Meet the foundling who found joy despite hardships

ITV has this week again been looking at the issue with its series Lost Family: Born Without Trace.

With the advent of DNA testing it is possible to at least give those abandoned at birth some kind of idea of their identity.

That luxury hasn’t been afforded to most, who have been left to wonder about their background and come to terms that, at the very start, they were abandoned.

Frances Atkins was left on a doorstep but never felt an ounce of bitterness. I spoke to her in 2002 and this is that candid and very poignant interview.

Does she remember the moment she was abandoned? Head bowed, forehead furrowed, concentrating hard, Frances Atkins tries to cast her mind back over eight decades to a bitter night in 1923.

“Sometimes, I have this vague memory of being on a step and hearing horses going up and down,” she says at last, a tiny figure in a comfortable chair at Wolverhampton’s Beacon Centre for the Blind.

The details are hazy. At the age of three or four, little Frances, blind from birth and terribly sickly, became what used to be called a foundling.

She was simply left on the doorstep of a big house in Newhampton Road, Wolverhampton. If the authorities made any attempt to reunite the family, she was unaware of it. She was taken from her native Black Country to a Sunshine Home for blind children in Southport.

Later, she was told that she had been born at 46 Horsley Fields in 1919.

Institutions

“I did hear that I had a little brother who died,” Frances recalls. “So it could have been that my mother had some sort of depression.”

Nursed back to health, the child was destined for a life in institutions for the blind. She was educated at special schools in Harborne and Edgbaston and in 1939 started work as a machine knitter at the old Wolverhampton, Dudley and District Institution for the Blind.

It may sound like a wretched deal in life but this tiny, white-haired little lady bubbles over with gratitude for a system which took care of her almost from cradle to old age.

In the 21st century it is trendy to condemn the ‘institutionalisation’ of people like Frances Atkins. It comes as a surprise to hear her talking so affectionately of the nurses, house mothers and social workers who have looked after her.

Born with optic atrophy, there was never a hope of her seeing anything more than vague shades and shapes. At the Sunshine Home she was raised in a strict religious regime.

“I remember very early on, being told how the soldiers had crucified Jesus on the cross. After that, I just couldn’t bear soldiers. Later I learned how Jesus healed the sick.”

Was she never bitter? Did this little Christian never stop and ask why a loving God had made her blind?

“There used to be this wonderful song,” she smiles, singing a few bars: “God took away my eyes, that my soul might see. You know, I used to squirm when I heard those words.

“But nowadays I do think I have led a better life as a blind person than if I’d had my sight. The education and the religion I had were excellent. As for being blind, well, I learned from the Creation that God made everything, and that everything he made was very good.”

Like many evangelical Christians, she believes her life is full of signs and blessings. She has lived at the Beacon Centre since the bungalows were built in 1975. A few years later, aged 57, she married a widower, Wilf. They were married for 26 years.

“All my life has been happy,” she says, “but that was the happiest time of all.”

Decision

There is a moment’s sadness as she recalls how, a year before, her husband suddenly died. But even on that bleak day, she says, she was blessed. A neighbour who was normally away at weekends was unexpectedly at home and able to give her a lift to the hospital, so she could hold Wilf’s hand as he slipped away.

“At my age, you think, is it fair to get another cat? So I said to the Lord, what shall I do? And the very next day on the radio, they were talking about stray cats and suggesting they should be culled. I thought, right, that’s a sign.”

The result of that decision, Sophie, curls on her lap.

Fluent in Braille, supplied with audio books and regularly visited by friends, neighbours and church companions, Frances Atkins is content with her lot.

At the time of the interview, the Beacon Centre found itself in difficult times. Beacon Industries, the workshop at the centre, which employed 46 blind and disabled workers, was in trouble after the collapse of a refinancing deal.

Frances Atkins was convinced all would be well, saying “God keeps his promises” and running her fingers over her Braille Bible until she finds words from Isaiah: “I will bring the blind by a way that they know not. I will lead them in paths they have not known.

“I will make darkness light before them, and crooked things straight.”

She raised her sightless eye from the page.

“This life,” said Frances Atkins, “should be all about putting light in people’s paths and being thankful.

“You know, not enough people count their blessings.”