The Secret Life of Dorothy Soames

by Justine Cowan

  There was little unscheduled time, perhaps a short break in the playroom—an ill-fitting name for a large blank space that held nothing other than rows of tables and chairs, with lockers on one wall where the children could store their meager belongings. Even then, “we were always under watchful eyes, free to talk and play games, but not too loudly or roughly,” my mother remarked. And lest they forgot, the reminder was displayed prominently in large letters on the wall above them:

  THE EYES OF THE LORD ARE IN EVERY PLACE, BEHOLDING THE EVIL AND THE GOOD.

  The monotony and silence of endless days, their rhythms more akin to those of a prison than a school for young children, must have been excruciating. The foundlings’ time was spent moving from place to place, obeying their superiors, or attending daily services in the chapel (twice on Sundays). Get up. Get dressed. Line up. Brush. March. Pray. Eat. Poop. March. Eat. March. Day in. Day out. Unchanging, and all to be done in silence with complete self-control, no whispering, no laughing, and most important, no mistakes.

  Any deviation from the rules, no matter how slight, was swiftly addressed by a staff member tasked with guaranteeing that order be maintained. This staff member would most often be female. While setting hospital policies was exclusively the province of men, enforcement and the day-to-day care of the foundlings fell predominantly to women. Selected not for their knowledge or training in education or child-rearing but whether they were “Persons of good Characters, . . . unincumbered with Families of their own, [and] professing the Protestant Religion,” few of the staff members had relevant experience.23 A matron (also called the headmistress) oversaw the raising of the girls as well as the management of the female staff—the teachers, cooks, and “nurses.” (The latter term was in keeping with the name of the institution, if not its mission, as “nurses” did not provide medical care. Instead they supervised the children, policing them as they brushed their teeth or made their beds, marched from place to place, and ate their meals.) A master oversaw the male foundlings, who lived in a separate wing, strictly sequestered from females.

  Life for the staff was dreary, strict, and dull. There were rules regarding behavior, requirements that staff members obey commands without dispute. During much of the Foundling Hospital’s history, the female staff could not leave the premises without permission, and visitors were discouraged. All staff were subject to strict curfews and forbidden from drinking or gambling. While some of the most restrictive rules seem to have been relaxed by the 1900s, the staff remained cloistered away from the outside world along with their charges. In the early years the women who worked at the hospital were young, typically under the age of forty, but by Dorothy’s time they were primarily older and childless, their chances of finding other employment long since passed. “In all my years at the school I can’t remember ever receiving a friendly comment, a solicitous inquiry or a compliment,” my mother recalled.

  When the staff spoke to us it was never in a personal way. Usually it was in an authoritative voice, primarily to command, instruct or rebuke. I suspect that the staff was chosen selectively, able to turn us into the obedient, unquestioning, submissive servants we were destined to become. It is clear to me now that the entire system was designed to prevent opportunities for us to deviate from our destinies.

  Not trained to work with children and deprived of fulfilling lives of their own, the joyless, indifferent staff was ill-equipped to meet the needs of parentless children and relied instead on punishment to enforce the strict rules. Canings and beatings with leather straps were common, administered at a whim for the most minor of offenses, such as talking in line, inattention, or dropping a piece of food at mealtime.

  Physical abuse was widespread, not just accepted but expected. Each classroom was equipped with a cane. Miss Abbott, one of Dorothy’s teachers (called “mistresses” back then), had a reputation for being “cane happy.” A short, birdlike woman with black hair and scrawny legs, she was so slight in stature that her cane seemed longer and more solid than her torso. My mother remembered her eyes bulging behind her glasses as she lashed her students’ palms until they sobbed.

  Other staffers preferred a wooden ruler or a hairbrush, always with a side of verbal abuse, often referring to a child’s illegitimacy. The children were constantly reminded of their shameful beginnings:

  You wicked child!

  You’re a disgrace, lucky to be alive!

  One nurse was known for choosing her favorite form of punishment, not so much for the method but the timing. She administered her floggings in the evenings, and only after the girls had removed their undergarments in preparation for bed, allowing her weapon of choice to land on bare skin. During the day, if a girl displeased her, she would take a pen from her pocket and write the child’s surname on her apron, marking an extra tick if the child misbehaved again. Just before lights out, she would call each name, one by one, and flog the girl on her bare bottom, the number of hits corresponding to the marks on her apron.

  Reading about the horrors that my mother endured as a child, it was hard to know which was worse—canings that yielded bruises that lasted for days, or the insults and rigidity that left a lifetime’s worth of emotional scars. My mother, like the other foundlings, was caught in an endless loop of punishment and suffering, with no chance of reprieve. The staff of the hospital were either ignorant of or indifferent to the impacts of their beatings, but modern psychological research has connected this kind of childhood neglect and abuse with a victim’s inability to exercise self-control; their capacity to obey instructions is significantly hampered due to trauma or abuse. In other words, the more you beat a child, the less likely she is able to control her own actions. And so, from the outset, the Foundling Hospital created an exacting, unsparing, rigid environment where infractions and abuse became inevitable, leading to beatings that would make children more likely to act out, leading to yet more beatings, escalating in frequency and intensity. The studies piled high on every available surface in my office, their certainties reframing all I thought I’d known about my mother.

  Some staffers were more vicious than others, evoking terror simply by entering a room, taking pleasure in the very act of inflicting pain on a child. In my mother’s time, that would have described Miss Woodward, one of the youngest instructors at the school. Unlike the other staff members, who were typically heavyset and dowdy, Miss Woodward was tall and slender, her wavy ginger hair cut in a stylish bob that framed her pretty round face. But the girls were not fooled by her appearance. They knew that just beneath her elegant veneer, she harbored a fury that would rise, wild and uncontrolled, triggered by even the slightest of infractions or, even more frightening, with no provocation whatsoever.

  Not a day passed that Dorothy wasn’t filled with anxiety and dread that Miss Woodward would be lurking just around the corner, waiting, ready to batter her small body with whatever instrument might be handy. Her fear wasn’t unreasonable. The worst beating she endured in her years at the Foundling Hospital was at the hands of Miss Woodward.

  Dorothy had been in crocodile formation, marching alongside another girl on the way to class. Miss Woodward was in the front of the line, on a tirade, berating the girls as she often did, when Dorothy muttered in a barely audible voice, “Oh, shut up.” Dorothy hadn’t thought Miss Woodward could hear her, but she was wrong. Miss Woodward grabbed Dorothy, pushing her roughly into a nearby classroom. Miss Abbot, who was leading a class, quickly stepped aside, clearing a path for Miss Woodward to thrust Dorothy over the desk. Miss Woodward grabbed the cane that was always handy in each classroom, pulled down Dorothy’s knickers, and beat her, thrashing her with such a fury that a purple-black mass of bruises remained for weeks.

  Dorothy did her best to hide the damage from the other girls. She also made sure to steer clear of the infirmary, knowing all too well the dangers of allowing a doctor to discover signs of a beating. A doctor might ask questions, perhaps express concern, cause trouble for the staff, which was certain to e
licit another beating. But Dorothy also hid her bruises because of the shame she felt, her belief that the beating had somehow been her fault. “I was embarrassed on weekly bath nights,” she wrote years later, “believing that my black and blue buttocks were a reminder to everyone that I was a bad girl.”

  There were six white porcelain bath tubs, three on either side of the bathroom, serving two or three upper dormitories, and we bathed two to a tub. The so-called “nurse” in charge, the always grim faced, matronly, bespectacled Nurse Knowles, in a dark blue dress, white apron and cap, made no comment as she stood there, arms folded over her oversized bosom, watching while we bathed, and I was sure that she thought the beating was well deserved.

  But the pain and bruising Dorothy experienced that day was not the worst that Miss Woodward could dole out. The most terrifying episode was yet to come, when Dorothy was unaware that she had done anything wrong—and it came without warning.

  Dorothy was in class, sitting quietly, hands folded, when Miss Woodward strolled into the classroom and nodded at the teacher, who seemed to be expecting her.

  “Soames, come with me,” she instructed.

  Dorothy made her way up to the front of the class, panicking. What had she done? While no stranger to punishment meted out at the hands of the hospital’s staff, she could not recall an incident that would have precipitated Miss Woodward’s unexpected visit.

  Miss Woodward ordered Dorothy to go put on her swimsuit. Dorothy looked anxiously at Miss Woodward, who was known for pushing unsuspecting children into the pool as a teaching technique. She was so feared that some of the girls would try to hide in the toilets rather than attend gym class. Dorothy had just begun to learn to swim, and had never ventured past the shallow end of the pool. When they entered the pool area, the strong smell of chlorine wafted through the indoor enclosure. She padded quietly behind Miss Woodward until, without warning, she felt herself being lifted in the air and flung toward the deep end of the pool. Dorothy screamed as she was propelled through the air before she plunged into the water.

  Unable to swim, she struggled to stay afloat, thrashing helplessly. As she came up for air, she was just able to make out the image of Miss Woodward holding the wooden lifesaving pole that normally hung on the wall by the side of the pool. It had a large canvas loop on the end, and she was pointing it in Dorothy’s direction. “I naturally thought my punishment was over,” my mother recounted in her manuscript. But Miss Woodward had something else in mind. She began poking Dorothy with the pole, pushing her under the water, bringing her up just long enough for her to gasp for air, and then forcing her underwater again. Dorothy was certain that she was going to die.

  The next thing she remembers was lying next to the pool, dripping wet, prostrate on the cold concrete. As she struggled to catch her breath, she looked up and saw Mr. Bland, the music teacher, and Nurse Major, a dormitory supervisor, standing close by, chatting casually with Miss Woodward. They would occasionally glance over at Dorothy as they spoke. She had never seen them at the pool before and was certain that they had been invited there by Miss Woodward to watch Dorothy’s punishment, a diversion from their otherwise dull and predictable days.

  After that Dorothy lived in constant fear of Miss Woodward, certain that she would eventually die by her hands. And so, on cold nights when she felt afraid, she did the only thing that was in her power: she prayed. Kneeling in the dark quietly, to avoid the ever-watchful eye of the dorm supervisor, she would clasp her hands together, rest her elbows on the thin mattress that sat upon her small iron bed, and beg God to save her from Miss Woodward.

  Oh Lord, please help me stop misbehaving and stop Miss Woodward from punishing me.

  Night after night she would pray, unaware that one day her prayers would be answered. But relief would not come soon, and in the meantime she would have to suffer a punishment even worse than Miss Woodward’s beatings—all because a man with an umbrella thought he knew best.

  IF YOU VISIT Westminster Abbey, where Queen Elizabeth II was crowned and Princess Diana mourned, you will see a memorial to Jonas Hanway in the north transept, just after you enter through the Great North Door. Unveiled in 1788, the monument boasts a relief of Britannia doling out clothing to orphans, a coat of arms with three demi-lions rampant, and a heroic inscription singing the praises of Hanway’s contributions to the poor:

  The helpless INFANT nurtur’d thro’ his Care.

  The friendless PROSTITUTE shelter’d and Reform’d.

  The hopeless YOUTH rescu’d from Misery and Ruin.

  And train’d to serve and to defend his Country.

  Uniting in one common Strain of Gratitude.

  Bear Testimony to their Benefactor’s Virtues:

  THIS was the FRIEND and FATHER of the POOR.

  Indeed, Hanway’s concern for the welfare of Britain’s children is thoroughly documented. In 1756 he became a governor of the Foundling Hospital, rising to vice president of the institution in 1772. He founded the Marine Society, the world’s first charity dedicated to seafarers; still in existence today, the charity helped prepare thousands of poor boys, many of them orphans, for a life at sea. He then founded the Magdalen House for penitent prostitutes, and advocated for the better treatment of chimney sweeps. Also known for his policy work, Hanway successfully lobbied for a law requiring the registration of poor children and another increasing wages for apprentices.

  Jonas Hanway was a colorful character in London society. After a trip to Paris, he began carrying an ornate umbrella with him wherever he went. Its canopy was said to be pale green silk on the outside and straw-colored satin on the inside, and small fruits and flowers were carved into its ebony handle. At the time, umbrellas weren’t used in London—at least not by men, as they were considered effeminate, a sign of weakness of character or, worst of all, of being too French. Hanway’s umbrella was particularly disliked by operators of hansom cabs, the two-wheeled horse-drawn carriages that frequented London’s streets. An umbrella was a threat to a cabbie’s bottom line; a pedestrian caught in the rain might well forgo cab fare if he could stay relatively dry without the added expense. When hansom cab drivers saw Hanway, they would pelt him with rubbish. One driver reportedly tried to run him down with his carriage, at which point Hanway learned yet another use for his umbrella: to give the driver a solid thrashing. A known eccentric who cared little for the opinions of others, Hanway went on using his umbrella, and he is credited today for making the object one of London’s most iconic symbols.

  When he wasn’t helping children or chasing off hansom cab drivers, Hanway was writing. Pamphlets had become an essential form of political discourse by the middle of the eighteenth century—the most famous of these was Common Sense, in which Thomas Paine advocated for the independence of the Thirteen Colonies. Hanway embraced this form of writing, producing more than eighty printed works in his lifetime, most of them pamphlets.

  Hanway regarded himself as a great thinker, with much to offer on how to improve British society. He wrote, among other things, on the operations of the Foundling Hospital, using his intimate knowledge of its workings to provide a detailed mathematical accounting of the financial gains achieved by putting foundlings to work. He also published writings on other subjects: religion, immorality, petty thievery, prostitution, how to create domestic happiness, the relationship between servant and master, and the advantages of eating bread. He was particularly passionate about his opposition to the drinking of tea, which was gaining popularity in London. In An Essay on Tea: Considered as Pernicious to Health, Obstructing Industry, and Impoverishing the Nation, he assailed tea drinking as an epidemic, claiming that it caused scurvy, weak nerves, and early mortality, and reduced the overall productivity of Britain’s labor force. These problems were worsened, he believed, because people drank tea at a higher temperature than human blood.

  More disturbingly, Hanway had an equal antipathy toward Jews, and wrote a lengthy pamphlet opposing their naturalization. “Was there ever such an
instance of the depravity and corruption of men, as among the Jews?”24 he asked, cautioning that to accept them into British society would be to “commit a violence” on Christianity.25

  The impact of one of Hanway’s pamphlets is still felt today. In his 1776 Solitude in Imprisonment: With Proper Profitable Labour and a Spare Diet, he advocated for solitary confinement—placing a person alone in a dark room with only bread and water. I ordered the pamphlet from a publishing company specializing in “forgotten” books. The text was difficult to read—the print tiny, the old-fashioned type a jumble, and the language arcane. But as I became accustomed to the strangeness of the language, the words’ meaning began to take shape. Hanway considered himself a devoutly religious man on an important mission to eradicate evil, wherever it might be found. This mission was for him an urgent calling, one that required swift action. And in this fight against the destructive forces that could poison human nature, he had identified solitary confinement as a powerful tool that could fundamentally shift human behavior toward piety. The “idea of being excluded from all human society, to converse with a man’s own heart,” Hanway believed, “will operate potently on the minds and manners of the people of every class.”26 To him, solitary confinement was not cruel but compassionate, a practice that would “restore the prisoner to the world and social life, in the most advantageous manner; and that he may, in due time, teach what he has learnt, and hand down virtue instead of vice to posterity.”27

  With these words, which he penned as mindfully as those regarding his beliefs in the dangers of tea and the benefits of bread, Jonas Hanway took my mother from me.