Time in Hospital
Ronald Leedham: Home
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.
More from
Ronald Leedham
- Difficult subject
- Lead Soldiers
- The Walk to Church on Sunday
- A Miserable Time
- Oliver Twist and donk
- Incendiaries in the park
- I Knew Nothing About Life
- Certificates
- Sheltering in the Church
- War starts
- Geography
- Cricket at Sevenoaks
- Beatings
- No talking
- Dogfight
- Boys and girls together
- Mum
- Explosives
- Visits
- Shut Away and Tipped Out
- Greyness
- ‘Mummy coming’
- Shame
- Buzz Bombs and Doodlebugs
- Parlour Songs
- Awful Sundays
- The Glow over London
- Visiting every six weeks
- Suitcases
- Shelter
- Oliver Twist
Here Ronald talks about his time in hospital as a young child.
https://howwasschool.allfie.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2013/06/home.mp3
Transcript
The doctor came around one day, I’ll always remember it, the doctor came round one day and, I don’t know, I’d heard this word home. I didn’t know what home was, didn’t mean a thing to me at all, but I’d heard this word home from the nurses’ conversations and the other children talking about home and this, that and the other, and they wanted to go home. I didn’t know what it meant, wanting to go home. I’d no conception what home life was meant at all at that time. And I remember saying to the doctor, I can remember saying to him ‘Can I go home?’ And he said ‘We’ll think about that,’ and suddenly I was sent home.Explore more
Explore stories by theme or view the timeline of significant events in education for disabled people