BURNS FAMILY 1910-20s

James Burns - Born 05Jan1905

Date in Cottage Homes, Napier, 04Jan1916 – age 11, weight 4.12 stone (26 kilos)

Discharged 14May1919 to Workhouse.

John Edward Burns - Born 14May1907, Died 1989

Date in Cottage Homes, Landseer, 04Jan1916 – age 9, weight 4.00 stone (25.4 kilos)

Absconded 20Jun1919.

Thomas Burns – Born 25mar1909

Date in Cottage Homes, Milton, 04Jan1916 – age 7, weight 3.7 stone (23.50 kilo)

Discharged 08Mar1923 to Eastern Hospital.

Addresses for their mother, Alice:

5, Levington Place, Charles Square

11 Vincent House, Vincent Street

23, Whitmore Road, Hoxton.

My father, John Edward and two of his brothers, Thomas and James, entered the Homes in 1915 - a few months after their father had died aged 42. They were then living in Rushton Street, which is just off the New North Road, Hoxton. Whilst dad finished up with probably the worst of the foster parents, his younger brother Tom had a much kinder couple to look after him.

Dad’s foster parent also had a son, the same age as dad, living in the cottage. He and dad just did not get along, consequently poor dad always finished up as the villain. He would be made to get up at 5 am to clean the kitchen, scrub stone floors and to keep on cleaning them until it was time for his breakfast of porridge with salt instead of sugar and then school.

He was obviously very unhappy and ran away on at least two occasions. Once, when about twelve years old, he walked all the way to Cambridge only to be caught when he stopped to ask for a glass of water at, of all places, the local policeman’s house. His punishment for that escapade was a day’s solitary confinement in the cellar. He spoke of only having a turnip to eat, although it may have been that the cellar was also the vegetable storehouse. The second time he turned up on his mother’s doorstep in Hoxton. She must have thought she was doing it for his own good by sending him straight back but it must have also broke his young heart. He was severely punished on another occasion for taking a carrot to eat because he was hungry. I understood that whilst he was given meagre meals, the son of his house parents obviously enjoyed the best of the menu. He told us that one of the boys, having wet his bed, had been made to walk around the garden in the middle of winter with the wet sheet over his head.

Both my father and his younger brother Tom (I don’t know anything about the older brother) learnt to play musical instruments whilst at the Homes. Dad was taught the cornet, Tom the clarinet. As soon as they were old enough, they joined the army as band boys, although not in the same regiment or at the same time, in dad’s case that was in 1923 when he was just sixteen.

From stories he has told us about his years in the cottage Homes, it is quite obvious that it was a very unhappy period in his life, there must have been good times although I cannot recall him saying so. Throughout his entire life though, he carried his great passion for music, which he had been taught, initially in the Home and then the army.

I found the Homes Magazine very fascinating to read and also very typical of that period. On page seven of the Hornchurch Homes Magazine, January 1922, my uncle Thomas is mentioned in the swimming races: Novices’ Race Boys, first place, T. Burns!

[Sadly Alan, the author of the above, passed away in 2002.]

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