Living in Hope

This is the story of a family that was torn apart back in 1949. A family of eight, in all, mum, dad and six siblings. I am the fourth child in this family, the oldest brother Hugh, sisters Margaret and Alice, my-self James, then John and Stephen. What was to happen to us all later we did not know, nor the reason why, and did not find out till years later in 2001. As I start our story it fills me with sadness, knowing we as a family were not to grow up to-gether. We were separated as children from our parents, because of illness and lack of money. Back in those days, if you didn¿t work then there was no money coming into the house. For some reason our father left us, and mum was left alone to bring us up. She could not work, so how was she to feed us. When mum went into Hospital to have Stephen, our oldest sister Margaret took care of us, the best way she could, but as she was only ten years old her-self, how was she to do it. Mum was in hospital for three weeks. Then mum brought Stephen home from hospital, and that¿s when the authorities came, and started to take us children away from our mum. WRITTEN BY JAMES