Mother of Ten (9 page)

People
in the community were aware of Dad’s illness and wanted to help. The local
shopkeepers knew him well. There was always something given to Mum every time
she went up to the street. The baker gave her bread he said he could not sell.
The grocer gave her the biscuits that had become broken in the tins and could
not be sold. The market gardener gave her boxes of fruit and vegetables. Often
she simply found boxes of food that had been left at the back door by
individual townspeople.

“Don’t
worry,” Mum told him, “you have so many friends in this town your family is not
likely to go without if anything happens to you.”

He
sighed. There was so much in that sigh; his regret, his loss and his grief.

Looking
back, I know I missed much of their story simply because I was absorbed in my
own world but their love for each other was always evident. 

I
can imagine them that night in the warmth of their bed as they lay quietly
together. Across the room Irene and Peter lay sleeping in the cot Irene had
once had to herself. In that silence, in the darkness of their bedroom, Mum
might have finally accepted the cruel reality that her husband, the man who had
loved and protected her year after year with the deepest passion and the purest
commitment, was sick enough to die. I imagine the tears rolling down her
cheeks. I see her hand reaching for his under the covers and squeezing it. I
see his fingers closing over hers.

All
this time, and for many more years, we (the Rowley children) were completely
unaware of the Bishop children; our three half-siblings who were living out
their lives without their mother.

At
the age of three and a half, Myrtle’s first child Bertie was placed in a Home
temporarily when the marriage of Myrtle and Henry Bishop fell apart in 1942. In
those days the NSW Child Welfare Department issued licences to ‘respectable’
women who wished to set up a Children’s Home. A woman who needed to find a way
to survive without a husband, such as a widow or deserted wife, was able to
make a living by converting her house to a Children’s Home. No qualifications
were required, no training was necessary. Children might be placed in such a
Home permanently or for a period of time during a family crisis. It seems
likely that Bertie, Audrey and Noel were placed temporarily in a Home of this
kind.

 Unlike
his sister and brother, Bertie was taken out of care after a short time. He
went to live with his paternal grandmother and grandfather at 536 David Street,
Albury, where he stayed until he was around nine years old. Why were the other
two children left in institutions? Perhaps there were financial reasons but I
believe the main reason was that Agnes Bishop had got it into her head that
Audrey and Noel were not her son’s children. This woman’s spitefulness came
through strongly during my research into what happened to my mother. I have no
doubt that Agnes was the instigator behind the rumours and events that led to
Myrtle’s three children being taken from her.

Society
made it easy for Agnes Bishop’s malevolence to bear fruit. At that time a woman
could be declared an unfit mother, which would result in her children being
removed from her care, simply because the children had been absent from school
on several occasions. It was also a time when a neighbour or a relative, such
as a child’s grandmother could, and often did, cause children to be placed in
Homes even when the children were living in safe, secure and suitable family
situations. Such an incident is related in Joanna Penglase’s book
Orphans of
the Living
: Sylvia Baker’s maternal grandmother who ‘had never thought our
father was good enough for her daughter’ asked the NSW Department to
investigate how the children were being cared for after the children’s mother
died. This resulted in Sylvia and her siblings being placed in a Home despite,
or because of, the fact that the children’s father was willingly caring for his
children with the help of a housekeeper.

Bertie
was not able to give me detailed information about his life with his
grandparents but I imagine he spent his childhood engaged in activities common
to other children living in Albury at the time: picking mushrooms and
blackberries, making ‘flying saucers’ out of dry cowpats, letting off
firecrackers and indulging in other harmless mischief. He might have made a
billycart out of a wooden fruit box from the grocer and raced it down a hill
with other children. Perhaps his grandmother allowed him to go to the pictures
when there was a Saturday matinee on at the local cinema.

His
grandparents cared for Bertie and looked after him. However, during his time
with them, Bertie’s grandmother took the opportunity to poison his mind about
his mother, telling him Myrtle was a slut and a bitch, among other things. This
makes me very angry not just on my mother’s behalf but because of how it must have
made Bertie feel to believe his mother was such a person and to grow up
thinking she had callously abandoned him.

Bertie
recalled that as a young child he was once approached by a woman at the gate of
the house in David Street. She alighted from a bicycle to hand him a gift of
toys but he was quickly snatched away from her by his grandmother.

“You
mustn’t go near that woman. She’ll steal you away,” Agnes Bishop told him.

 The
memory of this incident stayed with Bertie because he wondered if the woman
offering the gift was his mother. From the description that he gave me when I
met him, I believe it was. If this was Myrtle, her actions do not seem
consistent with a mother who ‘deserted’ her children which was what Henry
Bishop claimed. I also think the remark by Bertie’s paternal grandmother is
revealing. She may have said it merely to frighten the child but her words
could also suggest she thought that Myrtle might try to get her children back,
which throws further doubt on the desertion accusation.

Technically,
perhaps Myrtle could be described as deserting her children for if she was
being forced to take them on as a single parent she simply could not have done
so. As a woman on her own in the 1940s and the daughter of a widow, Myrtle
would not have stood a chance of being able to support herself and her
children. She would not have been eligible to claim social security payments
and work would not have been an option. Given the prejudices toward married
women and/or mothers in the workforce at that time she would have found it
almost impossible to get a job. With no kindergartens, child care centres or
‘before and after’ school care, she would also have had to find someone to take
care of the children while she was at work. Myrtle would have found it as difficult
as Joanna Penglase’s mother who was forced to place her daughters ‘in care’ in
the 1940s. In
Orphans of the Living
, Joanna writes:

 ‘What
else could my mother do? In the immediate post war era there was an acute
housing shortage and very little government or community assistance. Women’s
wages were low and not equal to a male – a breadwinner’s – wage. But how could
my mother go to work, if she had found a job? Who would look after her
children, one of them a baby? Even finding accommodation was difficult. She
lived in a much stricter, more judgemental, moral environment than we do now,
and women on their own – especially with children – were suspect.’ Joanna
Penglase could just as easily be talking about my mother.

I
wonder if Myrtle allowed herself to be named a deserter, or perhaps was
pressured to allow it, because that was the preferable option that would be
acceptable grounds for divorce. The other options were adultery and cruelty,
both of which would have resulted in significant newspaper coverage which,
especially in a relatively small place like Albury, would have done a great
deal of harm to the family’s reputation. This choice would also have made the
children the targets of gossiping tongues.

Perhaps Myrtle felt that she
had
virtually deserted her children because she had lost her will to care in the
normal way as a result of post natal depression. People who were placed in
Homes as children often mention they were put there as a result of their mother
suffering a ‘nervous breakdown’ after the birth of a child. Such conditions
were not discussed and often not considered worthy of medical treatment. In
Myrtle’s case it might not have even been post-natal depression but simply
depression as a result of spending over four years with an uncaring husband
while enduring the manipulative influence of a mother-in-law who did not want
her around. However, rather than desert her children, Myrtle appears to have
made every effort to remain close to them until she eventually had to face the
heartbreaking reality of her circumstances.

From
my knowledge of her as a mother I know that she would never willingly give up
her children. Mum was a totally committed mother who went out of her way to
make our young lives fun, interesting, healthy and educational. She spent time
and thought on the things she could do with us, and for us, such as making an
Easter egg trail so that we would have fun following the route and finding eggs
hidden in unlikely places – a few small chocolate eggs but mostly painted
boiled hen’s eggs. It didn’t matter what sort of eggs, Mum understood that it
was the fun of searching and discovering that gave us joy. I know she would
have given the same commitment to her first three children had circumstances
been different. Perhaps her unceasing dedication to us was partly because of
shame that she had had to relinquish her other children but if that is the case
it only reinforces my opinion that she cared about them.

When
I first began my research I, in my ignorance, could not understand why she had
not fought tooth and nail to keep her children with her. I am now in a better
position to understand the complex issues involved. Sometimes I berate myself
for having had such unkind thoughts and being so quick to pass judgement. There
could have been several reasons why Myrtle did not, or could not, fight to keep
her children. For one thing, she did not have the financial resources to take
care of them. Added to that was the likelihood that she was bereft of the
emotional resources to fight for them and because of that possibly felt they
would be better off with their father or in a Home.

It
was not Myrtle but the children’s father who placed them in orphanages. Henry
Bishop claimed, I assume in order to justify his actions, that Myrtle said she
couldn’t look after the children. We don’t know for sure that Myrtle said that.
After all, the statement comes from a man who did his very best to avoid his
responsibility to his children and was only too ready to believe his mother’s
malicious lies about his wife. However, if Myrtle did say it there could be
many reasons why. Perhaps she meant she could not do it on her own and needed
help. I also wonder if Henry Bishop told her she would receive no financial
assistance from him. Since he believed at least two of the children were not
his, he would have felt justified in withdrawing his financial support.

Admittedly,
in those days it would have been difficult for a single father to rear three
children. Putting children in an orphanage or Home was not only a common
solution to family breakdown but seen as appropriate and best for the children.
Therefore, I must (grudgingly) allow that purely practical reasons might have
been behind Henry Bishop’s decision to place his children in Homes. Whatever
the reason, Audrey and Noel remained in institutions after Bertie went to live
with his grandparents.

At
around the age of nine, Bertie became too wild for his grandmother to handle.
The situation was apparently brought to a head when Bertie found some detonator
caps in the glove box of an unlocked car. Not knowing what they were, but
intrigued by them, he placed the caps in his pocket and continued on his way,
which happened to be along the railway line. Perhaps still thinking about his
new ‘toys’, he did not hear the train coming until it was almost too late.
Bertie scuttled out of the way in time but the train driver reported the
incident to the police. No doubt the train driver considered a young boy
wandering along the railway tracks to be a tragedy waiting to happen. Had he
also known about the detonator caps he would surely have been horrified. The
Albury police, when they interviewed Bertie,
were
horrified and took the
matter seriously. Bertie’s father, probably in response to a summons from Agnes
Bishop, travelled from Queensland to Albury to sort out the problem.

The
aftermath of this incident which resulted in court proceedings was that the
family decided it was time for Bertie’s father to take charge of his eldest
son. Consequently, Bertie travelled with Henry Bishop by train to Manly,
Queensland 1500 kilometres away to join his step-mother and three
half-siblings. A two-day journey on a steam train might have been a dream come
true for a young boy but it was extremely unpleasant for nine-year-old Bertie
who suffered with motion sickness the whole way.

In
his new home, Bertie experienced some initial adjustment difficulties. Agnes
Bishop, who did not approve of her son’s second wife any more than she had
approved of Myrtle, had given Bertie a mission. He was to cause as much trouble
as he could in his new home with the aim of breaking up his father’s
marriage.  Clearly, no woman was good enough for Agnes Bishop’s son.

Bertie
was essentially an obedient child and did his best to carry out his
grandmother’s wishes. He became so troublesome that he was sent for a period of
time to Boys Town: a boys’ residential facility and school established by the
De La Salle Brothers. In recent years, former residents have spoken of sexual
and physical abuse they suffered in this facility. Boys Town was one of 150
orphanages and detention centres in Queensland under review by the Forde
Inquiry which ‘encompassed the period from 1911 to 1999’. The Inquiry ‘found
significant evidence of abuse and neglect of children’ which ‘included
emotional, physical, sexual and systems abuse’. Bertie did not speak to me of
his experience at Boys Town so I do not know if he was an abuse victim during
his time there.

He
was eventually returned to the family home where his step-mother did her best
to look after him and include him in the family. He enjoyed spending time with
his father, especially helping him tinker with cars. However, his previous
behaviour had impacted on their relationship and they did not establish a close
bond.

During
the time Bertie lived in Albury with his grandparents, he was never taken to
visit his sister, Audrey, who was less than ten kilometres away at St John’s
Orphanage in Thurgoona, then considered to be on the outskirts of Albury but
now a suburb.