One of my first internet stops of the day is always Spitalfields Life and yesterday's post At Tom's Flat reached out to me. Tom talks about his childhood spent in an orphanage - "In an orphanage, you go from a cot to a bed in a dormitory and you don't know what they're going to do to you in there," he says. My dad wasn't born an orphan as Tom was. He had parents and an extended family, but when his mother walked out in 1935 he and his brother John were placed in St Mary's Home for Boys in North Hyde where they spent three years. Dad was just ten years old. John a year younger. He always said that once his father got on his feet again he sent for the boys, but it wasn't quite like that. The orphanage closed and my grandfather was obliged to take back his sons. A third son, four year old Patrick, was lost forever. P laced in the care of the Vincent St. Paul Society and subsequently sent to Nazareth House Orphanage in Widnes, Cheshire, Patri...