Waterloo You Never Knew by Joanna Rickert-Hall

Author:Joanna Rickert-Hall
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Dundurn
Published: 2019-06-21T16:00:00+00:00

THE COOMBE

The accounts from Willow Hall are very different from some of the records I reviewed about the Coombe Orphanage in Hespeler. Here children worked hard, and the place, in the memories of those who spent time there, was often harsh.

The Coombe was founded in 1905 in the former house of the town’s eponymous founding father, Jacob Hespeler, who died in 1881. Initially, the Coombe was operated by Smyly Homes of Dublin as a home for relocated Irish orphans. In 1917 it was purchased by the Children’s Aid Society, which operated it until 1947. In 2000 author Paul Langan wrote a booklet, Hespeler’s Hidden Secret: The Coombe Orphanage 1905–1947, that detailed some of the harsh lives that children endured over the years while in care (confinement) at the Coombe. Documented in pictures are the children at work, doing hard manual labour for very little compensation. One former resident likened it to having to perform “slave labour.”

Children under the age of fourteen were to receive board, clothing, and schooling, while those over fourteen were hired out based on their ability to perform and their perceived “worth.” The rules claimed that no intemperate or abusive families were to receive any of the children “hired out,” and yet many adult survivors spoke only about relentless beatings, verbal abuse, and ill-treatment in their placements. The inspectors from the Coombe were required to visit the placements annually (but let’s face it, a lot can happen in between visits and, apparently, it did). Children would either stay on the farm at the Coombe and work, or be “let out” to work at another farm. Either way, supervision for those children was still the responsibility of the Coombe superintendents. The superintendents were required to report any abuse to the Children’s Aid Society, their employers. Too often, it seems, the staff at the Coombe didn’t do anything.

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