Class and the Common Girl.
Reading one of Moor Larkin’s excellent posts the other night, an excerpt from the Pollard report caught my eye. I had seen it before, but in isolation; now I was reading it again in conjunction with the memory of an except from Jimmy Savile’s autobiography (I confess I neither own a copy nor have read it – excerpts only!).
It was Meirion Jones making his disingenuous background notes to Mark Williams-Thomas and talking about the Duncroft girls:
4.5 In the 1950s, Duncroft was an elite institution where only the most intelligent young criminal girls were sent. If you were influential and your daughter had been caught doing something criminal, you would try and work the system so that she could go to Duncroft. As a result, the pupils at Duncroft included individuals who were connected to fairly influential and high profile families.
And again, in Savile’s autobiography a similar sentiment was expressed – that somehow parent’s could influence the result of a court case and ensure that their ‘well connected’ daughter ended up at Duncroft and not one of the many other similar Approved Schools dotted across the country.
It is cobblers. Cobblers on stilts as it happens.
First, and most important, any girl arriving at Duncroft in the 1960s, as I did, had been through the criminal justice system via the local Magistrates Court. The resulting ‘Care and Protection Order’ counted as a criminal record at the time – it barred future employment in the Civil Service or Armed Forces – both still bastions of upright God fearing citizens serving their country.
In fairness, some of the reasons why you might need to be criminally sanctioned as in need of ‘Care and Protection’ would seem laughable today. There was one girl, whose parents had upped and disappeared, who had maintained herself and her young brother by stealing food until caught – unthinkable today that she should be so punished, today social services would be running in circles furnishing a flat for her.
1960 was a different country, and it pays to remember that.
Other girls had played truant from school – today their parents would be punished. Another girl had taken a raincoat from a school coat rack on a rainy Friday night – when she returned it on the Monday morning she was charged with theft. Today you have to ‘intend to permanently deprive’ before being charged with theft. Without doubt there were some girls who had taken to prostitution at an early age, and one I shared a dormitory with, who proudly boasted of her starring role in early blue movies.
The point being that every single one of us had done something that was considered to be against the law at that time. I have detailed my own path to Duncroft. The notion that we were merely ’emotionally disturbed’ and that well-heeled parents had opted for this palatial manor house known as Duncroft to avoid us getting into more trouble is to seriously misunderstand what was going on here.
The courts, having sentenced us to (normally) a three year ‘Care and Protection order, we were then moved to an ‘assessment centre’. The first criteria for Duncroft was IQ. Here again, the thinking was not to isolate some well-heeled elite, but to ensure that the experiment of seeing whether further education, still in its infancy, would help us to return to normal life. The IQ element was not rigid. (I was later amused to find, when some fellow Duncroftians arrived on this site and commenced a conversation about IQ results, that I was the Dunce of the class of ’65. Their Barnardo’s notes revealed IQs of terrifying heights, unlike my own more modest score!). The IQ result was coupled with an assessment of ‘likely to benefit from further education’. That in turn meant that those who hadn’t played truant, and playing truant is far more difficult at a boarding school than it is for those at day school in their home town, had a head start here – they hadn’t missed so many lessons.
Parents, well-heeled or otherwise, had nothing whatsoever to do with this process.
Readers under the age of 60 may not be fully aware that back in the 1960s, ‘being at boarding school’ didn’t necessarily mean that your parents were well-heeled as it does now. The world map was still coloured pink, and boarding school was a sort of gentile fostering service for the children of the army of sometimes quite lowly civil servants and military that were stationed in the outposts of the British empire. I went to boarding school at 3 (Froebel’s in Guernsey) and I wasn’t unusual in having gone at an age that would be considered abuse in itself nowadays. I also wasn’t unusual in being part of the band of children that didn’t go home at Christmas or Easter holidays, simply because the journey to ‘home’ – Australia, Hong Kong or wherever – was really only ‘do-able’ in the longer summer holidays. B.O.A.Cs nanny service for ferrying such children to their parents is a fond memory for many. The more lowly the parent’s overseas occupation, the more likely boarding school rather than a private tutor in the ambassador’s residence…
So, was Duncroft only for the children of the well-heeled? Stuff and nonsense. I did a quick phone round of other Duncroft girls the other night, and between us, spanning 1965 to 1973, we can only come up with a total of two girls who were ex-boarding school, and only one of them (not I, that’s for sure) could remotely be described as ‘middle class’ let along ‘upper class’. The rest of our class mates were defiantly ‘working class’. One was the product of ‘fairground employees’. Two we can think of, had parents who had never been nor intended to be, gainfully employed. Again, as Moor has so painstakingly researched, some had no family home to return to. No parents to speak for them. Nowhere to go on the occasional home leaves. That was why people like Professor Bell took us on camping holidays to Norfolk. (*Waves to Ellen*).
The ‘celebrity connections’ that people make so much of, came about (mainly) because the school psychiatrist, Dr Mason, was married to an Elstree film producer, and the fact that the school and its ethos was a liberal experiment, an early exponent of the idea that neither your cultural background, nor your past, should count against you in ‘life chances’. People, especially the liberal elite, were fascinated by this notion of ‘bad girls’ being given a second chance. Little doubt that there were some who found the notion positively offensive.
The raising of the school leaving age to 16, and the concomitant requirement that everyone received a full time education, posed a problem for the mental health services. Young people are as prone to mental illness as adults. Schizophrenia can strike alarmingly early. Autism, though not a mental illness, can lead to behavioural problems that were not readily understood at the time. Psychiatric hospitals didn’t even have ‘young persons units’ and they most definitely didn’t have educational facilities.
One of the important changes brought about under the Children and Young Persons Act 1969 was that central government divested itself of direct responsibility for the former Approved Schools. Many were closed. Duncroft, already a ‘secure unit’ and with residential psychiatric facilities, became a ‘Community Home with Education’, administered by the Local Authority, and for the use of those with mental health issues who could not, because of the requirement for secure accommodation, utilise mainstream education. I have taken a straw poll of 1975/78, not as comprehensively as I did for the 1965/73 period, and girls from that period don’t remember anyone who would qualify as coming from a privileged background.
It is curious how this myth of a financially privileged elite has taken root. Initially from Savile’s idea that somehow parents were ‘clamouring’ to get their ‘gals’ into Duncroft; then from Meirion Jones’ comments to Pollard, and possibly the news that ‘Fiona’ was parented by a highly placed BBC apparatchik. On the one hand we were ‘poor little vulnerable waifs’ and on the other hand we were the ‘spoilt offspring of wealthy parents’ trying to avoid the court system?
Neither is true. We were an egalitarian experiment in what is now a very modern idea – that neither your past and nor your birth circumstances should preclude you from having a second chance at making a life for yourself.
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September 23, 2015 at 9:50 am -
1960 was a different country, and it pays to remember that.
Those of my generation , such as Meirion, tend not to realise, just what a social STAIN even a minor criminal record, especially for women, was still in the middle to late sixties. Very much akin to the leprosy of being an unmarried mother or her bastard. In my own family, one of my myriad of London Aunts was caught shop lifting in the early 60s (infact in true Dwarf style, she’d been heading up an amateur ‘ring’, had a flat full of hooky gear and was only convicted for one item of clothing -the only item in the flat she hadn’t actually stolen). Throughout my childhood her CRIMINAL RECORD (she got a non-custodial sentence before the JP) was paraded by my parents and Grandparents , and how it had RUINED HER LIFE and how she had to declare it at every Job Interview. It was regularly trotted out as an admonishment and salutary tale for young errant Dwarfs….and how she ‘would never get a decent job nor husband’.
I am pleased to report said CRIMINAL Aunt went on to out earn, legally, more than all her familial naysayers combined and married well. Her own son is a top flight lawyer.
If you were influential and your daughter had been caught doing something criminal, you would try and work the system so that she could go to Duncroft. Don’t hold back now Meirion, tell us what you really think of your social betters. Dear God, Chip-on-shoulder much?
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September 23, 2015 at 2:29 pm -
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September 23, 2015 at 6:11 pm -
And other creatures, all of whom would need a telescope to look at the belly of a snake.
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September 23, 2015 at 10:05 am -
Worth mentioning that R2/Fiona makes a similar claim about the girls being from well-to-do circumstances.#
She herself was the daughter of a BBC Producer – solid middle-class certainly.
Of course she also says many were prostitutes and one even a murderer, so who dares is believed.Given Jimmy’s main understanding of “Duncroft girls” must have come from Susan. What were her circumstances?
He did say in his interview for Ornament that the girls were very well-spoken, so his 2009 testimony is at least consistent.-
September 23, 2015 at 10:19 am -
I would say that Susan, the same as me, just about tottered into the middle class niche….just. A generation beforehand, neither of us would have stood a chance of being mistaken for middle class, but both our parents were the product of that great social mobility after the second world war. As it happens, two of my Uncles were bank managers for Barclays – before the war, neither would have had a prayer of attaining such a position, but post war, and post ‘officer class polish’, (and the Quaker background helped) both found themselves part of the new middle class. Their Mother was an Irish maid come over to work in the London hotels as a chambermaid….
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September 23, 2015 at 10:24 am -
Perhaps the nub here is that “criminals” were anticipated to be working-class untermensch, so the very fact that Miss Jones only took “intelligent” girls meant that the gals were bright, chatty and quick-witted. Thus, an impression is created of “class”, even if the girl was simply upwardly mobile because she was a bright kid.
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September 23, 2015 at 2:35 pm -
“…bank managers for Barclays…”
That would be classed by many as a criminal occupation these days…
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September 24, 2015 at 11:21 pm -
In ’72 I would have said the majority were lower middle class…pretty much the same social mix as my previous direct grant KEHS Birmingham (now THERE’S POSH for you!) selected on academic ability and the will to enter the exams alone. Working class was quite unusual. One might have teetered on mediocre upper class…but nobody of importance or influence.
My own social class cannot be fully disclosed until negotiations with my mother concerning my fee are concluded…but I am optimistic about being able to throw my full weight behind:
“Duncroft was an elite institution where only the most intelligent young criminal girls were sent. If you were influential and your daughter had been caught doing something criminal, you would try and work the system so that she could go to Duncroft.”…and go on a 4 star cruise. :o)
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September 23, 2015 at 10:14 am -
He did say in his interview for Ornament that the girls were very well-spoken
Given that JS was born in Leeds, any English accent would have sounded ‘posh’ to his ears. No doubt the Duncroft girls were , by and large, brought up to speak RP in public if they weren’t native speakers…that was the ‘polite’ thing to do. Even in the late 70s I can recall our Welsh-but-taught-himself-RP-as-a-boy-listening-to-the-Home Service teacher telling children to ‘speak properly’ .
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September 23, 2015 at 10:17 am -
Yeah, but by 1974 Jimmy was rubbing shoulders and had been to the Palace. He was also a millionaire, not a hick from the Yorkshire stick.
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September 23, 2015 at 11:13 am -
I know ML, I was merely pointing out in my facile way the incongruity of someone obviously from Yorkshire praising the well -spokeness of anyone.
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September 23, 2015 at 10:22 am -
Good point BD, and one that I should have included. My Liverpudlian Father had taken himself off for elocution lessons (much to the disgust of the remaining Scouse brigade) simply to improve his career prospects. Jimmy’s voice must have been one of the first ever heard on television which wasn’t solid RP.
How soon we forget.-
September 23, 2015 at 11:18 am -
Good point BD, and one that I should have included
Nah I was just making a ‘funny’ , you’re giving credit where none is due.
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September 23, 2015 at 10:46 am -
* I was reading it again in conjunction with the memory of an except from Jimmy Savile’s autobiography (I confess I neither own a copy nor have read it – excerpts only!). *
Just for the avoidance of future confusion, you must have been “remembering” his Ornament testimony because Jimmy makes no mention of Duncroft in his autobiography. It is an historical curiosity that he must indeed have been writing/publishing that very book at the same time as he was beginning his Duncroft associations. It crosses my mind that this would gel very well with Susan’s impression of a man reaching a minor crisis in his life, feeling the loneliness since his mother died. Jimmy’s writing of that book was very out of character generally as he otherwise shunned the personal limelight (until he became aged), so his opening-up by writing that autobio when he was approaching 50 seems indicative of a man reaching out to others (his 60million friends?) and trying to make sense of his own mid-life crisis, and trying to put it into some kind of order at the time. He is said to have been unemotional generally, but very logical.
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September 23, 2015 at 11:41 am -
His career/on-screen persona changed at this point too – compare the dynamic, at-ease and genuinely funny host of TOTP etc before circa 1976, with the over-formulaic and often wooden gift-to-lazy-impressionists after that does seem to suggest some kind of mid-life crisis and change in perception/priorities. The second big ‘change’ was after the heart surgery, when he seemed to play on his perceived eccentricities with the return of the long hair, bad clothes & the like, which was a gift to lazy posthumous demonisers.
His “rise” now is seen as being wholely inexplicable as ‘stage 1 Jim’ (the quick-witted, wisecracking, up-to-the minute-compere) and ‘stage 2 Jim’ (the be-suited elder statesman tirelessly working for good causes) are overshadowed by the liability that was the worn-out eccentric ‘stage 3 Jim’ – which is, as most things are with *all this* utterly deplorable. -
September 24, 2015 at 5:35 am -
It might be a silly question, but any chance the book could have been ghosted?
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September 24, 2015 at 4:28 pm -
Jimmy does say he wrote it because some in the media asked him if they could write one and he,
a) couldn’t see why they should make money out of him
b) knew they wouldn’t [couldn’t?] write the true story
There’s a photo of his hand-written first drafts in the book. He did it in school exercise books.
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September 23, 2015 at 11:40 am -
Surely he knows that in the ’60s/’70s the posh peoples’ borstals were, for girls, Roedean, and for boys, Gordonstoun, with the really really difficult ones being transported to Geelong Grammar’s Timbertop Campus in Ozland?
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September 23, 2015 at 12:00 pm -
No doubt we will reap the full benefit of that conditioning process when Brenda finally keels over and Brian gets his wish.
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September 23, 2015 at 6:45 pm -
I am pretty sure those institutions were for the mentally disadvantaged. We should not mock the afflicted.
Royals favourite course of study at university-history of art, only marginally less rigorous than PPE.
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September 23, 2015 at 12:00 pm -
I would absolutely confirm that it is total bs that parents had any influence as to which approved school you were sent. In the first instance, prior to being sent to your designated school, in virtually all cases, girls were sent from the juvenile courts to at LEAST one remand home (in my case, it was two, for several months and then on to a ‘Classifying School’ (the infamous Magdalen being one) where, with reports from the remand homes & assessment at the classifying school/centre, the powers that be decided which reform/approved school you would be sent to, ergo the moniker’Classifying School’. My father had been posted back overseas by the FO shortly after I entered the system anyway, it would have been difficult to influence anyone! He came from a working class family, was born in the East End and went to evening classes to get his degree while working in a printer’s and then applied and got into the FO – not wealthy nor ‘upper class’, just a hard-working civil servant. I had the plummy accent, acquired at boarding school where I was sent at 11 (very young but not nearly as young as Anna was) not him and the boarding school was full of girls whose fathers were destined overseas working in banks, the FO or similar and was hardly ‘upper class’. Said plummy accent causing me much grief (and physical fights) in the subsequent remand homes etc… My classmates at Duncroft came from all ‘social’ backgrounds – and accents! And, if my memory is correct, most of the girls were there for pretty minor demeanours like shop-lifting and, amazingly, bunking off school (I forget what the terminology was at the time) no heavy-duty adolescent criminals that I recall, so stop lying Meirion!
I should also point out that, despite being told the contrary and that our juvenile records would be destroyed some 5-7 years after leaving, the ‘mark’ or ‘mar’ remains insofar as no ex-reform/approved school person can appear in a UK Court and declare they are ‘a good man/woman and true’ as the CPS will have done their homework and quickly reveal you as a one-time ‘juvenile delinquent’!-
September 23, 2015 at 2:51 pm -
My classmates at Duncroft came from all ‘social’ backgrounds – and accents!
But I assume the ‘gals’ of whatever accentage were encouraged/reminded to ‘put in their best plum’ or ‘telephone voice’ when speaking to visitors to the school? I’d wager your ol’ Dad from Befffnal Grween didn’t jelly eel his vowels whilst in the FO…can you imagine that, Parker eat your heart out, “H’excuse me Mister H’ambasSODDOR, ‘is Royawl ‘Ighness d’ King hovv Darkyland is on the dawg n bowne…” .
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September 23, 2015 at 2:54 pm -
It was known as a ‘telephone voice’ at the time – the ability of girls, and some men, form varied backgrounds, to sound exactly like a BBC announcer when answering the telephone. A required knack if you wanted a job where answering the telephone was a necessity.
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September 23, 2015 at 3:08 pm -
My mum’s still got one of those! Went with the shorthand lessons, I suppose.
Despite the Dwarf’s cruel jibes at the expense of the Leeds-accent, my grandmother – from Leeds – managed the most magnificent pronunciation of the word ‘book’.
It drawled its way all around the room before coming to a halt… “booooooooooooooooooooooooooooooohhhhhhhk.”
(A single primary-school teacher of mine tried to get us to speak proper, too, but the idea had been abandoned by secondary. A shame, really, as being understood by those you are speaking to should surely be included on the curriculum.)-
September 23, 2015 at 4:07 pm -
understood by those you are speaking to should surely be included on the curriculum like, innit ayyy
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September 23, 2015 at 4:10 pm -
Me old gran’d box yer ears, TBD!
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September 23, 2015 at 4:20 pm -
I’ll see your ‘telephone voice’ and raise you ‘telephone smile’ – my late mother had one of those, which only came into use when speaking on the phone – it was the sort of forced rictus grin that you’d never like anyone to see but, on the phone in those pre-Skype days, they couldn’t.
In her later life, she had two pairs of false teeth – one pair of which was functionally better for eating: the other, much newer pair, she believed gave her a better smile. She would even swap to her ‘smiling teeth’ before making some phone-calls, in order to maintain her telephone smile ! That’s true dedication.
I do sometimes wonder about my genetics though ……-
September 23, 2015 at 4:24 pm -
I concede defeat, Mudplugger! That is dedication above & beyond…
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September 23, 2015 at 4:31 pm -
Fit fur? Kennin’ fit it is y’re sae’ing disna mean thit ony o’ th’ dafties fae doon sooth ‘r gaein’ tae hae ony notion fit it mins
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September 23, 2015 at 5:49 pm -
I’d insert one of those little yellow fellows here, scratching his head, if I knew how!
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September 23, 2015 at 6:12 pm -
And people wonder why I refer to anyone north of Watford Gap Services as ‘geordie’ or ‘orcs’. That has to be the most unintelligent and unintelligible thing i have heard today…and I live in Norfolk.
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September 23, 2015 at 9:02 pm -
Strangely enough, this week sees me in Norfolk for the first time ever. I had been truly disappointed until now. The local shops are devoid of wide fit socks for my 14 tootsies, and no rows of bargain priced 12 digit gloves are to be found. There are no bodies piled up at the roadside straights forming piles of ‘car kill’ . Even the bookshops that stock classic tomes that appeal to my specialist interests are not as daft as sell them for a pittance.
The only signs of strangeness have been a load of people still dressed up in their WW2 surplus outfits at the weekend, and the fact that everyone seems to be insanely chained to driving at 10 to 15 mph less than whatever is the prevailing speed limit
I was getting quite depressed about the dashing of my expectations, until you chipped in, as a representative true Norfolkman, to equate the notion that you considered that your lack of comprehension of some form of speech, which may well be intelligible to others, as being a sign that the one that expressed the same is necessarily unintelligent.
That’s much more like what I had thought I might encounter, so thank you for restoring my faith in East Anglian culture
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September 23, 2015 at 9:18 pm -
Now there’s three words you rarely see together “East + Anglian + Culture” – well done, I thought that had all died out with ‘Sale Of The Century’.
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September 24, 2015 at 12:27 am -
the fact that everyone seems to be insanely chained to driving at 10 to 15 mph less than whatever is the prevailing speed limit
Actually they are probably tourists, genuine Norfolkers tend to drive at 40 mph whatever the speed limit…..40 on a 60 and 40 through the Village 20 and if they are over 80 then 40 when they try and park.
as a representative true Norfolkman,
In my younger more violent and alcoholised days that would have earned you a punch in the mouth. I was NOT born in Norfolk, I only share about half my DNA with my ancestral village (Grandma Dwarf fell in love with a furriner and moved down south to be with him….mind you he came from a little Berkshire village that also only had a single DNA sequence & IQ score between them) and I live here under protest….loud and frequent protest.that you considered that your lack of comprehension of some form of speech
No that’s just because I’m English, nothing particularly Norfolk about that little bit of cultural prejudice.-
September 24, 2015 at 8:30 am -
My bad on the ascribing of ‘Norfolkman’ status to you
But, going back to the original point, are you then saying that, as a representative Englishman, that their lack of comprehension of others is something which apparently determines that those others lack intelligence?
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September 24, 2015 at 4:29 pm -
Seem to recall Hilda Ogden was still adopting hers in the 1980’s.
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September 24, 2015 at 12:47 pm -
I was watching an Oz TV show from the early 1960s the other day and I noticed how everyone had a sort of mid-Atlantic accent and commented same to a friend watching as well. He tells me everyone had to have the same and especially on the ABC where they were advised to mimic BBC accents. Long before Kylie came on the scene.
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September 23, 2015 at 12:05 pm -
In Meirion’s defence, the quote does define the catchment of Duncroft in the 1950s, all the other recollections relate to the 60s and thereafter. It may actually be accurate that a decade before, and before the radical new experiment, Duncroft did indeed house a disproportionate level of the well-to-do’s fallen female offspring.
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September 23, 2015 at 12:08 pm -
Meirion wasn’t even born until 1957. He was 3 years old by the end of that decade.
Can you name any other 3 year old that you would quote as a dependable source for analysing socio-economic trends in the educational world?
I would suggest that it was at least, at least, 1970, before Meirion could even pull together an intelligible statement on the subject.
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September 23, 2015 at 12:36 pm -
All true, but he may have been reporting what he had been told by others about its 1950s population, leading his audience to assume that the intake in later years had not changed. Is there are corroboration or otherwise from those who were at Duncroft in the 1950s ? That could be interesting, although not relevant to the later accusations.
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September 24, 2015 at 11:34 pm -
Wasn’t Meirion Welsh?
And mightn’t a very small Welsh boy regard anyone with an English accent as “posh”?
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September 23, 2015 at 3:43 pm -
Fascinating. Thanks Boss.
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September 23, 2015 at 5:57 pm -
I’m catching up with this fascinating story and trying to fill in the details. Can someone please tell me if the original Newsnight report has ever been broadcast or if it is available to view in any form?
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September 23, 2015 at 6:18 pm -
The answer to that is NO, and No!!!
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September 23, 2015 at 6:36 pm -
Thank you.
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September 24, 2015 at 4:30 pm -
In Pollard the rough drafts of the script are available.
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September 26, 2015 at 8:21 am -
Ok, now here’s odd, v odd I think. Can anyone – landlady, Moor, someone – explain the sentence in this week’s article by Jones in The Spectator (magazine supplement, £4 all in)?
Jones writes:-
>>The Newsnight film I had made with Liz MacKean exposing Jimmy Savile as a paedophile a year before he died.
I don’t understand this, whichever way one reads his broken English. There never was “a film” (only a proposed film, some filming, some draft scripts, some rough edits)? And the date…surely the point is nothing was “exposed” before Savile’s death? And Newsnight didn’t start work “a year before he died”?
Could it be Jones is just lying in this article, hoping no one will remember the chain of events? Or have I got it all muddled?
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September 26, 2015 at 9:36 am -
PS Forget £4, the Jones piece is online for free:-
http://life.spectator.co.uk/2015/09/alan-yentobs-crumbling-empire/
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September 26, 2015 at 9:37 am -
That is the usual chain of events, propagate a lie, keep propagating it; eventually, like ‘Johnny Rotten banned from the BBC for exposing Savile’ it will get accepted as the truth by some journalist somewhere.
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September 23, 2015 at 7:59 pm -
Of course the girls were well spoken. Estuary didn’t get fashionable until the 80s. At boarding schools the accent normalises to whatever the general populous agrees is OK. That’s why Jacob Rees Mogg sounds as he does, yet his older sisters sound like Amber Rudd.
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September 24, 2015 at 11:31 pm -
Another curious fact, at a tangent…
My father made a vocation out of controlling where I was sent – not so hard as both sides of the family were masonic (the only class that counts in the West Midlands) and my father could be a truly terrifying pest besides. I saw some of the letters. His aspiration (after Duncroft) was to get me (14, 6 feet tall, premature development syndrome and all) into a place called Saint Charles in London that was only for kids up to the age of 13. The implication was that I was to be taught to be “a proper child” who would hang off his every infantile word.
HE GOT SWEET FANNY NOWHERE…
Even though Sir Keith Joseph (then relevant minister) sanctioned three closely typed pages that attempted to introduce sanity, reason and the facts of life to my father’s outlook. When I found it it was genuinely touching to me how well the writer simply “got it”.
Bluntly, if there was a way for parents to specify placements, he would have done it…he didn’t…though he later came to pretty much control the local social services approach to me.
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September 25, 2015 at 6:57 pm -
Those very same exercise books that Moor refers to are the very same that the Police ‘mistook’ for his diaries – the ones they lost! All very strange as I have these hand written notes! Confused? The diaries were just normal hard backed diaries and are STILL missing :-0
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