Now, Justine has found out that Dorothy was her late mother’s real name – changed after she was abandoned at the Foundling Hospital, where a lifelong trauma began on Dorothy’s first day there, aged five. Letters confirmed Dorothy’s mother, Lena Weston applied to the Foundling Hospital, which had moved from London to Berkhamsted, Herts, in 1926, to accept her daughter into care from birth in 1932. From 1741, when the first babies were admitted, to 1954 when the last pupil was placed in foster care, the Foundling Hospital took in 25,000 children. “They appeared to derive joy from brutalising the children,” Justine says. She visited The Foundling Museum in London and realised it looked similar to how her mother furnished their California home.

Source: Daily Mirror February 10, 2021 19:07 UTC