Peter Lawton-Harris' life has been anything but conventional. He lived in a succession of children's homes under the impression that he was an orphan. But when he was 14, he discovered that his mother was far from dead...
 Peter |
Peter lived in one institution after another from birth. He was born in a home for girls who had "got into trouble" and later told that his parents were both dead. But when he was 14 he found that the truth was something quite different.
One day a woman came to the home looking for Peter and said that he had a mother and she wanted to see him. It transpired that Peter's mother had become pregnant by a married man and her parents had thrown her out, and because she had no money, she had to resort to prostitution. In 1929 (when he was a year old), she was arrested and the authorities took Peter and registered him as a pauper.
The Matron of the home told the 14-year-old Peter that the only reason his mother wanted to see him now was that he was working and she wanted his wages. But he managed to arrange to see her. "I don't know how to describe the experience. My mother was particularly small and she seemed to me to be an extremely gaudily dressed lady. She had bright red shoes, a bright red handbag and she was one of these girls that when she put lipstick on it went way beyond the lips".
But Peter wasn't able to go to live with his mother because "she was plying her trade". Although he didn't know that at the time. He says, "sometimes I would knock on the door and she would say, 'come back in half an hour'". And Peter would notice a soldiers or a sailors coat lying around. But he's far from critical. He doesn't think she had many options in life. "I think it's rather sad that she took to prostitution to keep her baby (Peter) and that resulted in the exact opposite".
Of course, Peter asked his mother about his father, but was told that it was none of his business! But Peter did eventually discover his father's identity. When his grandmother died, Peter found some papers signed by his mother authorising her to collect maintenance allowance from a Mr Leonard Lawton of Halifax. Peter tracked him down by advertising in the Halifax Courier. It turned out that Peter's birth had been the cause of divorce from his first wife.
Peter was in ignorance of much of his family's story until after his mother's death and he started investigating. He says, "I found some parts of it extremely traumatic because it made me realise just what my mother must have gone through".
