Rose Handleigh-Adams was sent to an unmarried mothers’ home at 15 where she says young girls in the 1950s “had their babies stolen from them”. She never told anyone about her tough childhood in North West London or the pregnancy until she recorded it in a book, aged 73. Now living in Basildon, Rose talks here to Louise Howeson about confronting the past and the awful way girls were treated in her youth.

 

"WHEN I met my future husband, Charles, I told him to never ask me about my childhood. I wanted to focus on the future and my family.

For this reason Charles died never knowing I was abused as a child and that I was put into an unmarried mothers’ home at 15 after falling pregnant.

I only went back over my past when I started writing my first book. I finished the book two weeks after Charles died, so he never got to read it.

Then again, I didn’t write the book in order for anyone else to read it. It was for me.

I called the book Another Time, Another Place because it really was a different world.

Young pregnant women were treated so badly in unmarried mothers’ homes and I really believe that many young girls’ babies were stolen from them. They took the babies when the girls were vulnerable and had no place to go, so they had no choice but to agree.

My childhood was horrendous. I was sexually abused and it meant that I withdrew into myself and was very quiet as a child. However, I was always headstrong and as I got a bit older, I became a bit of a bully! You wouldn’t believe it now, but I would pick on kids and my eight younger siblings because it was how I defended myself.

A friend who lived nearby got in touch through Friends Reunited and said she was scared of me! I had to tell her I was sorry and that is not what I am like now.

I was kicked out of home at 15 when my family found out that I was five months’ pregnant and sent to the unmarried mothers’ home on the other side of London.

The place was horrible and we were treated like we were on a conveyor belt.

There was a corrugated building next door where we had to go and ask for forgiveness.

At that time there was not the fertility treatment and so couples who could not have children would come to adopt the babies of unmarried women.

When the babies were taken away, you could hear the crying mothers and no one was allowed to look out of the window as the couple took the baby away.

There is a generation of young women who had their babies taken from them.

I met a woman in her early fifties recently who had been adopted and she said she wouldn’t look for her real mum because she didn’t love her. But I said she did love you, but she had no choice. I think a lot of women at that time were in the same position.

I only got into writing in my retirement and when I joined the Wickford Scribblers five years ago. Before that I brought up two children and then went back to college at 29, before embarking on a career as a civil servant.

I always liked writing, but I was busy with a career. It was only in retirement that I got into writing.

Then the founding member of the Wickford Scribblers, Bruce Bellringer, said that from my short stories and poems he could tell I had a book in me to write. I started writing an autobiography and all the things that had happened to me.

By putting myself at different ages in my life, I discovered how much detail I managed to remember.

There were things that came back, like my father finding a skeleton in the cellar, and to this day I don’t know who it was.

Bruce helped me with the book and eventually I finished it and found a publisher.

My heart was racing when the book was published. It felt like I was putting my story out there after so many years of keeping it hidden. It is still hard for me to talk about now.

Time has moved on and it is hard to believe that unmarried women were treated so badly.

My daughter was shocked and my son is still taking all the information in.

I have found peace myself about what happened and I am glad that I wrote the book. I think the fact I have a loving family and am happy now gave me the strength to write the book in the first place. I wanted a chance to stand and be a voice for these unmarried women, so people did not forget what happen to us. I am still very busy writing and have almost finished a novel and I am working on a follow-up book to Another Time, Another Place."

Another Time, Another Place is available from Waterstones in hardback for £16.99. l Rose was speaking to Louise Howeson.