Hopefully I will be able to look back on this week, and possibly next. as important days when I found a new resolve to tackle personal problems such as my weight, attend to necessary household repairs and begin to resolve some of the great mysteries of my early life. I need to do this if I am able to write about the relationship with my birth mother and my care mother and their older sister and who provide a family home until I went to work as child care officer in 1964 and rented a partly furnished flat in the city of Oxford. I am hesitant and cautious knowing the emotional roller coaster than my days have become with self confidence rising and falling, feeling as I did when I was physically younger and then within moments being an old man approaching his end of effective days.
I have decided that 15 maybe my lucky number this year because if you add the two digits of my age together they come to 15 and 15 is the number added to my birth certificate against my second name of Joseph. I resolved the mystery of this during the week and why below this is typed Josephine with a typed line through it. This information was not included in the shorted certificate obtained by my mother when I was eighteen, or in the full version which I subsequently obtained, and was required to send somewhere and was not returned, and in the days before the home copier had become a standard item. I first received this entry in 1999 when I commenced to try and confirm the information given me about the identity of my father. I assumed this was a copy of the register entry rather than a typing mistake by the copier, although it was odd that it had not been mentioned before. The latter possibility brought home to me the impact of such errors for which I was responsible when in my first job I paid insufficient attention to the writing out of new registration log books and vehicle licence renewals and made mistakes such as writing Private, Private, Private, instead of Private, Morris, Blue, or entered the grading of a P.C.T, Pedestrian Controlled Road vehicle incorrectly on some fifty or more milk delivery vehicles in a fleet.
The present registrar’s office has confirmed that this is the copy of an original corrected entry and that my registration was the 15th error recorded by the Registrar at the time. I wish to believe that this was the 15th of the particular year which given my birth in early March means that there could have been some 60 to 90 such errors over the course of the full year, and therefore my own event was not of special significance. However this means a high number so I suspect this refers to errors during the period of work of the Registrar as in the margin is the code 15=T.B. and T.B are the initials of the Registrar, something which I had not previously worked out. Sometimes I see too much or what I do not want to see while at others I miss what is evidently there, or its true meaning. This is an important aspect to the second mystery which may never be resolved.
This is in the form of a question. Was the intention of my mother that I should be placed for adoption or to be brought up as part of her sister’s family with whom she came live in England in 1938?. What part did the Catholic Church play and was it the church or an older brothers who left her in do doubt that she could not return to her homeland?
Back in 1938 Gibraltar was nothing like the community city state it has become today. The era of the day tripper from Spain had not commenced, and individual and family holidays on the continent was restricted to the upper classes within a much more stratified society, Bearing in mind that that the total resident population was between twenty and thirty thousand, (reminder to check the figure) was primarily Mediterranean, that is those born in Gibraltar Spain, Italy and Malta, and some North African and of Mediterranean and Middle Eastern religions, overwhelmingly Catholic, but with strong Jewish and Muslim communities, with the white British Service Officers and Colonial Managers forming the minority but influential Protestant social and economic upper class, leading their separate lives ignoring the smuggling of tobacco, coffee team and the like, way of life of the masses, and where the economy centred on the naval docks and the Military Garrison, and where domestic and manual work was primarily undertaken by Spanish workers crossing the border twice a day from the neighbouring frontier town of La Linea de la Conception, a town which supplied the fruit and vegetables and more openly supplemented the taverns and other places for masculine entertainment, than those directly provided the Gib town centre, and the subject of a publication about Gib scandals which should have appeared in January but interestingly remains to be published. Censorship ?
Although the area of Gibraltar is small with the greater land mass taken up the dramatically soaring Rock whose impact and domination has to be experienced to be understood, individual communities developed around what is in effect an island and the Catholic church in particular, directly accountable to the Pope and Vatican City rather than Madrid or London, was sub divided into church communities who independently of their priests or together with their priests went about things their own way, and could and did make or break the Bishop, along with the power of the Mother Superior of Convent, according to the present Bishop’s researched brilliantly honest history, The Church under a Cloud. It was a later Mother Superior who was responsible for the role my mother was to play at St Joseph’s School and where the records of the Order, long since departed from the Rock, may hold significant information about the circumstances in which she was told not to return to her homeland after my birth.
That my mother was required to leave and not to return to Gibraltar was a severe financial blow for the rest of her sisters, one had become an unsupported single parent with two sons who had become young men, one was severely disabled because of childhood meningitis, one had not worked outside the home, one who could only obtain employment as a governess to girls in a Spanish families from time to time, and one who had moved from being a pupil teacher, to teacher for the Convent run schools, and whose long standing fiancée had disappeared from his training as a Doctor at the University of Madrid during the Spanish Civil War.
Although my mother who at first I knew only as an aunt was told not to return, she provided no mothering to me, was always distant, and was unable to acknowledge me as her son, and only did so after she was admitted into residential care in 2003, shortly before her 96 birthday and when she was in a severe state of memory loss with psychosis. When the British Government decided to evacuate all "non essential" Gibraltarians because the Rock was being turned in to a military and air base HQ for the Mediterranean in World War II and where because of Franco’s superficial neutrality with Germany it was assumed that Germany would try and take the Rock early on as obtained information revealed at the time, my mothers five’ other sisters became part of the exodus. One married shortly beforehand and moved into army supplied quarters in England and where I was evacuated for a time during the War. My uncle in law rented a larger house in a neighbouring town to provide accommodation for these sisters, and my existence could not be kept secret from them and the aunt who I remember provided some mothering, she would give me baths and occasionally tell me a bedtime story, was tot take me with her when she married one of the three army Sergeants to whom she became engaged, and where it was only in her last days aged 93 in hospital that the explanation why she never married was revealed.
There is therefore a question mark over what was to have been my upbringing, between my mother’s arrival in England in 1938, my birth and the arrival of her sisters, This happened before the creation of Children’s departments in 1948. In 1999 and 2000 when I made enquiries, primarily to seek confirmatory evidence about my father. I approached the Catholic Church and Catholic Care bodies covering Croydon and my former schools without success and it is only recently that I decided to approach other bodies where records might have been kept or placed in official archives. It was only today that I realised that I had neglected one other possible source, medical records as since the early 1990’s it is possible to gain access for a small fee.
The second remaining area of some mystery concerns the decision to place me in care in around 1950. Until about then I shared an ordinary size double had with three adult women, my care mother and me at one end and my birth mother and the eldest sister at the other. This was not an appropriate situation, but even in the later 1940’s there were plenty bomb sites waiting for the shortage in building materials and funds to recover from the war, especially in the area where we lived which then only had one small area of local authority housing and no flats. I remember vividly being interviewed by a lady and being asked about my mother and father, saying my father was dead, and unbeknown to me, he was to live for another decade and a half, and that I denied who was my mother, having been told not to disclose her identity to anyone outside the household. I also remember being taken with a case to a warm and welcome home where there several children. I cannot remember if I stayed there over night, for a few days or just for that day, but when my care mother who had taken me visited, I pleased to return home and did so. The same happened when I was taken to hospital for a tonsils and adenoid operation and terrified I had pleaded with her to return before the admission and she had agreed. Subsequently with the help of our Member of Parliament we were allocated a top floor flat in a requisitioned house close to my childhood home and then when the property was returned to its owners, we were allocated one of twelve flats in a small development of two three storey blocks, newly built. It was about a decade later that I was taken by someone from our church to delivered Christmas presents to a child care home in the town and immediately recognised the property to which I had been taken, Again in 1999 2000 I only approached the Catholic authorities and agencies without success. I have now approached the statutory bodies but without expectation that any records will be found.
As with former victims of sexual, physical and mental violence in their childhood, it is fair to ask why wait for so long before making such enquires or making complaint. In my instance the need to know was not sufficiently strong to justify the potential impact on others or my relations with them. Now I accept that it is unlikely that information will be available which will confirm or help, but I need to make the effort.
I have decided that 15 maybe my lucky number this year because if you add the two digits of my age together they come to 15 and 15 is the number added to my birth certificate against my second name of Joseph. I resolved the mystery of this during the week and why below this is typed Josephine with a typed line through it. This information was not included in the shorted certificate obtained by my mother when I was eighteen, or in the full version which I subsequently obtained, and was required to send somewhere and was not returned, and in the days before the home copier had become a standard item. I first received this entry in 1999 when I commenced to try and confirm the information given me about the identity of my father. I assumed this was a copy of the register entry rather than a typing mistake by the copier, although it was odd that it had not been mentioned before. The latter possibility brought home to me the impact of such errors for which I was responsible when in my first job I paid insufficient attention to the writing out of new registration log books and vehicle licence renewals and made mistakes such as writing Private, Private, Private, instead of Private, Morris, Blue, or entered the grading of a P.C.T, Pedestrian Controlled Road vehicle incorrectly on some fifty or more milk delivery vehicles in a fleet.
The present registrar’s office has confirmed that this is the copy of an original corrected entry and that my registration was the 15th error recorded by the Registrar at the time. I wish to believe that this was the 15th of the particular year which given my birth in early March means that there could have been some 60 to 90 such errors over the course of the full year, and therefore my own event was not of special significance. However this means a high number so I suspect this refers to errors during the period of work of the Registrar as in the margin is the code 15=T.B. and T.B are the initials of the Registrar, something which I had not previously worked out. Sometimes I see too much or what I do not want to see while at others I miss what is evidently there, or its true meaning. This is an important aspect to the second mystery which may never be resolved.
This is in the form of a question. Was the intention of my mother that I should be placed for adoption or to be brought up as part of her sister’s family with whom she came live in England in 1938?. What part did the Catholic Church play and was it the church or an older brothers who left her in do doubt that she could not return to her homeland?
Back in 1938 Gibraltar was nothing like the community city state it has become today. The era of the day tripper from Spain had not commenced, and individual and family holidays on the continent was restricted to the upper classes within a much more stratified society, Bearing in mind that that the total resident population was between twenty and thirty thousand, (reminder to check the figure) was primarily Mediterranean, that is those born in Gibraltar Spain, Italy and Malta, and some North African and of Mediterranean and Middle Eastern religions, overwhelmingly Catholic, but with strong Jewish and Muslim communities, with the white British Service Officers and Colonial Managers forming the minority but influential Protestant social and economic upper class, leading their separate lives ignoring the smuggling of tobacco, coffee team and the like, way of life of the masses, and where the economy centred on the naval docks and the Military Garrison, and where domestic and manual work was primarily undertaken by Spanish workers crossing the border twice a day from the neighbouring frontier town of La Linea de la Conception, a town which supplied the fruit and vegetables and more openly supplemented the taverns and other places for masculine entertainment, than those directly provided the Gib town centre, and the subject of a publication about Gib scandals which should have appeared in January but interestingly remains to be published. Censorship ?
Although the area of Gibraltar is small with the greater land mass taken up the dramatically soaring Rock whose impact and domination has to be experienced to be understood, individual communities developed around what is in effect an island and the Catholic church in particular, directly accountable to the Pope and Vatican City rather than Madrid or London, was sub divided into church communities who independently of their priests or together with their priests went about things their own way, and could and did make or break the Bishop, along with the power of the Mother Superior of Convent, according to the present Bishop’s researched brilliantly honest history, The Church under a Cloud. It was a later Mother Superior who was responsible for the role my mother was to play at St Joseph’s School and where the records of the Order, long since departed from the Rock, may hold significant information about the circumstances in which she was told not to return to her homeland after my birth.
That my mother was required to leave and not to return to Gibraltar was a severe financial blow for the rest of her sisters, one had become an unsupported single parent with two sons who had become young men, one was severely disabled because of childhood meningitis, one had not worked outside the home, one who could only obtain employment as a governess to girls in a Spanish families from time to time, and one who had moved from being a pupil teacher, to teacher for the Convent run schools, and whose long standing fiancée had disappeared from his training as a Doctor at the University of Madrid during the Spanish Civil War.
Although my mother who at first I knew only as an aunt was told not to return, she provided no mothering to me, was always distant, and was unable to acknowledge me as her son, and only did so after she was admitted into residential care in 2003, shortly before her 96 birthday and when she was in a severe state of memory loss with psychosis. When the British Government decided to evacuate all "non essential" Gibraltarians because the Rock was being turned in to a military and air base HQ for the Mediterranean in World War II and where because of Franco’s superficial neutrality with Germany it was assumed that Germany would try and take the Rock early on as obtained information revealed at the time, my mothers five’ other sisters became part of the exodus. One married shortly beforehand and moved into army supplied quarters in England and where I was evacuated for a time during the War. My uncle in law rented a larger house in a neighbouring town to provide accommodation for these sisters, and my existence could not be kept secret from them and the aunt who I remember provided some mothering, she would give me baths and occasionally tell me a bedtime story, was tot take me with her when she married one of the three army Sergeants to whom she became engaged, and where it was only in her last days aged 93 in hospital that the explanation why she never married was revealed.
There is therefore a question mark over what was to have been my upbringing, between my mother’s arrival in England in 1938, my birth and the arrival of her sisters, This happened before the creation of Children’s departments in 1948. In 1999 and 2000 when I made enquiries, primarily to seek confirmatory evidence about my father. I approached the Catholic Church and Catholic Care bodies covering Croydon and my former schools without success and it is only recently that I decided to approach other bodies where records might have been kept or placed in official archives. It was only today that I realised that I had neglected one other possible source, medical records as since the early 1990’s it is possible to gain access for a small fee.
The second remaining area of some mystery concerns the decision to place me in care in around 1950. Until about then I shared an ordinary size double had with three adult women, my care mother and me at one end and my birth mother and the eldest sister at the other. This was not an appropriate situation, but even in the later 1940’s there were plenty bomb sites waiting for the shortage in building materials and funds to recover from the war, especially in the area where we lived which then only had one small area of local authority housing and no flats. I remember vividly being interviewed by a lady and being asked about my mother and father, saying my father was dead, and unbeknown to me, he was to live for another decade and a half, and that I denied who was my mother, having been told not to disclose her identity to anyone outside the household. I also remember being taken with a case to a warm and welcome home where there several children. I cannot remember if I stayed there over night, for a few days or just for that day, but when my care mother who had taken me visited, I pleased to return home and did so. The same happened when I was taken to hospital for a tonsils and adenoid operation and terrified I had pleaded with her to return before the admission and she had agreed. Subsequently with the help of our Member of Parliament we were allocated a top floor flat in a requisitioned house close to my childhood home and then when the property was returned to its owners, we were allocated one of twelve flats in a small development of two three storey blocks, newly built. It was about a decade later that I was taken by someone from our church to delivered Christmas presents to a child care home in the town and immediately recognised the property to which I had been taken, Again in 1999 2000 I only approached the Catholic authorities and agencies without success. I have now approached the statutory bodies but without expectation that any records will be found.
As with former victims of sexual, physical and mental violence in their childhood, it is fair to ask why wait for so long before making such enquires or making complaint. In my instance the need to know was not sufficiently strong to justify the potential impact on others or my relations with them. Now I accept that it is unlikely that information will be available which will confirm or help, but I need to make the effort.
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