From Elizabeth Lloyd, "The Story of a Community"
CHAPTER III
LIFE GOES ON.
By the end of the February of that first term the recognisable pattern of life at the Community had emerged; certainly among the Juniors.
The Seniors, boys and girls who had been at the Grammar Schools in Maidstone were taken in by the two Dorchester Grammar Schools. A group of girls who were not of grammar school standard were kept in at the Community and found a class of their own in the Community's Junior School. I always thought they must have found life dull compared with the life of their contemporaries who went out to school in Dorchester.
I had never had anything to do with adolescent girls in my life apart from seeing them about the house at The Mote and meeting them at meals and I had very little idea of the best way of attending to their needs and wants and general welfare.
There was the usual healthy and adaptable nucleus among the group: these had come from The Mote, were used to life at the Community, used to the adults and familiar with country life. To these were added, at intervals, girls who were known as "Home Office" girls: there were also a number of boys who came under the same category. These would probably usually have been in Approved Schools having been charged through the Juvenile Courts for various forms of delinquency; many were charged as being "out of control". Many of these girls were highly disturbed, very aggressive, often violent and delinquent: I had really absolutely no idea how to deal with them; I am not sure that anyone at the Community had much idea as to what to do for the best as, although there had been disturbed adolescents at The Mote, they had not been in such numbers and life at The Mote was a good deal easier than at Hyde. Many of these girls would probably have been better in a much smaller environment and with frequent expert psychiatric treatment: several we had were very disturbed and went into mental hospitals on leaving the Community. They came mostly from the London area and I remember well walking up and down the drive with a young Probation Officer who had brought a girl down, a huge strapping girl of fourteen: “She will be quite all right away from her home and she really likes the country, although she says she doesn't" said the Probation Officer looking rather dubiously at the dripping rhododendrons.
None of this came to pass: the girl disliked the country very much and was not all right away from home. I came to wish that Probation and Welfare Officers did not so often appear to see the behavioural problems of those they handed over to the Community's care, as simply the result of adverse circumstances or environment; these obviously contributed but sometimes the fault was "in themselves" and although the Community managed to contain such girls with these psychotic tendencies for many many terms, no real cure was effected and after leaving many went into mental hospitals.
The boys who came through the Home Office were often rough and tough and although they might be delinquent and given to absconding and truancy, they did not present the same social and disciplinary problems on anything like the same scale as the girls.
Miss Leila and Miss Dave gave a great deal of their time to the girls and Miss Leila generally had a very calming influence on them and the particular individual would leave her room after hours of talk, quieter and more reasonable, but the state did not last and the following evening any one or two, having been thwarted or annoyed by something, might be throwing chairs about, rushing up and down the passage and interfering with everyone else. If I had had more experience, or indeed, any experience with girls, I daresay life with this turbulent element would have been quieter.
We had at one time a girl who suffered from the most acute form of Kleptomania I have ever come across. She was twelve when she first came and she stayed until she was fifteen. During those three years she stole everything that took her fancy, or that she thought she needed: possessions, food, clothes, money. The things she took were often found and returned to their owners, but she would cut out name-tabs on other's clothes and sweets which were, of course, all rationed then, were normally never seen again. Every known method of dealing with Kleptomania was tried but nothing had the smallest effect on her. The Psychiatrist, who visited the Community as often as he could, which was seldom, gave her up and said he did not think he could do anything for her. We became used to her in the end: some years after she had left we heard she had married and gone to live in Australia: I think Kathleen Syer had the last word when she said "the family would want for nothing."
Later on we had another Kleptomaniac, but this time on the Staff. She was a young married woman teacher who had already been treated in hospital but with no effect and she was sent by her local Parson, as a last resort, to the Community but, very strangely, no one was informed about her state of mind.
All seemed well for a time; she taught the smaller children and had, I remember, a beautiful singing voice. Then mysteriously, clothes belonging to some of the Staff, began to disappear from their rooms, from drying in the stoke-hole; an extremely nice short jacket of mine disappeared one evening while we were all at supper: various girls were suspected but it finally became obvious that they were not responsible. Then money went from Staff-bedrooms and Miss Syer had a packet of tea and two tins of sardines taken from one of her garden sheds and, as she said, they were worth far more than any money. After an intense investigation carried out by Miss Dave, who by now had developed those remarkable detection qualities, Mrs.X. was suspected and finally admitted to the charge.
She apparently used to do up the clothes in huge parcels which she kept hidden under rugs in her locked car and post them, but where to I do not remember, if we ever knew. I only remember a terrible breakfast at the end of that term: all the children had gone and about half a dozen staff were left. We had breakfast in the kitchen sitting opposite Mrs.X. who had been interviewed the previous night by Miss Leila and Miss Dave. Our embarrassment was extreme as we were thunderstruck that she had appeared at all, as we knew, and she knew that we knew. I believe that she went back into hospital but we never heard of her; nor did we ever see our clothes again.
There were other problems too, but of a different nature and which affected everyone. There was a great deal of water outside as that first winter must have been one of the wettest Dorset had ever known. Unfortunately, inside, there was, only too often, very little, too little for baths, lavatories, washing-up, washing clothes: sometimes water came into pipes with renewed force and vigour and the girls' lavatory would be in a state of flood, the water cascading down from the cistern. I learnt to keep Wellington boots, a bucket and cloths as near as possible; it always seemed though that Miss Leila sent for me, or there was some other minor crisis that needed immediate attention, whenever I was wading about in that Lavatory, or else dealing with a flood in the bathroom. There was only one bath and one basin which was quite inadequate for twenty-five girls but there was no alternative so the best had to be made of it. When there was plenty of practically boiling hot water the cold often gave out but we learned to forestall and deal with such difficulties with the minimum of fuss. Supplies of candles were also kept, (although these were not at all easy to buy) as the electricity sometimes failed and every light would go out with no warning at all. Oil lamps were used in the dining-rooms and were always trimmed and at the ready.