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(Just read this in my local paper...)
I know these people fairly well, I am still in touch with the sister of this man. The family came to live next door to us in council housing when I was in my teens. The mother wasn't very good and used to go out leaving the two little girls alone and hungry - my Mum would bring them in to our house and feed them and look after them till the mother came home. Their father, this man's stepfather, used to come home drunk on his bike and swerve into the kerb to stop at his house, falling off most of the time. One night my parents heard a bump and the old lady swearing, turns out the old man got upstairs even tho drunk, but walked into the bedroom in his socks, slipped on the lino and slid under the bed, she had to leave him there until morning as she couldn't pull him out lol They kept chickens and rabbits and were really scruffy grubby people, but the daughter I keep in touch with has been a wonderful mother and now grandmother to her family, she married someone I went to school with, sadly they are both in poor health, she has bad arthritis and he has health problems, but I always get a card and a note at Christmas time and they did visit my Mum before she died altho they moved away from the street a long time back. She did say her brother was saying things that weren't true about the family which were upsetting to her. I can remember the brother John so I think the reporter or George has made a mistake, I don't recall a Stanley so it might have been him who died young.
I have seen George about with his wife and both of them used to visit the household so it wasn't all animosity, they brought their children to see their Grandmother but I think the old stepfather had died by then. He was a funny little chap, I don't think he had the horse when they moved next door!
Lizx
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Sent away from home in Norwich at eight to an approved school 100 miles away for no more than some petty vandalism, George Hydon had a childhood from a Dickens book.
Now 72, he has put together the jigsaw pieces of those traumatic early years thanks to a tenacious desire to find out why he was treated so badly and dozens of official documents that he has unearthed.
Mr Hydon, of Coleburn Road, Lakenham, has never before told his story, bottling up his anger at being separated from everyone and everything he knew as a youngster.
He spent seven years at the approved school - a residential school in Leicestershire for children who had committed crimes - and beatings were regular. Unlike most of the other children, he was not even allowed back for holidays.
He was kept there until 15, mostly because his home was considered unfit to go back to. And he was not even told when his younger brother died - his mother's letter telling the news kept from him by the headmaster.
Mr Hydon was annoyed to see children sent to Australia in the 1920s-1960s receiving an official apology, which has not been offered to those like him. “It was just as bad for the boys and girls sent to approved schools in this country,” he says.
He is speaking out now because he believes it will help others who went through the same thing. He knows of six of seven others from Norwich who were sent to the same school.
He lived with his parents and two younger brothers in a four-room cottage on Coach and Horses Street, near Chapelfield Gardens. The bomb-damaged house had an outside toilet and the water supply was from a shared outside tap.
He says: “At the age of six I was begging on the streets of Norwich. I could bring home more in a day than my mother and stepfather could in a week.”
A police report on him from July 1945 is entitled “Child found wandering abroad in filthy condition”. In it a PC Russell stated: “His skin and clothing were in a filthy condition and his footwear was such that he was partially barefooted. Hydon stated he had not been to school for some weeks and had not been washed since the other week.”
The authorities decided what to do with him and an “Approved School Order” consigned him to his fate, saying he was guilty of “wilfully causing damage with another boy to turf at the Garden of Rest, Market Place, Norwich” and “wilful damage with another boy to siphons”.
The order records his conduct as “lazy, crafty” and his character as “shifty, not to be trusted”.
Norwich's director of education, J W Beeson, sent a letter to the new school saying: “When the boy was at home the mother had no control over him and he was a constant source of trouble to the authorities.” His handwritten postscript to the letter adds: “This was one of the worst 'homes' in Norwich.”
Mr Hydon finally left in 1952, having been at the school longer than most. He was pleased to be out, getting a job at the Bally shoe factory in Norwich, but says: “I was withdrawn. I was used as a babysitter by my mother. It was not until I went into the RAF that I became my own man.”
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The education authorities kept an eye on George until he was 18. In August 1955 Home Office schools officer F White wrote: “Before joining the RAF on a five-year engagement he kept steadily to one job and paid his way religiously. In the early days in employment he had very little pocket money but never grumbled. He regularly had to do the babysitting while his mother went to the local.
“I regard him not as a delinquent, but just a boy who was committed to get him away from a poor home.”
Mr Hydon, who is writing a book about his amazing experiences, says: “It is only just now I have found out why I was kept there for that long. If I had known earlier I could have sued for lost childhood, but it is too late now.
“It seems a bit wrong. I just wonder why I couldn't have been put in foster care like my brothers.”
Mr White was full of praise for the 18-year-old. He wrote: “George has had a very unhelpful background but he has been a first-class lad since returning to Norwich.”
His final report said: “If ever there was a boy who overcame a very unhappy environment then that boy is George.”
It was when George Hydon's wife of 49 years, Valerie, asked him if there was anything he wanted to do before he died that he decided to return to his former school in Leicestershire. He was able to look around, though it is no longer a school.
He went on to ask for a copy of his records under the Data Protection Act and was given dozens of official documents on his childhood.
A retired Anglia Windows and Boulton and Paul worker, Mr Hydon was born in Yarmouth but moved to Norwich with his parents as a baby. His father, who worked on the railways, was killed in a railway accident and his mother Florence remarried.
Mr Hydon says: “My stepfather was a tinker. He had a horse and cart at one time, until the horse got killed in the bombings.
“I never went to school because I found it boring. My mother used to take me to school and I would be out the back door. I found it more free to be out and about doing what I wanted to do. I was also helping to look after my younger brothers John and Stanley.”
Eight-year-old George spent a few weeks in Bramerton Remand Home before eventually being sent to Desford School in Leicestershire. He had never been out of Norfolk before.
He recalls: “I arrived just before tea-time. I was taken by the headmaster, Mr Taylor, to the dining hall and introduced as 'the terror of Norwich'. He said 'I will give you the terror of Norwich', whereupon he gave me a smack round the ear and told me to find a place at the table.
“Why I was called the terror of Norwich I don't know - I was only about 3ft tall.”
Daily life at the school included regular beatings and hard work. He says: “Imagine getting up at six in the morning and having to go and sweep and scrub and clean buildings and the yard before breakfast, and being on parade before breakfast to see that we were clean and tidy.”
After breakfast came school, with another three parades through the day to check the children were all present and neatly turned out. A child with dirty shoes or clothes or a dirty face would be caned by the headteacher.
Mr Hydon says: “When you got the cane that was fairly bad, you would get it three times on each hand and on your backside.
“Being just over eight I never used to keep myself very clean. It took a lot of knocking about to get me to do it myself, which I thought was a bit unfair.
“There was sexual abuse as well, one of the boys suffered that, though I didn't, and the teacher went to prison for it.”
His brother John died in early 1946, but his mother's letter breaking the news was kept back by the headmaster, who wrote to her that “I do not want the lad to be distressed by something which he is powerless to alter”, and asked her not to mention the matter in future letters. He did not hear the news until 1948.
The great-grandfather, who has three children and three grandchildren, says the abuse he suffered affected his life and the way he brought his children up.
He said: “I never punished my children, never hit them. If they were in trouble and I sent them up to bed, within a minute I would go upstairs and say they could go out. It all goes back to the way I was treated when I was a child.”
It also meant that even as an adult he would not talk about his feelings. “If you showed emotion in the school you were bullied for it. I heard grown boys of 14 or 15 crying in the night but if you said anything the next morning they would deny it and called you a liar. So you bottled things up.”
Valerie, 70, a retired cleaner, says: “He is writing a book and I sit in the kitchen writing it out and crying because I didn't know what he had been through in there.
“All these years we could have split up many a time because he couldn't talk about things. If only he had talked years ago. But he has been a good husband and father.”
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bring,s back a few memories i to was in a approved school simula to that.
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Michael, that must have stirred up lots of memories, I hope it hasn't upset you.
Shelly,hope you got to the end lol, it is interesting and very sad that because his own home was so dreadful he had to be sent away rather than grow up with his family, however, who knows if he might have gone on to get up to more mischief with the lack of parental guidance that was missing there. Flo was ok but just couldn't cope with domestic things like laundry and providing good meals out of nothing etc, she had other priorities in her life. Her daughters are fiercely loyal to her memory tho. The daughter I am in touch with does look a lot like her Mother, just as I do mine. I would be in bed and hear Mum talking to these two little girls downstairs when she heard them crying and fetched them in for supper and warmth yet they were younger than I, always niggled me that I was in bed but they were allowed to stay up, but I didn't realise how bad it was for them at the time, Mum told me more later on.
Lizx
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Liz
How sad,for children to be born into a family like that.George must have had some dreadful experiences!It makes you really appreciate how lucky you are,to have a "normal" family.Your mother must have been a good , kind neighbour.I can recall a lady in the little town where I grew up,doing something similar for the little ones who lived near her.Their father was an alcoholic, he had about 10 children,and every Thursday night,when the father got his wages,he would stop in the pub on the way home,and blow most of it on grog.The poor wife couldn't feed all the children because he hadn't given her enough money,so this kind lady would give the children breakfast,several days a week.The wife tried her best,but she just couldn't manage on the little money she had,and all those mouths to feed.Sad,isn't it? Hopefully,it wouldn't happen these days,welfare would step in,and sort out the husband,who was causing the problems.
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Hi Margot, this was in the late 1950s/early 60s
I want to try and ring my friend tonight and see if she read it, I am sure someone would have told her about it if she doesn't have a paper. Thank heavens she broke the pattern tho, she had a little grandson the Christmas day before last and she helps care for him so her d.i.l. can work as well as her son.
Lizx
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Liz-same time frame here too.It's good that your friend broke that destructive pattern-I hope that all the children concerned,in both of those families,were able to do that also,and not let their lives be ruined forever .
So often these toxic relationships are repeated from generation to generation.
You are a good,caring friend,too.
Best wishes, Margot. xx
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