My mother told us that she had been in the workhouse when she was young. After she died I found minutes of the local Poor Law Union in 1928 listing my mother aged 10 and 5 of her siblings. The guardians had received a letter from the NSPCC suggesting that, as the father was dead and the mother had been diagnosed with Parkinsons disease, the board should adopt them. This they did after agreement with the mother and began to arrange foster parents. The mother, my grandmother, remained institutionalised until her death in 1947. Imagine the floods of tears if one of our thespians had discovered that. John