Barum Boy: Growing Up to be Gay

By Bernard Hewitt

Born illegitimate in the 1940s, Barum Boy is the story of one man’s journey to find his identity and place in the world. As a young boy, he yearns for a father and sets out to prove himself to his peers through reckless adventures. When he joins the Merchant Navy as a teenager, he experiences the world and its consequences firsthand. Struggling with his own sexuality and a mature homosexual relationship, he eventually finds his soulmate and true love, paving the way for a successful career. Follow his 50-year journey through life’s ups and downs, as he comes of age and learns what it means to survive and thrive as a human being.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Austin Macauley Publishers
• Release date: Mar 3, 2023
• ISBN: 9781649799050

Bernard Hewitt

This book is about me – a memoir – written from notes accumulated over more than a thirty-year period. So other than to say that I am of English birth and now 81 years of age, with a home in Spain, but spent some time in the UK, and still managed to travel elsewhere, the rest is now for you, dear reader, to find out.

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The Cottage Homes

The author – second row in, third from right

One of my earliest recollections was of a Christmas tree and a lot of children. Presents were being taken off the tree and given to us children. I was very happy and it was approximately 48 years later that I had this memory confirmed, in that I was shown a black and white photo by the retired matron of the children’s home, Mrs. Hicks. Yes, it wasn’t a dream, I was there.

A small boy with a large quiff and ears that stuck out and dressed in a sleeveless V-neck sweater, now called a tank top. I have since found out that I arrived in the ‘work house’ via the home of a childminder at the village of Marwood, just outside of Barnstaple. I was there with at least one other small child, called Graham—more of him later. There was some question of nonpayment of minding costs and so we two boys ended up in the ‘work house’, at more or less two years of age.

My next recollection was as a child playing at ‘doctors and nurses’.

This, I suppose, might be regarded as my first sexual experience.

Some experts say, that even babies have sexual feelings and can experience and erection—that is, before they have any idea as to what it is about. I can also recall a visit by a male doctor and having my temperature taken by means of a thermometer being inserted into my bottom. This was the first ever penetration of my anus that I’d experienced.

I have never checked out the medical justification of taking a child’s temperature by this means. I must’ve been at least five years of age, so it couldn’t really have been considered a risk that I was going to bite the glass thermometer. Was it that I had encountered my first pervert, homosexual or perhaps a pediatrist?

Could it be that a medical pediatrist was taking advantage of visiting a child in an institution where there was less likelihood of questions been raised as to exactly what he was doing?

Now we move on to what I consider to be the first stirrings of a father complex and eventual homosexual feelings. In the distant past I can recall been kissed by Mr. Hicks the father of the home and I can distinctly remember feeling his bristly chin touching my tender child’s cheek. It was a strange feeling but at the same time one that I liked. Probably, up to that point in time and for some years after, I had only ever been kissed, hugged, or caressed by humans of the female sex.

As a converse sensation, I seem to remember being punished by the same person, Mr. Hicks, but also regarding this as perfectly normal. If you were naughty as a child, then you got punished for it. For us in the children’s home, it wasn’t always just a smack, it could be the cane. Nowadays corporal punishment is outlawed. That makes it sound bad, but it wasn’t. I was happy as a child, even without a mother or a father. I believe that children don’t ask for a lot. Feed them, clothe them, give them a bed to sleep in, what more? But maybe, more than anything, let them mix and play with other children.

We grew up accepting the rules of life and its hardships. After all we did not really know anything different to which to compare. A child from a poor impoverished family can be just as happy and grow up perhaps even better adjusted than that from a wealthy background. Try to tell a child in India that it has cause to be less happy than the average child in Great Britain. No, I was happy, I had a set of rules that I could live within and I was being treated on a fair, if not tender, basis.

Then there were the games that we children played. Perhaps by today’s standards—cruel games. I can recall us kids using a metal garden sieve, propped up by a stick with a long cord attached to it. A few breadcrumbs scattered underneath and a little patience. Then a quick jerk of the cord and a trapped sparrow or chaffinch. Maybe an unlucky one had a wing damaged by the falling sieve, I can’t remember.

Neither do I recall what happened to the birds that we caught. Presumably, we set them free. In Thailand and in some European countries, they shoot or net wild birds for eating. Makes me think of 4 and 20 blackbirds baked in a pie. I can recall a pigeon’s loft and other pets, maybe a rabbit or a cat, in the children’s home.

Also playing football and when the ball went up on top of the flat roof of the GPO telephone depot next-door, it was the job of one of the older boys to climb up an adjacent tree in order to get onto the roof to retrieve it. That roof seemed enormously high back then, but I have looked at it since and can see it was really no more than equivalent of two stories. However, when you are only 2 to 3 foot tall, it stands to reason that everything looks bigger, not least of all, grown-ups.

I can’t remember at all about going to a nursery school—at the age of five presumably. Perhaps being in a children’s home with a lot of other children, a first school did not make the same impression on me as it would’ve done had I been an only child at my parents’ home. We had occasional outings as kids and I can recall playing in meadows with lots of wildflowers. So different to the boring, totally green fields of today. On one occasion I remember finding some coins in the grass, perhaps lost by someone lying in the grass making love.

Anyway, for us kids, not used to having much money, this provided a trip to a nearby ice cream shop and ice creams all around—such simple pleasures. Also, it made me feel really good that I was able to treat all of my friends. I think that to this day I am mostly a very open-handed person. After all, it is better to give than to receive.

A less pleasant incident that I can recall was of a child being made to clean his teeth. As a lesson, his teeth were forcibly cleaned by one of the ‘carers’ with salt, making his gums bleed. Also, on another occasion, some older boys were teasing Graham and when he tried to chase them into the house, they locked the door behind them, leaving him frustrated and angry outside. So angry did Graham become that he put his fist through a small glass pane, badly cutting his hand.

These days, one hears of children in homes being subjected to sexual assault from the minders. I had no experience of this, but some years later, when we were teenagers, a boy called Tony told me that an older girl who had stayed on at the home to work, had interfered with him in the bath and then over a period of years, this had developed into a full sexual relationship. Tony seemed to be very happy about it. It certainly wasn’t apparent that he had grown up maladjusted by the experience.

However, in 1992, Mrs. Hicks (the ex-Matron), told me that Tony had committed suicide at age 51—wife problems, she thought. There may have been incidences of older boys interfering with younger ones, but if so, it never happened to me.

A very young me; my mum had to be desperate to abandon me—YEH!

On weekends, I think that I was visited by my gran and in all probability, I was taken out for the day, although I have no recollection of any of this. I can vaguely recall the envious looks of those children less fortunate than me, who perhaps had no visitors or perhaps only very infrequently.

Tony had two older sisters in the home with him, Ruth and Sylvia, so he was luckier in that respect. His widowed father would visit them and was considered somewhat of a gypsy. Some years later, I met him when he had remarried and Tony was living with them at a hamlet called Fairy Cross. Tony’s dad seemed to be a really nice guy, but apparently had been unable to cope with three small kids on his own.

I also have a notion that prospective adopters or fosterers, used to call at the home and those children, on the adoption or fostering list, would wait in eager anticipation, hoping that this time, perhaps, it would be his or her turn to be lucky. Graham and a close friend of his John, were adopted by the same family. I later met Graham in Torquay, living with his wife and kids, but that is another part of the story.

We children of The Home had to attend St Mary’s Anglican Church and do the Sunday school thing. As we boys slept in a dormitory, and I probably only had a locker in which to keep my clothes and a few other possessions. In term of clothes, it likely only amounted to three sets. One for school, Sunday best, and rough play gear. I consider that I have always been a tidy, orderly person and this could have been the reason. Having a room to yourself and just throwing stuff around just was not possible. Also, my later scouting days when we had Kit Drill, and you had to lay out your blankets, and place your gear in a regimented way on top.

Early training is what I think it is about, but then having never been a parent, what do I know about bringing up kids—only second-hand knowledge!

These do not seem to be a lot of memories for what must have been the first seven years of my life. Is that common I wonder? Do very young children remember so little? The difference, perhaps, would be that if one were with one’s own parents and in close daily contact with a mother, then in all probability, one would get regular reminders of life’s incidences from her. In other words, not so much as one’s own memories, but those of one’s parents?

Also, at that time, cameras were not readily available, so unlike today where parents might have hundreds of photos of their children and even cine or video films—all serving as reminders of childhood—in the 1940s, the only photographs were either taken in a professional studio or at school. However, whatever my experiences were during those early years, I am left with the overall impression that I was happy.

Yes, I was happy at the Cottage Homes, so much so that when my gran arranged for me to leave and go and live with her—I cried. I must’ve been one of the few children who was unhappy to be leaving an institution. But it wasn’t really so strange, all of my friends were there and after all, I was going to a house where I would be the only child. Also, I was going to have to attend a new school, the Trinity church infant school. I think it was partly an attempt by my gran to break me away from the children’s home and its somewhat rough environment, but in fairness, at the same time, I was allowed to return to the Home to play with my friends whenever I wanted to, and in fact I continued to do this for several years afterwards, plus mixing with them through the Wolf Cubs. I was happy living at Taw Vale—Mr. Rootham’s house.

He was a retired solicitor and my gran was employed as his housekeeper. I discovered many years later that my gran had gone into ‘Service’ as a young girl and had probably done that for most of her life until she got married. She had a local grocer call at the house and would have a list of things that she required, which he later delivered. Against each item she would have the price that she had last paid and would query Mr. Cudmore if the price had gone up. She was very methodical and likely had to present Mr. Rootham with details of all household expenses.

Early School Days

About a year after arriving there at Taw Vale, I left the Trinity Church school and started at the Bluecoat School for Boys.

There, if not on my first day, but very shortly afterwards, I got into a playground fight. A lad called Harris (one of a gang) decided to pick on me. Whether or not he thought that, with my just having come from a mixed sex school, I was going to be easy game or what, I don’t know. Anyway, finding ourselves wrestling on the ground, I quickly put an end to the fight by grabbing his hair and banging his head on the stone yard—a very effective means of winning the fight.

I think it was from this incident that I got the nickname Spud. At that time there was a comic character called Spud Basher and that is what Harris got—a bashing!

Of course, it was immediately claimed by the other boys that I didn’t fight fair. I thought to myself, what has fairness got to do with it? I fight to win. Anyway, I didn’t experience any further attempts at bullying after that and that is still my recommendation to kids today—hit back, even if you do get a bloody nose in return. I think that maybe, would be bullies, respect the kid who tries to fight back. It is it seems, cowards or the weak, who they keep picking on. This innate ability to fight back and stick up for myself, I feel, had something to do with having spent five or more years in a children’s home, together with up to 50 other kids.

Regardless of what modern day thinkers might say, I believe that young kids, boys in particular, are somewhat like dog pups or lion cubs, in that they will play at fighting and wrestling with one another. In nature it is the weakest of the litter, or the runt, that goes to the wall. Survival of the fitness! Being somewhat of a zoologist at heart, this theory appeals to me. It then only becomes a matter of degree, with regard to humans, just how much bullying should a child be permitted to take before a parent intercedes.

In the end, as with a lioness, whatever the kids get up to, it is the parent who has eventually has to be seen to be in control. That is perhaps where our modern way of life falls down. The parents are, very often, so busy with their own lives and making ends meet, that their kids end up knowing that Mum and /or Dad can’t control them. Then a kid, who is beginning to think that he is grown-up, can be like ‘all hell let loose’. They, after all, have not yet learned the meaning of responsibility and as to just how risky a given situation might be.

The Bluecoat School was a very old building and seem to continue with the old-fashioned ways of discipline. Right from the first class where Miss Abbot believed in giving you a sharp crack over the knuckles with the edge of a wooden ruler, up to a…say, the likes of Mr. Selleck who belted you across the ass with a rubber Plimsol, and finally to the headmaster, who in the more extreme circumstances, could give you six of the best with a cane over the palm of your hands.

Then there was fat old Mother Parish. I got in another fight in the cloakroom and the other kid ended up with a nasty gash on his knee when he fell over onto a sharp tin, or something. Anyway, old mother Parish thought that she would humiliate me in front of the class by making me sit on her knee and then pinching me. Naturally, I was furious and eventually wrestled myself from her grasp and gave her leg a quick kick before running home. I don’t remember what the final outcome was.

The Barnstaple annual fair used to be located in a graveled area opposite the school and, of course, during the lunchtime we kids would be over there looking around. Once a number of us were late back to the school and that resulted in a caning by the headmaster.

After the fair had finished and all the tents and stuff cleared away, we kids would search site for anything of value that might have been dropped on the ground, including with luck some small change dropped by the many visitors to the fair.

On one occasion on the fairground site, where the shooting range had been, we found some 0.22 live bullets. Later whilst sat around a camp fire, somebody thought that it would be a laugh to throw one of these bullets on to the fire.

Of course, it exploded with a bang and lucky me, as always, got a piece of the brass casing fired into my lower jaw. I still have the scar of my shrapnel wound to prove it. Had it gone into my eye—then what?

Also near the school was the cattle market. On Fridays it was market day and we kids, again at lunch time, used to go there for entertainment. I learned then, that farmers can be cruel bastards. When loading or unloading cattle from trucks, it was common for them to belt the hell out of the stock with huge sticks, just to speed things up a bit. Although sometimes, the animals were so terrified, it had the opposite effect. The way they used to haul sheep and calves around was diabolical, but then it was the accepted thing.

As for the ‘poor’ farmers, it was not uncommon, even then pre-EC days, to see farmers in Jaguar cars with pigs or sheep on the backseat. No respect for the value of the car it seemed. The farmers’ kids were always the best dressed in school with tweed jackets and the rest of it.

Another thing about the market was the adjacent slaughter house.

On hot summer days, the doors would be left open and after a cow had been stunned, we kids could watch a slaughter man set to with a meat axe, cutting the poor beast’s head off, sometimes before it had even stopped kicking. Upon another occasion, I can recall watching a pig have its throat slit in the yard and then running around with its blood pouring out. I didn’t realize then, but presumably this was a ‘kosher’ killing. One way or another, I’m sure that it hardened us kids to the suffering of animals?

With regards to the killing of animals with the fishmongers of my early days, it was common to see dozens of whole rabbits—fur and all—hanging on hooks at the open shop frontage with blood still dripping out of their mouths. You could choose to have the shopkeeper skin it for you or take it home and do it yourself at a lower cost. Also, there would be wild pheasants strung up in the same way; likewise, have it plucked or do it yourself.

With today’s supermarkets and everything neatly packaged in a very sterile way, we the customer are far removed from the reality of the animal having to be killed, in order to provide us with the food that we want. Meat processing plants are one of the most horrible places in which to have to work.

Before leaving the subject of wild rabbits, at that time, North Devon was overrun with them. So as a means of some control all of the hedgerows in the fields were strewn with gin traps. These were designed to catch the rabbit by a leg. It would then be left to die in the trap, or await a catcher to come and collect it for marketing. As boys we would sometimes walk the hedgerows and if we came across a trapped rabbit, still alive, then release it. It would have had an injured leg, but possibly would survive to be trapped another day. When gin traps were banned as being inhumane, I can recall seeing in a farmyard a huge pile of them rusting away.

The farmers were of course angry at the banning of the traps, saying what damage the rabbits did to their crops—which was true. However, the disease myxomatosis was introduced to the U K and that eliminated millions of rabbits in a really horrible way.

I could never be deliberately cruel to an animal, at least that is in terms of torturing it. but to this day the thought of killing one does not frighten me.

Much later at the age of 17, that’s exactly what I did. I was having to go away to college in Plymouth and there was the question as to what to do with my pet black rabbit. To this day, my mum and gran believed that I gave it away. My Uncle Tom in Swansea used to keep rabbits for profit during the war and I had read one of his books on how to kill a rabbit ‘humanely’. Well, Blacky as he was called, got one quick sharp blow at the base of his skull with the handle of a heavy screwdriver. It was a very effective way and he died immediately. His body I then threw into the nearby river.

Also, as a teenager, I used to get drunk quite frequently, and once on the way walking—staggering—back home, I tried to strangle a cat for a purely sadistic reason. It scratched like hell and I let it go, so whether or not it survived I don’t know. In a way I was somewhat ashamed of doing that, but nevertheless, I did tell some of my mates about the incident. I suppose it had something to do with having the power of ‘life and death’ over something, or somebody, or just a case of being too drunk.

The killing of animals also reminds me of another situation. My best mate Barney was a keen collector of birds’ eggs, which unbelievably in those days was not only allowed but actually encouraged. But Barney also had an air rifle and he was a very good shot and on one occasion whilst at a scout camp, I went out with Barney and he shot quite a number of small birds which we tied together on a string. When we got back to the camp with our ‘game trophies’, the scoutmaster, quite rightly, was mad as hell at what we had done, or what Barney had done.

Another incident involving the killing of an animal. We were at a Scout camp and one of the boys asked the scoutmaster what he would like for his supper. The scoutmaster, Ivan, jokingly said—I fancy some duck. Well, with that, some of the boys—not me this time—went to a nearby farm where there was a duck pond and caught one of the ducks and wrung its neck. Of course, when they took it back to the camp and showed it to the scoutmaster, he was absolutely horrified and said that the boys and he would have to go to the farmer and apologize for what they had done. Fortunately, the farmer did not press charges. Neither did we get to keep the duck to eat.

Some of the forgoing makes me seem like a right little bastard, which in some respects I suppose I was. However, I have never stolen from anyone (except for the odd cigarette) and I have never physically hurt anyone, other than those who attacked me first.

The very worst kind of persons, in my view, are those who take advantage of their family or friends and the elderly. There should be a special place reserved in Hell for them.

Mr. Rootham had a daughter, who I only ever knew as Miss Rootham. She would come to stay with her father from time to time and amongst other things she was a smoker. She had a large bedroom in the front of the house and would often leave the bedroom door open. Upon looking in, I could see that, on her dressing table, she would have packets of cigarettes. I always remember the brand, it was Du Maurier.

Being typical kids at that time, one of the things that we experimented with was smoking, so rather wickedly I used to help myself to a few cigarettes at a time from one of Miss Rootham’s packets. I was never caught out doing this, thank God, because if I had, it could’ve been serious trouble both for me, but also for Gran. After I had been living at the house for a little while, my gran must’ve considered that it was time for me to have my own bedroom, so I moved up to a small room that was in the top of the house which gave me a lot more privacy.

Having more privacy meant that I was able to indulge in things that boys of around 10