have a stamp but just prayed that the post office would deliver the letter anyway. Heavens knows what my Mam thought when she opened the blood stained note!
I told Joe that there was no way that I would be going back to Mrs Burgess; he suggested that I come back to his house. When we arrived, the kind old lady with whom Joe was staying was just returning from a trip to town; when she saw the state of my face she said, ‘Well, you’re going to have to stay here until your mother arrives.’
With that, Mr Burgess arrived to take me back to the house; he too looked shocked at the state of my face. He begged me to go back, saying that his wife was deeply sorry for what she had done. The kind lady reluctantly agreed to let me go and off I went back to the house with Mr Burgess.
On arrival I ran straight up to my bedroom, fearful of repercussions. All I heard from downstairs were raised voices; at last Mr Burgess seemed to have stood up to his wicked wife. The next day my Mother arrived and left Mrs Burgess with no doubt about how she felt about the treatment I had received. She told her that, as far as she was concerned her son would be a lot safer in Liverpool despite the falling bombs. Within a few hours I was back home in Liverpool. The smell of the Mersey never smelt sweeter.15
Because their parents did not want them to live with strangers, Jean and Bern Noble were sent to the home of their grandmother’s brother, Frank. It was not, Jean recalls, the place of sanctuary they expected:
Frank had a bad temper and his maxim was ‘spare the rod and spoil the child’. Frank’s daughter and son in law, who also lived in the house, tried to protect us from Frank’s anger but for much of the time they were not at home.
On one occasion my brother helped me turn a somersault in the backyard which, because of my previous illness, (rheumatic fever) was forbidden. Seeing it, Frank turned on Bern and started beating him with a stick. Frank’s son in law, a much smaller and less aggressive man, intervened to stop him and Frank then attacked him and was punching and threatening to kill him. I ran screaming into the toilet and locked myself in. This was my first experience of a man being a tyrant in the home.
We were not given keys to the front door either which meant if everyone was out when we got home from school we had to wait for someone to return before being let in. Arriving home one afternoon from school I had the urgent need to relieve myself and rang the doorbell, hopping anxiously from one foot to the other. The curtains in the window twitched and Frank looked out to see who was at the door.
I waited for what seemed ages for him to open the door and rang the doorbell again and again, wondering what was keeping him. By the time he eventually opened the door the relief and need was such that, humiliatingly, I wet myself. He looked down at the doorstep with a disdainful and disgusted look on his face and said ‘What dirty little dog has done that on the doorstep?’ The need rose again on another occasion but rather than go through the same humiliation I walked up and down the street weeping in distress until a kindly neighbour came to my aid and allowed me to use her facilities.16
Sisters Peggy and Betty White were evacuated to Oxford. They were very happy with Mr and Mrs Murphy but had to move out when Mrs Murphy was due to have a baby. Their second billet was very different, as Peggy recalls:
We moved in with Mrs Fisher who turned out to be the most wicked woman we had ever met. From the very next day we were beaten and made to do all the housework before going to school. We had to get up at five each morning and we were sent to bed as soon as we got in from school. As an extra punishment we would be shut, one at a time, in a dark coal-shed all night. We hated that as there were huge spiders and it was bitterly cold – you could see white frost on the top of the coal when she let you out in the morning.
The most cruel thing Mrs Fisher did was when her little Scottie dog couldn’t get outside since the back door was closed and messed on the kitchen floor. In her rage she took the dog upstairs and threw it out of the bedroom window. He landed on the rockery below. Betty and I ran out and picked him up; he was still alive and whimpering. Mrs Fisher snatched him from us and we never saw the little chap again.
We lived with Mrs Fisher and her husband (who was also frightened of her) for about a year, which to us seemed like forever. However, one day Betty’s teacher saw the terrible bruises on her. She questioned us both, and we said that Mrs Fisher would kill us if we ever told anyone. The teacher, whose name was Mrs Payne, took us back to the house and told us to pack our belongings in a suitcase while she had words with Mrs Fisher. Then we all left.
As we walked along the road in the gathering dusk with our battered suitcase balanced precariously on Mrs Payne’s bicycle, she said, ‘Where would you like to live most of all?’
Betty and I cried in unison, ‘With Mrs Murphy.’
She replied, ‘That’s just where we are going.’
We skipped the rest of the way there. Mrs Murphy cried when she saw us and so did we.17
Jennifer Williams was starved and beaten in her Somerset billet. In fact, her treatment was so cruel that even to this day she still bears the scars:
We had a boiled egg for breakfast but were not given lunch to take to school. I got by with an extra bottle of free milk and an apple or pear that a London evacuee gave me as he lived on a farm. In the holidays my sister and I survived by stealing from the watercress beds or taking carrots from the ploughed fields.
My mother visited us from Bristol once in two years, at Christmas 1943. It was a five mile walk from the bus and five miles back to the bus stop to Bristol. We walked the five miles to see my mother catch the bus and walked five miles back. Tired, I was crying for my mother and my ‘reward’ was a beating with a black stick. I still have the wheals on my back.18
Financial gain may have proven the incentive for some individuals to foster an evacuee. Rosemary Hall and her brother endured harsh treatment in Birkenhead:
My brother and I stood in the church hall for ages, people wanted me but not my brother as well. A woman said, ‘I will have the little girl’ but she was told that we didn’t want to be separated. The woman said, ‘I don’t want two of them’ and the Salvation Army lady said. ‘But if you take them both you will get nearly 20 shillings a week to keep them.’
The woman quickly changed her mind! We spent a horrendous four months sleeping on camp beds in her hallway behind the front door. We weren’t allowed in any other part of the house except the lavatory in the backyard and we were constantly hungry. She clearly took us in just to get the weekly 20 shillings.
After four months our Mum tracked us down. She knocked on the door of the house, saw the state of us and removed us from the premises without waiting for the woman to come back from the shops.19
Eileen Parker and her brother were sent from Swansea to an unwelcoming family in Whitland:
My Mum had just had her kidney removed and could not look after us. We were sent to a farm where the people were not very nice to us. Every day we were given fish paste sandwiches and goat’s milk, which tasted awful. My teacher saw that I was not drinking my milk so she swapped it for her cow’s milk. We had very little to eat at other times and had to work on the farm after school and at weekends.
When Mum was well enough to travel, she came to visit us. As we met her on the railway station platform, she was horrified at how thin we were. She said we looked like a pair of urchins and decided to take us straight home with her, despite the dangers in Swansea. I was so relieved to be going back home! She firmly believed that the couple who took us in only did so to get the billeting allowance.20
Rose Hawkins, aged eight, was evacuated from Birmingham to Aston Ingham in Herefordshire, in September 1940:
My brother Bill was badly injured when the factory he worked in was bombed, so Mum sent my brother John and I to the countryside. We moved in with a husband and wife who had no family, and no intention of sparing the rod or making allowances.
Everything was regimented, our letters sent home were censored, or destroyed if they contained requests of ‘Please can we come home?’ We walked two and a half miles each way to school and if we were late back, there was no meal, straight to bed.
When I first arrived I wet the bed as I was so scared. The woman told me ‘If you wet the bed again, I will boil a mouse and make you drink the liquid!’ So whenever I ate and drank anything after that, I always checked it for pieces of mouse.
Fifty years later, we attended Aston Ingham’s first evacuee reunion, presenting the village with a biblical picture with this inscription; ‘Suffer the little children to come unto me, and forbid them not, for such is the Kingdom of Heaven.’21
George and Brenda Osborn, aged five and six, were sent from Portsmouth to Wootton Bridge on the Isle of Wight. They were placed in separate billets. It was George who suffered the most. Unsurprisingly, he still recalls his ill treatment:
She had been forced to take in an evacuee. She was never cruel to me physically but the mental torture was just as bad.
I was almost ignored, being sent out to play in the garden or told to sit quietly with a book. Any noise was criticised and the family stepped over me with a ‘tutting’ sound. Every other mouthful of food was accompanied with comments about how grateful I should be, or how many brave men had died bringing it to our table.
Finally, she told me that if I had not been moved by Friday of that week, then she would throw me out. True to her word Mrs. Wilson packed all my things in a small suitcase and bundled my dirty clothes up in a towel. She told me to call back from school at lunchtime and take everything to the house of Mrs Gallop, where my sister was living.
Mrs Gallop (Auntie Annie to me) had no idea I was going to turn up, but placed me in the care of her lodgers, a young couple with no children.
I didn’t tell anyone what happened when I was alone in the house with them. Brenda noticed some marks on my body one night when I was undressing and asked me what they were. Eventually I told her that the lodger had done it, hitting me with his leather belt. She ran down the stairs, wide eyed and red faced, her lips closed tightly together in anger and told Aunty Annie what had happened.
When she didn’t believe her – probably her defence for not knowing how to handle the situation – Brenda stormed into the front room, which the lodgers occupied, and told them she was going to tell our mother, her teacher and everyone she knew. They said I was lying, but she knew I wasn’t, and she wouldn’t let me near them from that moment. They hadn’t reckoned with my big sister – aged just six.
True to her word, Brenda told everybody she saw. She added the village policeman, Sunday school teacher and district nurse to her list. Somebody had to take notice and very soon they did. A man called a ‘Child Cruelty Officer’ called round and he made me take off my shirt to show him the marks, now fast fading, but some had broken the skin and still showed. He called the lodgers in for their explanation but he wasn’t convinced. I was immediately removed from their ‘care’ and went back to living with Aunty Annie and my sister.22
George’s happiness, however, was short-lived. He goes on to detail the events that happened just one year later:
The last time I saw Brenda was six weeks before she died, walking with Aunty Annie. She was on the way to Dr. Kennedy’s evening surgery, her arm in terrible pain and swollen like a balloon. Brenda looked back once or twice, waving in the way she always did when she was saying good-bye. I didn’t bother waving back but shouted after her saying something like, ‘You’re a sissy, it doesn’t really hurt, you’re only playing up.’
She was rushed straight from the surgery to the hospital in an ambulance. Mother came to see Brenda often, crossing on the ferry from Portsmouth to Ryde. My sister died at St. Mary’s County Hospital Ryde, on 28th December 1941. She died of what was called blood poisoning in those days, caused by an infection after an inoculation at school against diphtheria.
Because Brenda’s death was so close to Christmas, letters of sympathy were arriving at the same time as ‘Get Well’ and Christmas cards. Christmas presents for Brenda also lay forlornly unopened – Mother not knowing what to do with them.
With all my heart I wish my last words to Brenda, as she walked to the doctor’s surgery, had been kinder. I should have said, ‘Please come back soon Brenda because I shall miss you terribly. For as long as I can remember you’ve always been there for me; you have not only been my sister but also my best friend, mother and father, all rolled into one. I always feel safe and secure with you and you’re the only person who has never let me down. I depend on you for so many things, so come back soon and I promise never to be spiteful or hurt you – ever again.’23
‘I was completely neglected,’ notes Edna Dart when describing conditions in her Devon billet as an eight-year-old evacuee. ‘For tea one day I was given a sandwich full of fat and a glass of lemonade with salt in it. I wasn’t washed and my clothes weren’t washed. In those days, the authorities didn’t check on the people they put you with.’24
Jean Arthur was three years younger than Edna when she was sent to a billet in Cornwall. Her young age did little to prevent her suffering constant humiliation:
My brother Sid and I were evacuated to St Albans, I was sent to one house and [my brother] Sid was sent next door. We were used to living in flats so it seemed very posh, the people were really snobby and horrible and considered us dirty and common because we were from London.
They made me feel poor and shabby, and they immediately combed my hair with methylated spirits, it was very demeaning. I slept in a little fold up bed next to their daughter who looked down on me from her bed and sneered at me. When I sat at the dining table there were unfamiliar items there. For example there was a dish with a spoon sitting in a silver plated stand, and I had never seen anything like that before. I asked the family ‘What is that?’ and they mocked me saying ‘Don’t you know what that is? It’s a jam container’ which made me cringe with embarrassment. Mum came to visit and saw how unhappy we both were and took us home.25
Francis Rutter was also evacuated to Cornwall – to a monastery. His experiences were not happy:
I was eight years old and sent to stay with the Benedictum Brothers in Redruth. I found it very hard to live under the Brothers’ strict regime and tried on numerous occasions to run away. The only way they dealt with this was to beat me in front of the other boys at assembly, to make an example of me. I missed my family immensely and it still upsets me that I was sent so far away and not even to a family. I thought I would be on a farm or in the countryside, not at a strict monastery where we weren’t allowed to play, or even talk most of the time.26
When Jean Bell was evacuated to South Wales, she found herself being moved from one billet to another which led to a roller-coaster of experiences:
I was picked out, with my sister, by a Welsh lady and unfortunately she turned out to be very cruel to us. She had a daughter who stamped on my sister’s fingers when she was drawing hopscotch on the pavement. Both my sister and I started at the local school without shoes and were laughed at by the local children for being badly dressed. My sister told me later this was because our clothes had been sold. I seem to have blocked out most of what happened whilst we lived with this lady but I do know my sister was admitted to hospital with a back injury and it was at this point that we were removed from this house.
A little later, we stayed with a really lovely lady who was very kind to us although I remember that soon after we moved in with her, I fell into the river and was too frightened to go home. Because of my experience in the previous billet, I feared being severely punished. It was quite dark when the lady found me, still very wet and scared, and took me home, gave me a big cuddle and dried me off and put me to bed. After that, I felt loved and settled down happily with her.
We remained with her for a while but then, unfortunately for us, her daughter, who was in the forces, became pregnant and was sent home. The room we occupied was required for her daughter so once again a new home had to be found for us.
This lady looked upon us as servants and we were kept busy with housework etc. Because I was younger than my sister, I had the lightest chores but my sister had to do the washing by hand and scrub the stone floor in the kitchen. I got away with sweeping and dusting. My sister and I also ate in the kitchen whilst friends and family ate in the dining room.27
During the Second World War the separation of children from their parents was viewed in a different light than it might be today. Indeed, the author John Welshman believes that evacuation would not happen today, ‘because changes in the way that child abuse has been exposed mean that children would never be sent away to live with strangers’.28
Evacuee Jean Arthur experienced sexual abuse during her time with her host household in Cornwall. She, like many others, wishes to share her memories to expose what some evacuees had to endure:
After some time we left our first billet and were evacuated again to the countryside, just outside St Austell, Cornwall. The couple who cared for us had no children and were very cold hearted.
I pined so badly for my Mum that I started wetting the bed, which was a cardinal sin! I got thrashed and each night before I went to bed I would get on my hands and knees and pray to God ‘Please don’t let me go to sleep and wet the bed’ but of course I fell asleep and wet it. The husband tried to interfere with me when his wife was out. The neighbours must have known something of what was going on and felt sorry for us because they complained to the authorities about our treatment.29
Ann Smith was evacuated from Liverpool to Anglesey with her school. Although she herself was not abused or harassed, a couple of her friends were:
One girl, who was the same age as me (12 years old) had a tough time as the farmer used to sexually accost her. She was very frightened but she would not let us tell the teacher in case of causing trouble. Looking back now, we should have reported it but in those days none of us really knew what it was all about, there was no sex education in schools.
Another girl was billeted with a butcher and his wife and the butcher would bring the girl to see us in his van. However, when it got time for her to go home, she would beg us to go with her in the van as he always tried to molest her. So we used to go back with her in the van so that she would not be on her own with him. His wife was really nice to us and obviously had no idea what her husband was up to.30
A number of the evacuees suffered not merely neglect or mistreatment at the hands of their hosts but were actually killed by them. One of these instances was probably the most harrowing story ever told of illtreatment of young children. This was the case of the death of thirteen-year-old Dennis O’Neill. It was reported in the Daily Mirror of Wednesday, 14 February 1945, and because of the starling nature of the crime, it is repeated here at length. The principal witness was his tenyear-old brother Terence, who was described as a sturdy, fair-haired boy:
Terence stood in front of the witness box by the side of counsel to give evidence.
‘We were quite warm in bed when we went to the farm in June,’ said Terence, after identifying the bed clothing provided for them, ‘but when the winter came we were not very warm. I asked Mr. and Mrs. Gough for another blanket but never got one.’
When Mrs. Gough washed the blanket they had to go to bed without one, and they were cold.
Asked what food they were given, Terence said that they had bread and butter for breakfast, two or three pieces, and tea.
Counsel: Do you remember what you had for dinner? – Bread and butter, sometimes two and sometimes three pieces, and tea to drink. Sometimes I think, we had tinned salmon.
They had apple pie sometimes, but often when they had that they only had two pieces of bread and butter. He did not remember having more than one piece of pie.
Counsel: What did you have for tea? – Bread and butter, sometimes two and sometimes three pieces, and tea to drink.
What did you have for supper? – Bread and butter one piece very often, and tea to drink. We never got sugar in our tea. Fairly often I was hungry and we used to go into the pantry and get something.
At this point Terence started to cry, but he recovered his composure.
‘Were you ever caught in the pantry?’ asked counsel. ‘No’ replied Terence, ‘but they found out and gave us stripes – very often Mr. Gough and sometimes Mrs. Gough. The stripes were given on our hands with a thin stick and sometimes with a fairly thick one. I don’t remember how many stripes we had but it was a lot.’
Terence said that every evening they had to tell Mr. Gough what they had done wrong during the day, and then he gave them stripes – sometimes ten for one thing. ‘Sometimes,’ added the boy, ‘they said they were too tired to give us stripes, but other times we had nearly a hundred on one night.’
The stripes were given for going into the pantry, for taking a long time with the horses, for not cleaning the cowhouse properly, and for getting their clothes dirty.
Counsel: How many times do you think you missed having stripes? – Only a few days.
They were given thrashings on their hands and legs.
An album of twelve photographs taken of the boy after death and described by Mr. H.H. Maddocks, for the prosecution, as ‘revolting’ was handed to the three magistrates and inspected by them. Mrs. M.W. Cock, the one woman on the bench, shook her head and closed her eyes.
‘One evening about two days before I left, Mr. Gough stripped Dennis in the kitchen, took him into the back kitchen told him to get on the pig bench, tied a rope across his back and fastened him down with it. Then he started hitting him on the top part of the back with a stick and Dennis cried and shouted.’
Mrs. Gough was in another room, but he thought she must have heard Dennis shrieking.
Counsel: Where were you when this was going on? – Mr. Gough told me to hold the lantern so he could see what he was doing.
‘This thrashing,’ said Terence, ‘did not take long but Mr. Gough threatened that if Dennis kept on being bad he would put him on the bench again.’
Counsel: Do you know what Dennis had done to cause this thrashing? – I think he had had a bite out of a swede. He thought Gough did the thrashing with a thick stick because the thin one had broken off. The day before Dennis died he got up but kept falling down.
In the evening when Terence returned from school Dennis was in a cubby hole, a dark place in the kitchen. He was locked in as Gough had put a nail in the latch … He (Terence) did not get any tea that day because when Mrs. Gough asked him to get some dry bracken he said he would not be able to find any because of the snow.
On the Sunday night before Dennis’s death he was sent to bed early and left Dennis in the kitchen naked. He heard Dennis crying and when Dennis came to bed he was still without his clothes.
Gough came up later, pulled Dennis away and smacked him across the face. He said that if they made a noise again he would throw them downstairs.
Later, because Dennis was crying, Gough came upstairs and put his knee on the bed, Dennis was lying on his back and Gough thumped him on his chest with both his fists.
Earlier, Dr. Andrew James Rhodes, pathologist at the Royal Salop Infirmary, Shrewsbury, said that at a post-mortem examination on 11 January, ‘he found … that he was very thin and wasted. There were extensive bruises on the chest, the result of a series of blows struck with some violence. There were areas of ulceration on the feet and the back of the right leg was severely chapped and cracked.’ Dr. Rhodes said there were other ulcers on the left foot which must have caused extreme pain.
‘There was a large number of recent bruises on the back, one five inches long, running towards the right shoulder and crossed by another four inches long.’
‘His examination,’ he said, ‘showed no natural cause for the boy’s death’.
The surprising verdict was not one of murder, as one might imagine, but that of manslaughter. However, there was a case of murder of an evacuee, that of six-year-old, Patricia Ann Cupit, and it became front page news:
Unwilling to risk the dangers of a city in wartime, a young RAF sergeant and his wife searched the country for a haven for their only child, a girl of six. A friend in London told them, ‘I will show you the safest place for her. I have a sister in a tiny village who will look after her.’ So last summer little Patricia Cupit went to live in the village of Wrigglesworth in the heart of the Norfolk countryside at the cottage of Mr and Mrs Paske.
Patricia died yesterday after being found stabbed in a peaceful copse in the village. Mr Cupit and his wife hurried from London when they heard of the discovery. They arrived at the hospital before the child died but she did not regain consciousness. Her foster mother, Mrs Paske, told me last night, ‘Patricia was the most adorable child in the world – all the village loved her. A policeman sat by Patricia’s bedside throughout the night hoping that she might give some clue but she never spoke.’
Despite Patricia being unable to identify her killer, the police did arrest the culprit, as revealed in The Times of 18 July 1942, under the headline ‘Death Sentence for Murder of Child Evacuee’:
Sentence of death was passed by Mr Justice Wrottesley at the Central Criminal Court yesterday on James Wyeth, 21, a Private in the Pioneer Corps, committed from East Haring, Norfolk, who was found Guilty of the murder of of Patricia Ann Cupit, a 6½-year-old evacuee, who was found unconscious and suffering from head wounds under some bushes at Wrigglesworth Park, near Thetford, on May 5, and died the following day.
For the defence it was urged that Wyeth was insane at the time he committed the act.
The case then went to appeal, and this was reported in The Times on 26 August:
The Court [of Criminal Appeal] dismissed the appeal of James Wyeth, who was convicted at the Central Criminal Court of the murder of Patricia Ann Cupit … Mr F.J. Alpe [for the appellant] said that the child was killed on the morning of May 6 last in Riddlesworth [sic] Park, Norfolk. There was little dispute as to the facts of the case, and the defence was one of insanity.
The appellant had made a statement to the police authorities in which he said on the day in question he was working as a member of the Pioneer Corps, on a munition shed. He saw the child pass by, and the idea came over him to follow her. He did so and took her by her clothes and dragged her under some trees out of sight and did not remember anything more until he saw her lying on her face in front him with blood all over her face. He returned to his work and later, thinking he had done something very wrong and made a statement to the police.
On behalf of the appellant, a doctor was called at the trial who said that he believed the appellant was telling the truth when he said he did not know what had happened when he attacked the girl. He (the doctor) believed his statement, partly as a result of his examination of him, and partly because he knew that the appellant had two blood relatives who were detained in mental homes.
Counsel said that the ground of appeal was that the judge had misdirected the jury in failing to call their attention to the evidence of insanity in the appellant’s family.
Mr Justice Humphreys, giving judgement, said that in opposition to the medical evidence was given by the senior medical officer in the prison in which the appellant was detained, who said that he could not accept the theory that the appellant had suffered from any lapse of memory after the commission of the crime, and that from his daily contact with him he could find no ground for saying that the appellant did not know what he was doing, or if he did know, he did not know that it was wrong. It was for the jury to express their view as between the doctors. It was, of course, further necessary that the law should be correctly stated by the Judge.
In the opinion of the Court there had been no misdirection, and, that being so, the appeal must be dismissed.
Despite this judgement, Wyeth was later classified insane. He was reprieved from the death sentence and instead sent to Broadmoor Prison by order of the Home Secretary.
Perhaps the strangest case of all was that of a host family whose evacuees had driven them to commit suicide and murder! William James Reid, a former Acting-Governor of Assam Province in India, had, it was said in the Glostershire Echo of 25 November 1939, since the start of the war ‘largely lost his sense of proportion’. According to a neighbour, Mr Reid said that his wife could not cope with the children that had been placed with them.
‘He asked me to go over with him, on his wife’s behalf,’ said Mr Charles Prettejohn, ‘to try and get the evacuees taken from the house. Afterwards he was very dissatisfied because I know he got rather short shrift’. He said that the evacuees ‘depressed’ him. Mr Prettejohn continued: ‘It was owing to his intense fondness for his wife that he attempted to get rid of the evacuee children billeted with them … He told me he was quite sure his wife could not carry on.’
Doctor W.L. Scott described what he found: ‘Sir William had a gunshot wound in the chest. Lady Reid had a wound in the head, and, apparently had been shot from behind … it could not have been selfinflicted.’
The jury at the inquest reached the conclusion that Sir William ‘murdered his wife and shot himself while of unsound mind’.