Hello Mohawk
Many have spoken about the difficult experiences of being 'in care' in the twenties and thirties. I have put this in other places but will put it again. It would have been illuminating for our parents and grandparents to have had a site like this to communicate through before they died. If our relatives did not have the workhouses and children's homes they would have had less. Hard and even cruel they may have been at times, but my father for example had a good life, children and happiness later. Although he carried the loss of never seeing brothers and sisters that he was removed from very early and never saw again. A rhyme he used to sing to me as a little boy was a ryme he said they used to sing in Shenley Fields Children's Home. Perhaps used for other childrens homes over the decades?
"There is a rotten place called Shenley Fields, where we have bread and jam for all our meals. Egg and bacon never seen, nor no biscuits in a tin, that's why we run away from Shenley Fields". Ps - My father never ran away!
My father James Edmunds-Littleford (Jim), born 1919, was in a workhouse as an infant before being going to Shenley Fields Children's home in early 1920's and Royal School for the Deaf. After this, at about 16, he went to a working Home for boys in Birminham then went to a college in Manchester studying Baking and Confectionary. I believe this was a difficult life but my dad was always grateful for his chance and enjoyed his life with many successes including meeting my mom and having two lovely children (me included) perhaps he was one of the lucky one's. It is interesting that he went to his deaf club - Institute for the Deaf in Granville Street, Birmingham, followed by an hour in the Granville pub (now a theme pub O'Neil's ?) cormer of Granville Street and Broad Street. He did this from 18 (college time aside) to 83 when he died after his last night at the deaf club which had then been moved to Ladywood.