1920s: No bitterness over lost childhood

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After an unhappy start to life, Gina Betteridge found happiness and was determined to make the most of it. She is pictured here performing with the Lincote Players

Gina Betteridge (left) with one of her 11 grandchildren, Adele (centre) and daughter-in-law, Sue Betteridge

Malnutrition and rickets – a familiar sign of poor health and poverty in the 1920s – alerted the local authorities to the family problems which saw little Jean Dawes, as she was then known, begin an institutionalised life that lasted nearly 20 years.

She was just a few months old when she was taken to the workhouse and split up from her parents and brothers and sisters.

But, despite the harsh life and punishment she received at the hands of strict disciplinarians, it was not being wanted by her own family which caused the most pain for Gina.

“There were happy times and sad ones, but the most hurtful and painful thing that can happen to any human is being rejected. It is a horrible feeling – if only people would give cuddles and love and show kindness and understanding – we would not have chips on our shoulders. You never lose them, although I have tried and, I think, have almost succeeded,” she said.

Gina, of Upper Midway, Swadlincote, was born in Horninglow Road, Burton-on-Trent, the youngest of seven children, all of whom were taken into local authority care in different institutions. She was quite grown up before she discovered she was not Jean Dawes, but Georgina Leonora Dawes.

She went to Burton workhouse and then to a nursery until she was old enough to attend school. Then, she was transferred to a children’s home in Park Grove, Derby.

The children at the home helped with the chores, including scrubbing shelves and floors, polishing the brass stair rods and black-leading the kitchen stove.

Inevitably, there were conflicts and, one day, Gina got into a soap fight with another girl during which the matron was accidentally hit in the face.

“What punishment I got – a hairbrush across the backside and put down the cellar in the dark, in a short cotton nightdress and no shoes. The door was locked. I was so cold but I wouldn’t cry.”

The home occupied numbers 42 and 44 Park Grove. She attended Ashbourne Road Junior and then Kedleston Road Senior Schools.

“I enjoyed school but got up to a lot of mischief. Once, I remember going scrumping apples on our way to Markeaton Park. The others ran off, but the owner of the trees caught me. He told me off and made me give them back.

“Then he said if I wanted apples to ask at the house. Cheeky as you like, when he had gone up the field, I went and asked his wife if she had any fruit. She didn’t know I had been one of those taking their apples,” she laughed.

Markeaton Park was a favourite place to play. She fell into the brook there so often that the park keeper’s wife used to keep spare knickers, a liberty bodice, vest, stockings and boots all ready for her at her cottage.

Most of the time Gina felt the staff in the homes did their best to make the children have a good life.

“But we never had cuddles or any love shown us, although we did have a lot of freedom. One Christmas, I remember three of us had long dance dresses made for the school dance; we even had dance shoes. Mine was a blue floral organza. We were allowed to choose the pattern we wanted and the lady who made them gave us advice and helped us to decide what suited us best.”

On one occasion, Gina ran away from school because she had been punished.

She was found sound asleep in an outside toilet by the owner of the house, who gave her breakfast and called the police.

“They fetched me back, told me off and put me in the isolation room. Nobody talked to me and I had my meals in there. Next thing, I got out of the window and tried to run away again.

“If someone had shown a bit of understanding and made us feel wanted instead of blaming us for our parents and relations putting us in a home, I think we would not have had the stigma of being called ’workhouse brats’ and those ’home kids’.”

Gina’s happiest childhood memory was when she was 11 and was fostered for 18 months by a Derby doctor and his wife who had a nine-year-old daughter, Sophia.

“I felt special. I had new clothes, not the old thick woollen stockings and institution shoes I had been used to for the previous eight years of my life. The clothes even went into bed with me because they were my own, not shared.”

But 18 months later, her idyllic life came to an end when she had to return to the institution because her parents had refused permission for her to be adopted by the family who had shown her such kindness.

Like many other local children who lived in council homes, Gina remembers the excitement of going on holiday with them to Skegness.

“We were up at 4.30am and on our way at six. It was a great adventure. My tummy was like jelly as we made our way to Friargate Station to catch the train.

“We slept in tents and didn’t care about the weather. Our mattress covers were filled with straw. Boys were on one side of a huge field and girls on the other. I had four years of very happy holidays by the sea.”

When she was 13, it was decided Gina needed more discipline and was sent to work at a nun’s home in Malvern.

“They didn’t sort me out. If I got hit, I refused to cry and I got hit quite a lot – by hand on the bottom, head, neck, anything.”

Gina later joined the Army, training for the ATS at Harrogate, and was then sent to Scotland.

She was 25 before true happiness came into her life in the shape of former brewer and miner Albert Betteridge.

They fell in love and married and she still remembers the thrill of Christmas Eve 1953, when they walked through the front door of a house in Upper Midway, which was the first home of her own she had ever had.

“I just cried, I was so happy,” she said.

She had five children and now has 11 grandchildren, four great-grandchildren and one great-great-grandchild.

Sadly, Albert died 23 years ago but she is living a full life and making up for some of the things she missed as a child.

She has travelled to Australia to visit friends, taken an adult literacy course, enjoys swimming with disabled people and helping people suffering with blindness.

“Despite a poor start, happiness came into my life when I met Albert and we had 32 wonderful years together. I think I have been very fortunate indeed,” she said.

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