A Barnardo’s boy’s story

A Barnardo’s boy’s story By John Denyer

I INTERVIEWED Richard Avery with the intent to hear and write about his memories of active service in the Korean War. However, I discovered that the story of the first 17 years of his life was so challenging, so difficult, that with his kind permission, I have tried to describe it here. I suspect many people of a younger generation would find it hard to image how difficult life could be in the mid 1930s in Cornwall, and across the UK, especially for orphans or those who for whatever reason were reliant on charitable organisations.

Richard Avery, who lives in Ashleigh Way, was born in Mevagissey in January 1932, the youngest of seven children. He had a start to life that would be hard to comprehend for many of us when, in 1934, his mother Irene died of cancer aged just 35. If that wasn’t tragic enough, the following year his father Richard Henry died aged 46 from ‘exhaustion and ulcerative colitis’, leaving all seven children orphaned.

One can only imagine how hard it would have been for Richard’s father, first to lose his young wife, then trying to support seven children alone. This was a long time before a welfare system, as we now know it, was established in the UK.

In February 1935, following the death of his father, three-year-old Richard and four sisters were taken into temporary shelter, the Dr Barnardo’s ‘Ever Open Door’, known as Welby in Plymouth. The eldest two siblings, Henry (20) and Eva (18) were already working so didn’t go into the care system.

Life was always tough as a 'Barnardo's boy or girl’ but even more so during the global depression of the 1930s and in the run up to and during the Second World War.

Over the next decade, Richard lived in multiple children's homes from Plymouth to Norfolk, including a military school and one period with a foster family. Initially, all contact with his eldest siblings and the extended family was lost and not regained for many months or years.

Image: Richard aged four years, with his sisters Kathleen, Rene, Ethel, and Mary and eldest Sister Eva, who was 19 and visiting.

After six months, Richard and four sisters were sent to the 'Girls Village Home' in Barkingside, East London. Six months after that due to ill health he was sent to Syndal Convalescent Home for Girls at Hove, West Sussex. Over the next two years, Richard rotated another three times between the Girls Village Home in Barkingside and the Convalescent Home in Hove. It's unclear why he was kept in girls' homes throughout this period, other than perhaps to have some contact with those sisters also in care.

Richard aged six at Barnardo’s Girls Village Home

Syndal, Dr Barnardo’s Convalescent Home for Girls in Hove, West Sussex.

In September 1938 at the age of six, with the dark clouds of war looming, Richard was evacuated from Barkingside to Worcester, but this was only for a month. He soon returned to the Girls Village Home in East London. In May 1939, Richard was then fostered to a Mrs Maggs who lived at 40 High Street, Midsomer Norton in Somerset. For the first time in his life, Richard had some stability as he stayed with Mrs Maggs for four years. Richard remembers Mrs Maggs as a wonderful caring person and devoted to those in her care. He recalls that:

She had up to four boys all from Dr Barnardo’s at any one time. We were always well fed, she was a brilliant cook. She brought us up to be religious, we went to church and Sunday school regularly.

She was very well liked in the community and found us Saturday and holiday jobs to earn pocket money. Of any monies earned, half had to be deposited in a money box which we each had. Such money saved could then be spent on day trips to Bath which included a dinner for which she paid.

War broke out while I was with Mrs Maggs. During the air raids we had to hide under the large dining table. I do recall that there was a sentry at the bottom of the steps to the house and Mrs Maggs would take him a jug of tea. She made sure we were well dressed for school and Sunday best. Bath night was Friday and in a large tin bath in front of the fire. The hot water came from a large clothes boiler in the kitchen.

Mrs Maggs also had a part time job cleaning the large CO-OP store nearby and took us with her which I remember was fun for us. When it came to birthdays and Christmas, she always made it feel special.

Another memory of my time with Mrs Maggs was that there was an elderly chap called Frederick Bray who also lived there. The house had three bedrooms, two at the front and a very large one at the rear. The rear one had two single beds and one double, hence room for four boys. Mrs Maggs had one of the front bedrooms and Mr Bray the other.

In September 1943 Richard left Mrs Maggs and was sent to Barnardo's 'Boys Garden City' in Woodford, London. He was only there for a couple of weeks when, at the age of 11 years, he was sent by train to Watts Naval Training School (WNTS) in Dereham, Norfolk. WNTS was a military school with links to the Royal Navy, and the young boys had to adapt quickly to a strict military-style regime.

Friday ‘passing out’ parade at WNTS

There aren’t many available records of Watts Naval Training School, but I did find the reminiscences from one unnamed ‘old boy’ who, it seems, was there a few years before Richard:

This was a military-style life and training. The boys were given numbers to identify themselves more so than their own names. Their hair was clipped short, and they were rigged out in sailors' uniforms. In a strict regime which seems terribly harsh by today's standards, the boys' lives were now to be governed by bugle calls. The cane was used as a swift punishment for those breaking the rules. The boys' best kit was stowed away, and their boots and socks were locked up. Apart from on Sunday parades and for church services, they would wear nothing on their feet inside or outside the building from April to October regardless of the weather.

Image: Boy sailors manning the mast at WNTS, Norfolk.

Their days began at 05:45. The first hour of the day was reserved for cleaning, sweeping, scrubbing and polishing. Next would come breakfast and then assembly. Classes began at 09:15 and would continue through the day till 16:50. The boys would learn seamanship, physical training, gunnery, drill and signals, as well as other lessons. The evenings were busy too – tea, homework, supper and, at 20:00, the teeth-cleaning ceremony when hundreds of boys lined up for a spoonful of cooking salt with which to scrub teeth and gargle. After another assembly, it was time for prayers and 'lights out' at 21:00.

It turned out that a sailor's life wasn't to be for Richard as, after five months, he was sent to the Barnardo's wartime evacuation centre at Honingham Hall - a grand old country house near Norwich. He stayed there for 18 months until September 1945 when he was sent to Spring Hill House East Cowes, Isle of Wight for a month before going on to yet another boys home in Ashdene, Southampton, where he finished school.

The main entrance for Dr Barnardo’s Home in Stepney Causeway

In May 1946, aged 14, he was sent to Dr Barnardo's centre at Stepney Causeway, East London. Once Richard reached the age of 14, as was the norm in the mid-1940s, he finished school and immediately had to leave the care system. Before leaving, Dr Barnardo's arranged 'digs' (accommodation, a room shared with other boys) in Kentish Town and a job as an 'office boy' at Gallaher's Cigarette Co. in their Cannon Street, London EC1 office.

The main building of Dr Barnardo’s Children’s Home at Stepney Causeway, East London.

Image: The ‘Tinsmiths Workshop’, at the Dr Barnardo’s Stepney Causeway childrens home. one of several such vocational workshops where boys and girls could be taught trade related skills.

That was Richard’s last contact with Dr Barnardo's - he was all alone in an adult world and had to grow up fast.

Richard aged just 14, as he left Dr Barnardo’s care to start work.

To be continued. Next month read how Richard joins the Army, is sent to Malaysia, Germany and then Korea where he meets and is transferred into the unit of Major Tresawna DSO from Lamelyn Farm, Probus.