Free Lemon Sherbet and Dolly Blue by Lynn Knight Page A

stone corridors and ever-present discipline – Walk, Don’t Run; Stand Straight.
    The Orphanage could accommodate 124 children. Numbers fluctu ated, but in the 1900s, it held around 100 ‘inmates’, including my great-aunt and her sisters. They were fortunate, apparently. Around 1903, the institution came under the care of the Madins, a married couple who were complimented on the marked improvement in the children since their appointment as Superintendent and Matron. True, questions were asked, in Mr Madin’s first year, about his severe use of corporal punishment, but these concerns were quickly brushed aside. The Committee expressed its full confidence in his judgement and authority: the Superintendent should administer discipline as he thought fit. Some may think it even more fortunate that Mr Madin died three years later, leaving his wife in sole charge.
    Other residential staff included a Labour Master (for the boys), an Industrial Trainer (for girls) and a Girls’ Attendant and Infants Teacher (one post). There were some half a dozen Girls’ Attendants in four years. Miss Turner, Miss Berrington, Rose Church, Alice Butler, Mrs Blagdon, Marion Shawson – one after another, they traipse across the Minutes. One attendant lasted only three months, another was dismissed for insubordination after five days. These were the women responsible for the welfare of the youngest girls, the women my great-aunt should have known best, and felt able to turn to. One face after another departing: no mother, and no motherly figure to rely on (although at least the careless and cruel attendants departed as swiftly as the kind ones).
    My great-aunt said she was neither happy nor unhappy during her orphanage years – both states seeming too extreme for the kind of nothingness she lived in, which was neither one thing nor another, but just Tuesday following Monday and her left foot following her right in the slim crocodile heading to and from the Catholic Church on Spencer Street on Sunday mornings. As Catholics, she and her sisters were in a minority; theirs was a longer walk to church, more fresh air and a longer time away from Ashgate Road, but greater opportunities for chapped hands and chilblained feet. Her cuffs never quite reached her wrists, no matter how hard she tugged them; her boots were generally too large or too small, with the rare pair that fitted shaped by someone else’s feet before hers. She was never quite warm enough and there was never quite enough to eat. She had known it for so long, my great-aunt did not even recognise that the stone in the pit of her stomach was hunger.
    Friday breakfasts consisted of 6 oz of bread, a pint of milk and a pint of porridge – glutinous, thick grey porridge that stuck to thebowl and made her gag. With the children struggling to swallow this tepid mess without the sugar that would have helped to make it edible, much of the ration was wasted. Orders were issued that Friday porridge be replaced with three-quarters of an ounce of jam. Friday’s stone became even larger. Though, however much she loathed the inedible porridge, my great-aunt was lucky to be given fresh milk and in such quantity – a splash of condensed was a more frequent offering for most working-class children at this time.
    For all the ghastly food and insufficient everything, attempts were made to humanise institutional life. There were fireworks onGuy Fawkes’ Night (costing a sum not to exceed £2), annual trips to the seaside, plus the ‘usual extras’ at Christmas. Benefactors donated greenery, crackers, oranges, sweets, figs and – on one occasion – dolls, though there were not enough dolls to go round, and some little girls had no idea how to play with a doll, having never had the chance until now. Figs and oranges, though appropriately festive and a vast improvement on the usual fare, disappeared with the season and were, anyway, not things you