If Only These Walls Could Speak
by
Alan Hamblin
The True Story of life in an orphanage, including the personal recollections of several of those who lived there.
The Royal Albert Orphanage in Worcester was set up independently by local businessmen in the 1860s. For the Victorian and Edwardian periods the book draws on the Orphanage’s records. However from 1910 onwards, the personal recollections of 33 of the children who lived there during the forty year period up to the early post-war years provide us with a vivid and striking first hand picture of what life for them was really like.
Eventually in the mid 1950s dwindling numbers caused the orphanage to move elsewhere before closing entirely in the 1960s. The original rather forbidding looking building in Henwick Road, now listed and occupied by the YMCA, survives to remind us of what many children had to endure in the not so very distant past.
Alan Hamblin was born in Gloucester in the mid 1930s. When he was seven he and his older sister Margaret were sent to an orphanage. However in their case they went to the Princess Alice Orphanage in Birmingham. Part II of this book tells something of his memories from the four years that he spent there. Only on arrival did they discover that, far from his sister being able to help look after him, the orphanage was separated so strictly into boys and girls that brothers and sisters were never to meet! Providentially, his sister was sent to a mixed family home on the Hampshire coast for health reasons and shortly thereafter Alan was allowed to join her there. A Tesco now stands where the Princess Alice Orphanage used to be. Educated at Privett School in Gosport, the author trained as a compositor and subsequently worked as a typographer for advertising agencies in London. Now retired and living in Harpenden, Hertfordshire, his hobbies include table tennis and collecting postcards.
ISBN: 978-1-906302-21-4
PRICE: £15.00 (plus P & P £3.00 UK, £4.00 EU, £6.50 RoW)
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