The Secret Life of Dorothy Soames

by Justine Cowan

  DOROTHY WAS EIGHT when she was first locked in a closet. When the hospital opened in the mid-1700s, such a punishment would have been unheard of. In those early days, children were rewarded for good behavior. They were given a silver thimble, a pair of scissors, gingerbread, or even a special hat for a job well done, perhaps for perfecting a new sewing stitch or fashioning a particularly sturdy piece of cordage—a practice adopted not as a kindness but based on the then-current economic axiom that incentives increased productivity. This isn’t to say that, in the hospital’s first years, a foundling wouldn’t receive a slap across the head or a switch across an outstretched palm following a cheeky comment. But records reveal a sinister development the year after Hanway, who was considered one of the hospital’s most influential governors, published his pamphlet on solitary confinement. On January 29, 1777, the governors ordered “a plan and estimate of the expense of fitting up a place for the solitary confinement of children who may misbehave.”28 Once the confinement area had been built, it was referred to as the Dark Room, the Lock-Up Room, or, most often, Prison. The first to receive this punishment were children as young as eight, and they were sometimes locked up for as long as a week. The room was also used to confine apprentices who had already left the hospital but been returned by their masters due to bad behavior.

  Hanway was not alone in his views, but his voice was powerful, and his ideas took hold. He is credited by some for the widespread adoption of solitary confinement in penal settings, and even for bringing the practice to the United States. Ironically, another notable supporter of the Foundling Hospital would be one of the most eloquent critics of the practice. In 1842 Charles Dickens traveled to the United States, visiting a prison just outside of Philadelphia. He walked away appalled at the conditions, describing the “hopeless solitary confinement” as “cruel and wrong,” believing it to be a punishment “which no man has a right to inflict upon his fellow creature,” its

  slow and daily tampering with the mysteries of the brain, to be immeasurably worse than any torture of the body; and because its ghastly signs and tokens are not so palpable to the eye and sense of touch as scars upon the flesh; because its wounds are not upon the surface, and it extorts few cries that human ears can hear; therefore the more I denounce it, as a secret punishment which slumbering humanity is not roused up to stay.29

  I assume it unlikely that Dickens was aware that the brutal treatment he found so objectionable was being used at the Foundling Hospital. I certainly found no proof of it. Perhaps, if he had known, he would have stepped in to put an end to the cruel practice.

  The “Prison” used to lock up children no longer existed by the time Dorothy was born. In the 1920s the hospital, under financial stress at that time, sold its land to a developer who wished to turn the area into a market (it would later become New Covent Garden Market, where the fictive Eliza Doolittle sold flowers in My Fair Lady). The governors bought back a small strip of land and constructed a new building to serve as administrative headquarters, containing re-creations of many of the hospital’s original rooms—the Court Room, the Picture Gallery, and the Committee Room. This building is where the Foundling Museum is housed today.

  The children were temporarily relocated to an old convent in Redhill before the hospital’s primary campus was moved ultimately to the small town of Berkhamsted in 1935, two years before Dorothy’s arrival. There is no record of a special room for solitary confinement on that property—but that didn’t stop Miss Wright, the matron of the Foundling Hospital during Dorothy’s time there. My mother seemed to remember every last detail about her:

  Dickens himself could not have created a headmistress any more joyless and forbidding than Miss Wright. Her graying hair was parted in the middle and pulled back into a bun, the sides professionally set in a series of waves framing her long face and nose. She kept her arms close to her primly-clothed thin body and her walk and bearing were almost stealthy; I couldn’t imagine her swinging her arms, even slightly. Her pursed lips never parted into a smile; a hearty laugh would have been unimaginable.

  Miss Wright patrolled the hallways, looking for the slightest infraction. She eschewed canes and rulers, instead carrying a leather strap. She would enter a room with an air of importance, her steely eyes gazing expectantly as the girls rose to their feet.

  But for Dorothy, Miss Wright preferred solitary confinement over the strap, and for the next several years Dorothy would endure being locked up in windowless rooms time and time again. Hanway had been wrong, it turned out—the solitude did little to stop her from getting into trouble.

  It was no secret that Miss Wright picked on Dorothy more than the other girls. She considered her to be unruly, speaking out of turn, defying orders. Dorothy was precocious, and to Miss Wright, her lively personality was evidence that she was a “bad seed.” It seemed an almost daily event for her to be on the receiving end of Miss Wright’s leather strap, or locked away in a dark cupboard, closet, or storeroom for hours on end. Only sometimes would Dorothy be given bread and water. On the luckier days, she would be locked in a room with windows.

  On one occasion, she had been shut away in a storeroom for hours with nothing to eat when she came upon a tin of chocolates. As the hours wore on and the pangs of hunger intensified, she could no longer control herself. She opened the tin and shoved the chocolate into her mouth, one piece after the next, until the tin was empty. This infraction earned Dorothy a sound beating to top off her confinement. She was also branded a thief, a label that followed her until the day she left the Foundling Hospital.

  My mother never lost that ability to eat a box of chocolates in a single sitting. My father would buy them for her, always the iconic California-based See’s Candies, a pound of assorted chocolates filled with marzipan, cherries, or nuts. She would disappear into her bedroom, get under the covers, and devour the treats with childlike joy, sometimes going through the entire box. Perhaps, as I like to think, she was imagining Miss Wright’s face as the rich candies melted in her mouth.

  I thought about what my mother endured in that storeroom as I reviewed psychological studies on early childhood abuse. The research exploring the effects of forced isolation on a living creature is startling. It was easier for me to connect that way, to process what had happened all those years ago in the context of clinical studies and three-inch thick textbooks. Unlike my family history, the research was transparent.

  In the 1950s the psychologist Harry Harlow conducted animal studies on the impact of solitary confinement, placing monkeys in a “vertical chamber apparatus” that isolated them from any outside interactions. The results were horrific. After only two or three days of isolation, Harlow reported, the monkeys would “assume a hunched position in a corner of the bottom of the apparatus. One might presume at this point that they find their situation to be hopeless.”30 The reaction of the monkeys was so pronounced that Harlow nicknamed his apparatus the “pit of despair.”31 His experiments demonstrated that a perfectly happy monkey could be placed in the apparatus and, after only a few days, emerge hopeless, broken beyond repair. Unsurprisingly, his methodology was eventually condemned as unethical and inhumane.

  My mother did not enumerate the number of times she was locked in a closet, a cupboard, or a storeroom, and the files I unearthed at Coram don’t list her infractions. I tried to imagine myself in her place, sitting in the dark, alone and afraid. But somehow I couldn’t conjure up the fear she must have felt.

  Maybe my inability to empathize stemmed from fears of my own. What would replace the anger I had nurtured so passionately and for so long if I were to release it? My go-to mental image of my mother featured a sharp, critical voice, curled lips, nervously darting eyes. Even after her death, my psychological fallback was to review the list of wrongs she’d committed against me, buttressing my anger lest it subside ever so slightly. But the more I learned about her life, the harder it was for me to remember that familiar picture that lived within me. Instead, I began to see a sma
ll girl with features like mine, pale skin, a sprinkle of freckles, and smooth brown hair, huddled in a corner, alone in the dark.

  That little girl named Dorothy did the unthinkable, performing a feat Harlow and Dickens could hardly have imagined—she managed to survive the darkness. Her fear of her captors was powerful, but her desire to escape the dreariness of her existence was stronger. She did not let them break her. Instead, she would defy her fate, taking every opportunity to be what she should have been all along: a beautiful and curious child.

  And so, when it snowed and the girls were forbidden to leave the building, Dorothy would sneak outside just to stamp her small feet in the freshly fallen powder, or feel the wet snowflakes as they landed on the tip of her nose. And sometimes at night she would slip out of bed and crawl through an unlocked window onto the landing next to the dormitory. Shivering in the cool night air, she would tilt her head up and gaze at the stars. And there, underneath the expansive universe, she dared to hope.

  10

  Longing

  It was an annual ritual I dreaded—searching for the perfect Mother’s Day card, one that would meet my mother’s approval without being dishonest. I spent what felt like hours whittling down the options, placing cards that were too sentimental back on the shelf as I shifted from foot to foot.

  Gifts, no matter how carefully chosen, were even more complicated. Whatever I’d brought my mother would be inspected, perhaps turned upside down as she sought a label, always finding something to disappoint. She wouldn’t necessarily say that she didn’t like my gift, but I could see it in her face.

  Later, as I looked back at decades of holidays and birthdays, at gifts that went unused or ended up in a pile for Goodwill, I wondered if I’d misunderstood. Perhaps it wasn’t disappointment that I saw in the dullness of my mother’s eyes. Maybe it was simply too painful for her to hold a gift dearly, to truly cherish it, lest she become careless and let it slip from her grasp, never to be seen again. The feverish way she ate through those boxes of chocolates before they could be taken from her came back to me then with a different meaning.

  I don’t know what they told Dorothy the first time she received a gift from a mysterious stranger. A package would arrive once or twice a year, unexpectedly, or at Christmas, sometimes on her birthday, identifying marks always removed. Sometimes the gift was simple: a doll, a toy, a spool of yarn. Other times it was extravagant—a colorfully embroidered knitting bag with wooden handles, a delicate brooch, or her favorite, “a small black and white exquisitely carved ivory container in the form of a penguin that screwed open around in the middle. It was about two and half inches high. The eyes were two rubies. Real ones.”

  As an adult, with only a child’s memory to inform her, my mother remained convinced that the rubies were real—the deep red, the way they sparkled in the light.

  The only people Dorothy knew outside the wrought-iron gates that enclosed the Foundling Hospital’s grounds were her foster parents, but the gifts were not from them. They had little money to spare and were indifferent to her welfare. She did see her foster mother from time to time, on “Mum’s Day,” when foster mothers were allowed to visit their former charges. The date was announced in advance, creating a buzz of anticipation among the foundlings who longed for any contact with the outside world. It didn’t matter that the visits were short, an hour or two; the children looked forward to the day, some making gifts to present to their “mums.” Dorothy once made a potholder for her foster mother, stitching together scraps she found lying about in sewing class.

  While they knew in advance that the big day was coming, the children were not told whether they should expect to see their foster mothers. When the day finally arrived, the foundlings would assemble in the playroom. As they waited anxiously, one or two girls would peek out the door, listening for footsteps along the long corridor. The first to spot a teacher with a clipboard in hand would shriek with excitement, “List! List!” As she entered the playroom, the girls would continue to cry out as they clamored around her, begging her to reveal the names of the children whose foster mothers had come to visit. Dorothy longed to hear her name called out, but her recollections revealed the pain the day also brought:

  I remember how deeply depressed I felt when my name was not on any of the lists. . . . In spite of my difficult relationship with my foster mother, when she came to the school it was the most exciting day of the year for me. I knew she would inevitably criticize me or hurt my feelings in some way, but she was the only person I had in the world, my only connection to the outside world. . . . Too often, after a brief conversation, she spent most of the time talking with the other mothers nearby, and I never dared to interrupt her.

  Dorothy was luckier than some of the children. Among the ranks of the waiting were those who, after being dropped off at the Foundling Hospital at the age of five, would never see their foster mothers again. Never told that their foster mothers would not be coming, they too would sit quietly, eager to hear their names called, only to be disappointed time after time. It was a cruel practice, raising a child’s hopes only to dash them with the recitation of the List.

  Dorothy continued to receive gifts, and over time she learned the identity of the mysterious stranger behind them—the sender was her “real” mother. I don’t know when or how she discovered the truth, but it was probably the way that foundlings learned about most things—clues picked up from conversations between staff members overheard in the hallways, or gossip passed from one girl to the next. The staff rarely spoke to the children except to instruct or discipline, and questions were considered impertinent, likely to result in a whack across the head. But Dorothy soon learned that having a “real” mother was special, something that set her apart from her peers, though she had no way of understanding what it meant.

  By design, foundlings were separated from society and told little about the outside world. The first permanent location of the hospital was in an isolated area of London known as Lamb’s Conduit. The area was sparsely developed at the time, but it was not remote enough to prevent the curious from visiting. The site became a novelty of sorts, a diversion for the wealthy, who would come to see the foundlings, dressed in their matching uniforms, march from place to place. Many came just to watch the children sleep or eat. But the governors were strict, and soon limited the children’s interactions with outsiders, fearing that the visitors might corrupt the children’s morals and prevent them from being properly equipped for the life that awaited them. When visitors were allowed, the governors urged “that no familiar Notice may be taken of the Children, lest it should encourage them to forget the lowness of their Station.”32

  For well over a century the governors restricted access to the foundlings, and their isolation was only intensified when the children were moved to Berkhamsted in 1935, two years before Dorothy arrived. While not far from London, the new facility was more secluded, with few houses nearby. The foundlings only left the compound for short supervised walks on Sundays. Indeed, the governors’ efforts to isolate the children were so effective that the townspeople grew concerned that the children did not actually exist, forcing the hospital to hold an event, marching the children along the fence line for all to see.

  With little outside contact and supervised by adults who rarely engaged them in conversation, the children had to create their own understanding of the world. Many failed to grasp basic concepts about family structures, the difference between foster and biological families, or that members of a family had the same surname. Even in their early years, while they were being fostered in the countryside, many did not know whether the children they were playing with were foster brothers and sisters who would one day join them at the Foundling Hospital or their foster parents’ children whom they might never see again. One foundling discovered that his foster mother had raised twenty-six other foundlings the day she first visited him at the hospital on Mum’s Day.

  Dorothy would have lacked any clear comprehension of wha
t it meant to have a family, so it’s hard to imagine what she thought about her connection to this mysterious biological mother who sent presents. But she did make it clear that these presents provided solace on some of her darkest days. Her birthday was particularly difficult, “a long, aching day” as she later described it. But she recalled feeling special on birthdays because, while some of the girls received gifts from their foster mothers, none of the girls she knew had ever received gifts from their real mothers. Yet questions about her mother remained unanswered. Who was she? Why couldn’t Dorothy meet her? Why hadn’t she visited? The answers were left solely to Dorothy’s imagination and the uninformed chatter of her fellow foundlings, for the identity of Dorothy’s mother was a closely guarded secret.

  Her mother’s name wasn’t all that was being concealed from her, however. Something else was being kept from Dorothy, something that might have comforted her, even given her hope.

  Dorothy’s mother had been regularly writing, asking about her, begging to see her.

  Lena Weston had sent the first handwritten letter a few weeks after she had left her daughter in the care of the Foundling Hospital:

  March 28th, 1932

  Dear Sir,

  I would very much like to hear how my Baby is getting on, would you kindly write to me and say if she is quite well, as I should so much like to hear. The particulars of the child I enquire for are as follows. Taken into the Hospital March 2nd, 1932. Female child, alphabetical number O.

  Yours truly,

  Lena Weston.

  A typed response was dispatched promptly:

  30th March, 1932

  Dear Madam,

  I am in receipt of your letter of the 28th instant and am glad to tell you your little girl is quite well and is settling down nicely in her new surroundings.

  I hope you will get on well.

  Yours faithfully,