Author(s): Patricia Owen

Self Published

For over 135 years The Children's Society has provided care and protection for vulnerable, disadvantaged, destitute, endangered and unsupported British children aged from six weeks to 16 years. Without my mother signing me over to the Society I would have had a continued dire existence in the workhouses. Without the Children's Homes I would have been on the streets. From my birth, alone with my mother was a destitute situation on all accounts, and there were times that we spent in the workhouse. I was left in various places, nurseries etc, some apparently very dubious and consequently I would be very quickly removed and placed elsewhere. Living in bed and breakfasts, and flats to apparently became a task for my mother and I as not many would take in a toddler as well. So my mother had no choice but to try and get me into care.A mother in your life should be unconditional, mortal or immortal. I've tried to find mine on a computer. Through the Children's Society's micro film documents on the life of Patricia McLendon Owen, I have further recounted and remembered the facts presented in the pages to come. I was lucky as a fire in the Society's London Records Department had destroyed the documents of many others. I am thrilled to have my life double documented and now in my possession, since correspondence started in 2006, but at the same time deeply saddened that so much of my childhood was 'so sad'. In the chill, stark environment of the orphanages children questioned their existence. Where do I belong? Who do I belong too? Who am I? Confusion created long periods of silence in me, neglect produced behavioural issues in others, while self doubt and insecurities settled in all of us. The baby boomers - the war babies...there's so many of us with the same upbringing in the Homes. If I saw something like WAR BABY Love Child on the book shelves I'd gravitate towards it. I'd want to read it, to verify what I went through.The flow of documents to follow are accurate and eloquent, indisputable evidence of my existence. Reflective of the 'decorum' of the times, the neat and tidy correspondence at times manages to twist and twirl the truth of my experiences for I was just a vulnerable and abandoned little girl looking for someone to love me.