With All Hopes Dashed In The Human Zoo

WITH ALL HOPES DASHED IN THE HUMAN ZOO
Mary Baker

Born disabled and made motherless at the age of 11, Mary Baker (nee Cutler) spent her early childhood in hospitals and workhouses in Dorset, and her teenage years in a London home for disabled and/or mentally-handicapped girls, before pursuing a promising nursing career.

Against all her expectations she married, raised a family of her own, and went on to foster nearly 50 babies. In With All Hopes Dashed In The Human Zoo, her autobiography, she tells for the first time how her early years were all up hill with tragedy, hardship and struggle, and how a successful marriage blessed with children brought her the happiness she thought she would never have.

With All Hopes Dashed In The Human Zoo.
Mary Baker.
Softback, 210 mm x 148 mm, 96 pages, 70 black and white photographs.
Published by Danny Howell Books.
July 1990.
ISBN 1872818021.

With All Hopes Dashed In The Human Zoo

WITH ALL HOPES DASHED IN THE HUMAN ZOO
INTRODUCTION

During Easter 1990 Mary Baker (nee Cutler), my mother’s cousin, came to stay for a short break at my home. It was the first time Mary and I had met and despite an age difference of 34 years between us (she is 68) we got on really well. I had absolutely no idea of the life Mary had led and there was certainly nothing in her deportment to suggest that she had been through tragedy and heartache during her younger days. Indeed she appeared to be a happy-go-lucky soul with a constant smile on her face.

At the time of Mary’s visit I was preparing the manuscript for my eleventh book, one that featured the transcripts of interviews I had made with five senior citizens whose paths had crossed in Somerset and Wiltshire. Mary, glancing over my shoulder, read some of the potted biographies I was keying into my word processor. It was then, with some modesty, that she told me a few things about her life. She told me she had been born with a dislocated hip and that her father, a farm labourer, was disabled from an injury received in the First World War. She also told me that when she was eleven her mother had died suddenly, which meant the break-up of family life.

Mary, who hardly knew her mother because she had spent so much of her childhood in hospitals, found herself in workhouses for a short sojourn before spending her teenage years at Halliwick School for Disabled Girls in London. She didn’t see her father again until she was 17 and remained in care until she was 21. Despite the difficulties, Mary, to her credit, went on to pursue a successful nursing career and, against all expectations, married and raised a family of her own. She also fostered nearly 50 babies; something she says was worthwhile and gave her life a purpose.

I was quite taken aback by what Mary had said, and immediately realised there was a heart-rendering story behind her happy smiling face. Quick-thinking I asked her if I could tape-record a “conversation” with her and she readily agreed. Over the Easter holiday, for two evenings and one afternoon, Mary chatted away to me, either answering my questions or remembering aloud the twists and turns that fate had cast upon her life.

With All Hopes Dashed In The Human Zoo features the edited transcript of the tape I recorded with Mary. Her words are reproduced ad verbatim but the text omits all or any questioning I did. The only change made by myself to Mary’s story has been to put her memories into chronological order for the benefit of readers. I have also checked and confirmed names and dates where possible.

In the closing paragraph of this book Mary says “I hope my story will serve as a record of what life was really like for a motherless, disabled child, growing up.” I am pleased to say this book does serve as a worthy record. It also reminds us that no one today should ever suffer in such circumstances. Progress, often much maligned for its detrimental effects, has also brought improvements including some with regards social conditions and the introduction of the Welfare State. Mary’s story relates how the physically-handicapped and the mentally-handicapped were shut away from society years ago, in stark contrast to today when the handicapped are encouraged to play their rightful part in the community.

Danny Howell, July 1990.

A Life Of Love That Began In Sadness

Mary Baker with her husband Sid at their home in Upton,

in 1987, shortly before his death.

A LIFE OF LOVE THAT BEGAN IN SADNESS

.

Happiness only really came to Dorset farm worker's daughter Mary Cutler just after her 30th birthday when she married Sidney Thorn-Baker at Bournemouth Register Office on 23 August 1952.

He was the rock on which was founded the family life that, through tragic circumstances, Mary herself had been denied.

On her own now, widowed three years ago but still living in Upton, Poole, in the bungalow she and Sid moved into in 1955, Mary is amazed at how it has all turned out for her despite the most unpromising beginnings.

Born with a dislocated hip, she spent five years in and out of hospital - at Boscombe, Swanage and Wimborne - suffering the horrors of gas anaesthetics, pain and boredom.

That meant she did not go to school, in Woodlands, near Wimborne, where her father, Martin Cutler, worked on Mr Robert Dyke's Manor Farm, until she was nine.

She moved to Cranborne School at 11 but had only one term there because just before Christmas in 1933 her mother died at 38 from double pneumonia.

Mary and her six brothers were split up as a result, some of them going to the workhouses in Wimborne and Wareham - grim places for a child in any circumstances.

Then in the spring of 1935 Mary was torn completely from her family and her home.

Recalling her traumatic train journey from Wareham, not knowing where she was going or why, she said: "Outside the carriage window fields and fields passed by and I gave up counting them. Each one only served to remid me how much further I was going away from my brothers, my father, and Dorset."

Her destination was Halliwick School for Disabled Girls at Winchmore Hill in North London, an institution as mercilessly austere and awesome as any Dickensian establishment - "a human zoo," as Mary Baker described it.

The first night she just lay in bed crying. "I was miles from any home life I had ever known, so many sad things had happened to me and I was in a strange place with all hopes dashed."

But life went on, however tough it may have been, and the war came and at 19 Mary started training to be a nurse, graduating to a uniform and a wage packet of 10 bob (50p) a month.

The happiness of the marriage which in all her hopelessness she had never dreamed possible was capped by further impossible dreams coming true - two sons and a daughter of her own.

She also fostered, for 13 years from 1963 until Sid retired in 1976, nearly 50 babies for Dorset County Council.

Mary Baker has set down in straight-forward, homespun style the story of her life. It is a lesson to those today who may have less reason to feel hard done by, a story of much courage and cheerfulness, of hopes fulfilled however hard they had been dashed.

Chris Whitfield, Western Gazette.

With All Hopes Dashed In The Human Zoo, by Mary Baker, is published by Danny Howell Books, at £6.50.