Early Life

Ronald Leedham: Suitcases


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.

Here Ronald remembers his stepmother leaving.

  • Ronald Leedham
  • Ronald Leedham
https://howwasschool.allfie.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2013/05/suitcases.mp3

Transcript

But I can’t remember anything – I know that the marriage failed, the old man’s marriage failed, and I can remember the stepmother’s suitcases in the hall one day. And, she evidently left that day. I think the old man was expecting it. And from there I got – obviously he couldn’t cope. He had to go to work, you know, and I ended up – he introduced me to The Shaftesbury Society and that’s how I ended up in their 'homes for crippled children', so called.

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