Reflections

Ronald Leedham: Boys and girls together

Ronald Leedham was born in 1929 in India. His family moved back to England in 1931after Ronald contracted Polio. Ronald spent some years in Hospital as a young child after contracting Diptheria. When he was six he returned home to Catford for a short while to live with his father, eventually ending up living in ‘homes for crippled children’ run by the Shaftesbury Society, until he was sixteen.

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Ronald Leedham

Here Ron talks about two ways in which his school life could have been better.

Transcript

Well more frequent visiting would have been a big help, like once a week. Cos I know it’s not practical in lots of cases to have permanent visiting like you’ve got in hospitals cos it’s not practical. I don’t think it’s a good idea to have boys and girls separated because we didn’t know anything about females, and I’m sure I made some terrible blunders and I’m sure everybody else has made blunders. Apart from the fact that you’re different to them because more often than not you’ve got a disability and they haven’t. The girls I'm sure suffered because they had girls homes as well I'm speaking from the boys homes point of view, but they had girls homes as well and I'm sure the girls suffered just as much afterwards as the boys did.

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