Because of this and what the nuns, the ladies and older girls did to me, is why I have no friends. I don't want to be laugh at, pushed aside, or abuse. No one can harm me, while I am by myself.
It hurts me so much. Why! Why! Why! I can't go on anymore. They had destroyed my life and it is still the same, whenever I think about it. It is as though it is happening over and over again.
KITCHEN.
I had to cook up some cabbages today, you should have seen them, they were covered all over with cater pillar eggs. I had to wash them and cook them for the children. I threw them out and gave them to the hens. I couldn't cook them, because I could not get the cater pillar eggs off them.
Sister Simon took me to her room again and I was beaten until I could not walk away. It hurt me but I was happy that the children did not get the rotten cater pillar egg cabbages. I was just a child myself when I had to do this.
In the kitchen there were big copper gas cookers, which were lit underneath, they were two feet round in diameter and four feet in height.
We cooked the milk pudding in them. To clean them I had to fill them up with water and lit the gas, until the water boiled, then I would empty the water out by jug into a bucket, which I would put down the sink.
I would then scrape the milk off the sides, which came off in flakes.
To clean the bottom of the gas copper, I had to stand on a stool and I was
very lucky to have never had fallen into it. As my feet were never flat on the stool. The coppers were boiling hot and I could not see what I was doing, because of all the steam. I was always frightened of falling into the coppers.
There were also big steam ovens which we cooked steamed pudding, potatoes, vegetables and lots more. When I had to get the big dishes out of the steam ovens, which had big holes in the sides and bottom of them. I would get steam burns on my hands and arms. I could not go to Sister Simeon, to tell her that I had burnt my arms, because she would just hit me, then send me back to work. The steamers were high off the ground and I had to stand on a stool to reach up to open the oven door.
I cut the cored beef and roast beef up by a big electric meat cutters, which had a big round blade. I hated using the big electric meat cutter, because I had cut my ring finger left hand on it. One of the girls who worked in the kitchen with me, had cut her two fmgers off. I still remember looking for her fmgers in amongst the meat. We found them but it was too late to save them for her.
15th BIRTHDAY.
On my 15th birthday, two ladies came to see me. they gave me my first birthday cake, a pair of shoes and a beautiful jersey.
When they left I asked Sister Blandina who they were.
She told me that one of them was my fairy godmother.
That night Sister Blandina cut the cake up and I was told to give everyone a piece. When it came to my turn to have a piece there was none left, I could not ask anyone for a taste for fear that Sister Blandina would hit me.
In 1993, when I first found out I had a family and my brother John sent me a photo of our mother and her sister, Shirley Ann whom I am named after. I recognize them both as the two ladies who came to see me at Nazareth House. I was so upset, to think that the nuns knew about my mother and did not tell methat I had a family. The nuns told me that I was an orphan and that my mother was dead.
KITCHEN.
This happened to me at any time of the day and every day, three to five times a day. Sister Simeon had a bad temper. She would slap an old lady called Gladys, across the face, for no reason at all. 1 would see her do it. Sister Simeon was so cruel to Gladys and me.
I was in my teens now and could see that she meant everything she did to me.
The nun in the kitchen hates me, she locks me in her room and hits me with a hand broom. Every time she comes back from church.
When Sister Simeon would start to hit me. 1 would run around the table and 1 would scream out loud. My voice was good.
"Where is everybody?" "I know that they can hear me"
1 have no more straight left. 1 fall to the floor. Sister Simeon is still hitting me with the hand broom. 1 wake up in bed later.
"Why has nothing being done about it?"
Sister Michael Ursula came up to see me, she said that she was sorry for what had happened to me. But she could not help me. I can not believe that I have lived through this.
"How could they do this to me?"
I worked my teenage years in fear, as 1 did my childhood. Sister Simeon would hit me with what ever she had in her hands, every day. I would get under the table and she would get a broom to hit me with, so in the end I would get on my hands and knees, put my head on the floor and wrap my arms around my head, to protect it. I would scream out loud, but no one helped me. She would hit me all the more and harder
I would get up at five in the morning, work until half past two, and have a half-hour off Then started work again at 3 PM. Finish work at 7 PM or later that night, some days when it was the day before a feast day. I worked until 9 PM to 10 PM that night.
When I was much older I got 2/6, to five shillings a month.
I saved up the money and brought myself a beautiful red bike. with red tartan mudguards over the front and back wheels. The bike got stolen from N.Z. rails
In October 1966, when I left Christchurch to come to Whangarei, to start a new life with my four and a half month old son Robert. [ROBBIE] And my husband Brian. N.Z. rails never did give me another bike. It was the very first thing that I had ever brought for myself.
bravenet.com
