NOBODY'S CHILD...by a woman who cannot forget. By Alison Goodall, Sunday Mail, June 3, 1984 Doris Black, 57, remembers her time at Quarriers' in the same amazing detail as Jan McQueenie. Doris, who like Jan later suffered a broken marriage, is very bitter about her experience. She said, "when I was five years old I was beaten on the soles of my feet with a strap. I shall never forget the things that were done to me. "I went to Quarriers, aged four in 1931. I was there for thirteen years. I paid a hundred times over for the sins of my father and mother, who didn't want me. It was hell to be an unwanted child. BIRTHDAY "It took me years to get on my feet after my experience there. "When I left the home they sent me to a home in Edinburgh for fallen women. I'd never even seen a naked man and I was just 16. "I never once had a visitor in Quarriers. I was twelve and having a medical when I discovered what date my birthday was. "One day I was sitting on the grass outside. Our cottage mother - call her Miss Brown - caught me and accused me of eating leaves. "I thought, when I open my mouth and show her, she'll know I wasn't doing anything of the sort. "But she ripped down my pants and gave me 80 strokes of the belt on my bare backside. "Every bit of my body was sore. My chest was sore because I took such gasps of air, my throat was sore from screaming with pain, and my head was sore. "I'll not forget that beating till my dying day. I told the truth yet I was still beaten." Doris, now an Edinburgh housewife, then spoke of another haunting incident... "On Christmas day one year I couldn't get the range to kindle. "I was battered on both elbows with a poker, then made to scrub the floors. "Later I sat at the back of the church and got my present from the tree...1001 Household Hints." |