The Forgotten Child: A little boy abandoned at birth. His fight for survival. A powerful true story.
Based on a true story, The Forgotten Child is a heart-breaking memoir of an abandoned newborn baby left to die, his tempestuous upbringing, and how he came through the other side.It’s a freezing winter’s night in 1954. A baby boy, a few hours old, is left by his mother, wrapped in nothing but two sheets of newspaper and hidden amongst the undergrowth by a canal bank. An hour later, a late-shift postman is walking wearily home when he hears a faint cry. He finds the newspaper parcel and discovers the newborn, white-cold and whimpering, inside.After being rushed to hospital and against all odds, the baby survives. He’s baptised by the hospital chaplain as Richard.Everything feels as though it’s looking up; Richard is put into local authority care and regains his health. However, after nearly five blissful years in a rural care home filled with loving friends, it soon unfolds that his turbulent start in life is only the beginning…Based on a devastating true story, this inspirational memoir follows Richard’s traumatic birth, abusive childhood, and search for the truth.
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HarperElement
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First published by HarperElement 2019
FIRST EDITION
Text © Richard Gallear 2019
Cover layout design © HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd 2019
Cover photograph © Bert Hardy/Picture Post/Getty Images (front cover archive image is not of author)
A catalogue record of this book is available from the British Library
Richard Gallear asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work
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Source ISBN: 9780008320768
Ebook Edition © March 2019 ISBN: 9780008320775
Version: 2019-01-31
Contents
Chapter 5 – Goodbye to Happiness
Chapter 6 – The House of Dangers
Chapter 12 – Another Nail in the Coffin
Chapter 13 – Adoption – Hope or Despair?
Chapter 15 – Schooldays and Holidays
Chapter 19 – A Room with a View
Chapter 22 – Crossroads … and a New Life
Chapter 23 – Opening Pandora’s Box
CHAPTER 1
‘What was that?’ The whispered words faded to echoes in the dark mists of that frozen night, 17 November 1954.
Postman Joseph Lester had just finished his shift at Birmingham’s sorting office and started out on his walk home along Gas Street, through the gap in the wall and down to the canal towpath at Gas Street Basin. It was nine o’clock; the temperature was two degrees below zero. Tired and shivering cold, he was keen to get back to his family in Ledsham Street and relax in front of a roaring fire. This was his usual shortcut home, so he knew his way through the fog that thickened the darkness and stayed well clear of the water’s edge. There was nobody about – just the unseen lapping of water and the muffled, almost inaudible sounds of the city all around … until that faint something, a sort of whimper.
Joseph pointed his torch where he thought it came from, but he found it almost impossible to see anything. He retraced his steps and tried again, shining the beam to and fro over the water and straining his eyes to pick any form out of the darkness. As he moved his torch for one last sweep over the canal, the beam caught something pale. Was it his imagination? Had it moved?
There it was again. An eerie sound, was it a wounded animal? Surely even a rat wouldn’t venture out on this wintry night. But rats aren’t usually pale coloured. Could it be a kitten, or maybe the shape was just a piece of paper?
Joseph hesitated. It was probably nothing worth stopping for, but something niggled at him, making him turn back from his homeward path. He picked his way over the main bridge and round the basin to the other side, where he knew there was another low bridge, which was about where he thought the pale object must be. Sure enough, as he approached it from the back, he heard that sound again, fainter still. Whatever it was, he needed to find it soon. He clambered down and under the bridge, ducking to shine his torch through the profuse undergrowth.
‘There it is!’ he said out loud to himself, reaching what looked like a parcel wrapped in newspaper, only two or three inches from the water’s edge. But this was no normal parcel. As he peeled back the paper, he found inside a scrawny newborn baby, white, cold and whimpering. Joseph was shocked beyond belief: he’d seen rats as big as cats down there, capable of attacking this baby or pushing him into the canal.
He wrapped him up again and placed him inside his coat, holding him close to try to warm him, and turned to go back up to the street, where he knew there was a phone box to dial 999. Police Constable Watson came to meet Joseph and took his name, then noted down his brief account of finding the baby.
‘Well done, mate,’ he told him. ‘You might have saved a life tonight.’
Joseph smiled and went on his way, back to his wife and children. Meanwhile, the policeman hailed a squad car and took the baby straight to the Accident Hospital, where he was rushed through and seen straight away. A nurse gently opened up the two layers of newspaper and removed the thin, stained blanket beneath. She gasped when she saw the baby’s roughly cut umbilical cord.
