Betsy’s War

Author’s Note:

In the 1940’s 185,000 children in England and Wales were adopted compared to around 3,000 in 2024. Between 1899 and 1967, 100,000 children were sent abroad from the United Kingdom to Canada, Australian and the Dominions - many from Liverpool which was one of the main departure cities.During the blitz 70,000 in Liverpool were made homeless. 4,000 lost their lives. Families were fractured and struggled to cope. The children of these families who often turned to religious institutions, were known as Orphans of The Living. Young single mothers, like Betsy in my latest book, felt that they had no choice but to give their babies away for adoption. The shame of being an unmarried mother has disappeared, and the expression Orphans of The Living is rarely heard today. But these books are dedicated to all of those who found themselves in this unbearable situation – including my own grandmotherwho after she was widowed with nine young children, sent my father and his siblings to St Joseph’s orphanage nestling in the sand dunes of Freshfield.  I walked with my father many times over those same dunes, and yet he held that secret of his time in the orphanage with the nuns, close to his heart until he died, and I only discovered it whilst writing this trilogy. This was a generation who after the trauma of war rarely talked about it, instead they often looked forward and didn’t dwell on the past. I would like to thank all those who have shared similar stories and helped me bring them into the light so we can remember the heartbreaking, yet resilient and inspiring lives that have gone before us. The final book in the trilogy is also dedicated to the incredible bravery of the 55,573 men – nearly half of Bomber Command - who lost their lives in World War Two, and to the memory of the 76 including a large number of mothers and their babies on the maternity wards,who tragically died in the bombing of Liverpool’s Mill Road Hospital on the 3rd of May 1941.