desperation.
7.
A LOT TO ANSWER FOR 1978-1980
For the owners this was a money making operation from the start. Damaged young boys from dysfunctional families were the cash cow. A local authority would spend, at that time, around a hundred and twenty pounds a week per child who, for the sake of dignity I will refer to as having ‘special needs’, rather than the label used at the time. Ingmanthorpe Hall (‘for socially maladjusted and culturally deprived boys’) could do it for a hundred and ten and also take the hassle of dealing with the ensuing trauma that arrived with each new resident.
The co- owners were not evil, and in their own way cared to some extent about their charges, but the whole point of the enterprise was to make money. In due course I was to visit similar local authority run places that were many times worse and some of the boys did leave Ingmanthorpe Hall in better shape than when they arrived. Given what they had to endure when they were at home any improvement should not, in theory, have been hard to achieve.
As a child I often spent the few minutes in the dentist’s waiting room reading the old copies of the Reader’s Digest left there. It used to have a regular feature which went out under the heading ‘Laughter – the best medicine’, and even though there were sad stories and bleak times at Ingmanthorpe Hall, the resilience of the human spirit and the knowing humour required for survival was never absent for long.
Brian Watson was a troubled fifteen year old with all sorts of nervous ticks and bizarre speech patterns and so even in the most dire situations came out with sentences and word formations that were guaranteed to diffuse incipient tensions. After hearing about another win by Liverpool, who he supported fanatically from a distance, Brian would say “That EMILY Hughes had a great game”. In fact to give us the benefit of his post match analysis Brian had come over to a member of staff and I who were chatting and butted in with “Apologies for interdupting the condensation Mr Rawlstron”. He would happily walk around singing Mull of Kintyre, a Paul McCartney’s hit of the time, loudly and without embarrassment “Oh Mill of Kentucky, I miss strolling down by the sea”. When I pushed him a little on his work in class he blew a fuse and ran out screaming at no one in particular, “there’s nothing wrong with my bastard brasswork”.
On my second day Brian had come up to me in the playground with a serious look on his face.
“You work here don’t you,” which he delivered somehow as both a question and a statement. I replied that I did and having had his suspicions confirmed Brian went on to ask
“You know our head teacher don’t you?”
I confirmed that indeed I did.
“Would you give him a message please?”
I said that I’d be delighted to at which juncture Brian already laughing manically had started to run away.
“Tell him to fuck off”.
Brian was one of the few who gradually settled and stabilised but more than once, when it all got too much for him, he would run away. When that happened he was easily found at the nearby slip road for the A1 completely oblivious to the fact that, although he was attempting to get to this home in Halifax, he was on the northern slip road potentially heading in the opposite direction for Newcastle.
Jimmy Sturrock was a pathological liar whose untruths were of such epic scale that even the youngest of boys in the school could see through his porkers. When stable and on his medication he was friendly and desperate to please, but even then could not stop the invention of fabulous tales, such was his insecurity and need for status. A fairly typical example occurred during a lesson about ‘Flight’ which happened after the boys had just come back into residence from their half term break. They were often even more hyperactive at this time, having been back in the environment that caused many of
7.
A LOT TO ANSWER FOR 1978-1980
For the owners this was a money making operation from the start. Damaged young boys from dysfunctional families were the cash cow. A local authority would spend, at that time, around a hundred and twenty pounds a week per child who, for the sake of dignity I will refer to as having ‘special needs’, rather than the label used at the time. Ingmanthorpe Hall (‘for socially maladjusted and culturally deprived boys’) could do it for a hundred and ten and also take the hassle of dealing with the ensuing trauma that arrived with each new resident.
The co- owners were not evil, and in their own way cared to some extent about their charges, but the whole point of the enterprise was to make money. In due course I was to visit similar local authority run places that were many times worse and some of the boys did leave Ingmanthorpe Hall in better shape than when they arrived. Given what they had to endure when they were at home any improvement should not, in theory, have been hard to achieve.
As a child I often spent the few minutes in the dentist’s waiting room reading the old copies of the Reader’s Digest left there. It used to have a regular feature which went out under the heading ‘Laughter – the best medicine’, and even though there were sad stories and bleak times at Ingmanthorpe Hall, the resilience of the human spirit and the knowing humour required for survival was never absent for long.
Brian Watson was a troubled fifteen year old with all sorts of nervous ticks and bizarre speech patterns and so even in the most dire situations came out with sentences and word formations that were guaranteed to diffuse incipient tensions. After hearing about another win by Liverpool, who he supported fanatically from a distance, Brian would say “That EMILY Hughes had a great game”. In fact to give us the benefit of his post match analysis Brian had come over to a member of staff and I who were chatting and butted in with “Apologies for interdupting the condensation Mr Rawlstron”. He would happily walk around singing Mull of Kintyre, a Paul McCartney’s hit of the time, loudly and without embarrassment “Oh Mill of Kentucky, I miss strolling down by the sea”. When I pushed him a little on his work in class he blew a fuse and ran out screaming at no one in particular, “there’s nothing wrong with my bastard brasswork”.
On my second day Brian had come up to me in the playground with a serious look on his face.
“You work here don’t you,” which he delivered somehow as both a question and a statement. I replied that I did and having had his suspicions confirmed Brian went on to ask
“You know our head teacher don’t you?”
I confirmed that indeed I did.
“Would you give him a message please?”
I said that I’d be delighted to at which juncture Brian already laughing manically had started to run away.
“Tell him to fuck off”.
Brian was one of the few who gradually settled and stabilised but more than once, when it all got too much for him, he would run away. When that happened he was easily found at the nearby slip road for the A1 completely oblivious to the fact that, although he was attempting to get to this home in Halifax, he was on the northern slip road potentially heading in the opposite direction for Newcastle.
Jimmy Sturrock was a pathological liar whose untruths were of such epic scale that even the youngest of boys in the school could see through his porkers. When stable and on his medication he was friendly and desperate to please, but even then could not stop the invention of fabulous tales, such was his insecurity and need for status. A fairly typical example occurred during a lesson about ‘Flight’ which happened after the boys had just come back into residence from their half term break. They were often even more hyperactive at this time, having been back in the environment that caused many of
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