Janice and Janet attended Bedwell school together after World War II. They were both miserable there, so when they returned for a visit 45 years later with Felicity Finch they had mixed feelings...

Bedwell Girls with the local hunt (Janet is in top right)

The Royal Victoria Patriotic School was set up in 1854 for the daughters of servicemen killed in the Crimean War and continued to care for the daughters of women widowed in the world wars. Janet Lawrence started at Bedwell in 1953 when she was 14, Janice Baldwin, nee Trowbridge, was sent to the school at six in 1946 and stayed there until 1959. Neither of the girls felt they fitted in, Janet because her father was still alive and Janice for rather more disturbing reasons, so when they met up for the first time in 45 years and went back to visit Bedwell, the memories came flooding back.

Though the front door is not the same as when Janet and Janice were at the school, the rest of the buildings look much the same as they did. Janice recalls that she used to look at the lovely pine tree standing outside the school as she lay in her bed at night. "I think it helped me. It helped me think of things beyond the building. It was a symbol of liberation to me at a time when we were incarcerated. It was my friend".

Janice recalls that they were only allowed through the main doors into the vestibule at the beginning of term. Janice and Janet are surprised to discover how different the main hall is from when they were at the school.

It wasn't long after arriving at age 6 that Janice felt that things were not quite right. Apart from realising that she needed cuddles and reassurance and wasn't given them, she also felt that she was picked on a good deal. "As far as I was concerned there was no difficulty at all with the girls, the problem here in this place was the discipline imposed by the staff on us".

Bedwell Girls Marching

Before boarding at Bedwell Janet had lived in what was then Ceylon for three years. "Mostly our life consisted of going to the Columbo Swimming Club and swimming. We did have servants at home even though my father as the bandmaster of the Ceylon Army lived in an army quarter and was really not rich at all".

Janice was the youngest of five children, all of whom went to Bedwell. At one point they were all at the school at the same time, though sadly they hardly ever met. "We were separated and kept separate, and I was made to feel that being a Trowbridge was not really a very good thing". In her early teens she finally found some answers. All the children at the school as the daughters of soldiers who had died in the service of their country, but her father had committed suicide. Janice was shocked to find this out, having rather naturally assumed that her father had been killed on active service. It did, however, help her to understand why she and her family had been singled out as different or 'unworthy'. Suicide in those days was considered a crime. "As far as the Army was concerned he was a disgrace".

Janet was also different to the other girls, but in her case it was because her father was still alive. She remembers feeling very sensitive when, at mealtimes, the other girls would talk about how their fathers were shot down, or tortured by the Japanese. She realised that it was best if she kept quiet on such occasions.

Janice recalls "For me, the way that I coped with this sense of being undermined, if you like, was to feel very angry inside...I held it all inside and that was quite hard really".

Janice and Janet remember that occasionally they would play a duet together on the piano in the corner of the 'ballroom' which was used as a gymnasium.

When Janice left Bedwell she just wanted to leave it completely behind, and didn't discuss it for years with her husband. She also didn't talk for a long time about her father's death and how it impacted on her time at Bedwell. "I think I needed to become very mature to understand it fully myself. I had to get over being here [at Bedwell]. I had to get over the sense of being made to feel unworthy, of being made to feel bad".

Looking back to that time as they stand outside Bedwell, Janet feels the visit has been a bit like 'an exorcism'. She feels "it's as though it's purged it from my system and I've put it all in its place, and relegated it back to the place where it was and let it go". Janice doesn't feel the same. "I don't really feel that anything has been exorcised for me. I'm enjoying the beauty of the garden and the birds and the trees, but at the moment the building is behind me and that's where it wants to stay in my mind. But I haven't got rid of it. I'm not out of the woods yet".

Janet sees now how much the two women had in common when they were at the school, though they didn't realise it then. Janice "Perhaps a lot of us were not aware of the misery of others". They both agree that under the circumstances they've both turned out all right.