Songs of Innocence (20 page)

In the last days of the war, the papers were full of the case. The reports of the diminutive ten-year-old Terry, standing in the courtroom recounting how he had seen his brother, stripped naked
and freezing, being beaten with a stick by a stranger into whose care he had been delivered; how he had returned from school just before the boy’s death to find him locked in a cupboard,
brought tears to the eyes of thousands – particularly those who had been separated from their own children. There were numerous offers of adoption for Terry, who later wrote a book about his
experiences.
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Reginald Gough was convicted of manslaughter and sentenced to six years; his wife Esther received a lesser sentence of six months for neglect. The court heard that in 1942, not long after their
marriage, Esther had left her husband and had accused him of cruelty. But Newport Corporation, which had asked Shropshire County Council to check on the boys, had never discovered that fact before
it placed them with the couple. The resulting Monckton inquiry led to tighter rules governing the fostering out of children. There was nothing new in child cruelty, of course, but the fate of
Dennis O’Neill had touched a very raw nerve. ‘Billeted Boy’s Death’, read one headline, reminding parents everywhere of how the imperceptible thread that bound them to their
children had been stretched thin by war.

Dennis’s death marked a sea-change in attitudes to child abuse. Earlier cases which came to the public’s attention had usually involved cruelty by parents or employers. There had,
until now, been a general assumption that if a child’s home was less than perfect the best solution was to remove him from it. There had also been
a view that it was
always better for a child to live in the healthy, wholesome surroundings of rural England than amid the crowds and miasmas of the city. This case – along, perhaps, with tales told by
returning evacuees – exploded those theories, and not just because it laid bare the depths of rural poverty and dysfunction.

But the fate of Dennis O’Neill, or rather the public reaction to it, had an even wider significance. It underlined a huge change in public attitudes to children and to family life, and it
signalled the way to the next half-century of public policy.

In one sense, what set the death of Dennis O’Neill apart from the countless deaths of neglected, abused children that went before was the new sense of collective responsibility it
demonstrated. There was somehow a feeling that it was not only Dennis’s parents, nor even just his foster-parents, who had let him down. The central failure, in the eyes of the world, was not
that of the individuals involved – though that had indeed been grievous – but of the state. Some of the most condemnatory reports were those of the evidence given in court by Newport
Corporation, which had seemingly contracted out its duty of care to Shropshire, and of Shropshire County Council itself, which had failed to discover what was happening on that remote farm. By the
time the Monckton inquiry reported in May 1945, most of the building blocks of the new Welfare State were in place, and huge policy changes were under way. In a broad sense, the case helped to
cement the feeling that in future, the government would play a much greater part in the nation’s life – and its involvement would not stop, as it had continued largely to do up till
now, on the front doorstep of the family home.

In a specific sense, it gave rise to legislation that would radically change the lives of Britain’s most vulnerable children over the next half-century. The 1948 Children Act,
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brought about in large part through outrage over the O’Neill case, passed the power of the old Poor Law authorities to assume parental responsibility
over a child
to local authorities. The Act was followed by a series of further legislative measures which gave new powers to the state over children’s lives: in 1952,
the right to remove children from the family home even if their parents had not been prosecuted for cruelty; and, in 1958, the right for judges to order children to be taken into care in divorce
disputes. Later, the tide would begin to turn and more emphasis would be placed on preventive work to help families stay together – but in some respects the broader effect was the same: when
family life went awry, it was increasingly the state’s job – in particular the job of social workers – to step in and sort out the mess.

But the O’Neill case also highlighted something more fundamental, something political with a small ‘p’ rather than a large one. Perhaps it was just the simple desire, held by
so many, to return to a life with family at its heart after years of separation and war. Perhaps it was the coming to fruition of years of gradual change during which children had been handed the
gift of individuality, a promise that they actually mattered. Perhaps it was that children were gaining scarcity value, as families continued to shrink. Perhaps it was just part of that wider
post-war optimism – the feeling that now, if ever, things really would get better. But suddenly, the family was at the heart of the nation’s consciousness in a way that it probably
never had been before. The case reminded the nation that blood was, after all, thicker than water.

It helped, of course, that Britain had a newly married heir to the throne in Princess Elizabeth, who wed Philip Mountbatten in November 1947. The couple, along with their children –
Charles was born a year later in November 1948 and Anne in 1950 – became a sort of national symbol of domestic and familial bliss, photographed often in poses which underlined the joy of
family life.

‘The central theme would be the same if wireless had never been invented,’ gushed
The Times
in its preview of the King’s Christmas
message from
Sandringham in 1950. ‘It is of kinsmen and kinswomen, grandparents, parents and children, assembled under their own roof to keep the Christian feast . . . Sandringham, as is the way with
homes in which children have been happy, has gone from strength to strength.’

Richard Cannon, born in Sevenoaks, Kent, in 1948, kept a scrapbook into which he pasted pictures of the young Prince Charles and Princess Anne, along with beautifully presented displays of food
– which was, of course, still scarce – and sweets, which were rationed. The book contained a particularly striking picture of a little boy, not unlike the golden-haired child who
illustrated the Frederick Truby King childcare book which had bestraddled the first half of the century. But in this picture the boy, shining-haired, gleaming and rosy-cheeked, is transplanted from
his mother’s Edwardian knee to a perfect suburban garden, where he sits playing happily alone with a bucket and spade. Instead of the formal shirt and shorts of Truby King’s day, this
boy has short dungarees, perfect for doing practical, boyish things. The picture speaks volumes about the joys of post-war family life, Mother presumably inside baking cakes and other delicacies in
a shiny new cooker while Father commutes to a white-collar job in town, returning in the evening to a spick house and a wholesome meal.

It was all an illusion, of course, as Richard Cannon’s own memories of childhood demonstrated. The second of five children, he felt looking back that there had been a sort of national
post-war dash for matrimony, of which his parents had been part: ‘They married six or seven months after the war. I think there was a bit of a rush to find a wife or a husband,’ he
said. ‘It was a time of relief at the soldiers coming home, and there was the need to marry and have children. That’s often at the back of my mind, that it was a bit of a rush
job.’
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Outwardly, the Cannon family home fitted perfectly into the 1950s image of domesticity. Richard’s mother stayed at home in Kent while
his father commuted to a job
with British American Tobacco in London and was a member of the local cricket club. The house had flowerbeds in the front garden, a lawn and an allotment garden at the back, a bay window in the
lounge. But Richard, who was one of five siblings, thought later that his father’s bad wartime experience as a very young soldier under Montgomery in the desert – he had been eighteen
in 1939 – must have left scars.

‘I think the positive side he saw was that he was a part of something very big, that had achieved something . . . but I think a lot of the men of that age had six years of their lives
stolen, really. I think it really affected the personality, and so it affected the household. When my father was at the cricket club, with all his mates around, it would be: “Oh yeah, what a
great bloke.” But at home he had a really violent temper. I have to say he was not a good father.’

That said, fathers were still quite remote figures in most families in the years after the war – as Mr Cannon’s semi-residence in the bar of the local cricket club demonstrated. Most
were out at work during the day, and the only adults the young Richard usually met when visiting friends after school were mothers. Yet in the public imagination of the day, the nuclear family
– complete with father, of course – reigned supreme. The new Welfare State could be seen almost as a hymn to the nation’s children – certainly to its hardworking,
respectable families. Bohemianism was out, respectability was in. In short, the ideal child of the popular imagination had come in from the woodlands where he had spent the pre-war years building
dens and climbing trees. In future, his natural habitat was to be a garden or a purpose-built playground in the suburbs.

The pressure to conform was enormous, especially on young women who had often experienced undreamed-of freedoms during the war, only to find themselves imprisoned by domesticity shortly
afterwards. The papers were suddenly full of articles about
children – their winsomeness, how to ensure they ate properly, what to do with them in the holidays, the
dangers of ill-fitting shoes. And the responsibility for ensuring these children were nourished, appropriately clothed and shod, and adequately entertained fell to this army of women who had
married during or shortly after the war. An air of martyrdom hung around the new, full-on style of motherhood, as one correspondent – a full-time mother herself – confessed: ‘It
took time, as a mother, to acquire a sense of proportion. Nothing, I vowed, breast-feeding an undernourished infant for a full nine months, was to deprive my child of his birthright.’ But
this mother was absolutely sure she was doing the right thing – her own mother had worked, and she had been scarred by the experience: ‘While we are tired and frustrated and hard up,
other less conscientious women appear to be getting the best of both worlds . . . Few of the children growing up today in homes where both parents follow full-time careers will consider as adults
that their upbringing was ideal, no matter what their mothers may be saying now to the contrary.’

Guilt, then, lurked around every corner for the women of the 1950s. And to make matters worse, the psychologists of the day were starting to observe that children needed to bond with their
mothers. This was the period, for instance, in which John Bowlby formulated his theory of attachment, which said children tended to form strong bonds with their main care-givers early in life. In
an article for the
News Chronicle
in 1952, headed ‘The Mother who stays at home gives her children a better chance’, Bowlby wrote: ‘Babies need mothers because a
child’s emotional development depends on his relationship with his mother in his very early years. If she neglects him when he is small there will be trouble afterwards. So the mother who
stays at home is giving her children a surer foundation for mental health than costly equipment and an expensive education can provide.’
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So, this new emphasis on the family had its drawbacks, especially for children who were aware their own families were less than perfect. Yet there was a genuine sense of
optimism, a real feeling that this was a good time to be a child. Family Allowance of eight shillings per week helped to stretch tight budgets, and despite the fact that post-war austerity
stretched well into the 1950s, there was a new health service, a new school system, new housing, all of which had a direct effect on children’s lives.

Some of this family-centredness might be seen as a sort of hardheaded attempt by the government to ensure necessary population growth. After all, Beveridge had warned during the war that a
declining birth rate continued to be a threat to national prosperity. And in 1952 the Archbishop of Canterbury told the Mother’s Union that two children did not represent a proper effort in
this respect: ‘Family only truly begins with three children.’
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Yet it quickly became clear that the population was growing healthily as
couples married and settled down to post-war life. However, the notion that Britain had a ‘baby boom’ generation, as America did, is something of a myth. Official statistics show the
population of the UK grew by around two million between 1941 and 1951, as it had done in each decade since the early twentieth century – mainly because fewer people were dying. And while
there was a spike in the birth rate just after the war ended, it was smaller than the one that followed the end of World War One. By the early 1950s, the birth rate had dropped again to wartime
levels.

And in an age of growing prosperity, concerns about children’s health began to turn in new directions. No longer would the newspapers worry aloud about the puny, underfed youths who might
be the country’s first line of defence in the event of another war. When sugar came off the ration in 1953, the papers greeted the event cheerfully: ‘Nowadays, a child’s pocket
money is once again genuine currency, capable of conversion at any confectioner’s into bull’s eyes,
humbugs, allsorts and chocolate; and the old joy that the
young used to find in humouring their palates in their own way has returned. Already more sweets and chocolates are being eaten than before the war,’
The Times
reported in June
1953
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– there had been an earlier attempt to de-ration sugar in 1949 but the resulting rush for the sweet shops had led to the decision being
reversed. But the sense of unalloyed enjoyment would not last long. Before the decade was out, medical officers were seeing a worrying rise in obesity among the young. In the late Victorian era,
workers had queued up on their days off to stare at Miss Ivy, the celebrated Lancashire Fat Girl. A century later, there would be no novelty in finding an overweight adolescent female in
Lancashire, or anywhere else. The UK’s confectioners never looked back, and large swathes of the countryside were given over to the growing of sugar beet to feed the nation’s new
craving. Just as the old infectious diseases were being swept away by antibiotics and better housing conditions, they were beginning to be replaced by diseases of affluence – road traffic
accidents, air pollution and, of course, over-eating.