Transcript

MABEL COOPER

I think this story is just telling people that it's wrong to shut people with learning difficulties away.

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I was born in 1944. I didn't really know my mum. I was taken away when I was four weeks old because they said my mum was begging on the street. I was put into care. My mum was also put into care. She stayed there for two months and then ran away, and they didn't see her anymore after that.

When I was 11, I went to St. Lawrence's Hospital which housed 2,000 people with learning difficulties. They called us hurtful names like idiots, moral defective. When I went to St. Lawrence's, you could just hear the noise outside, the screaming and what have you. When you're 11 and you go into these big buildings, into something like St. Lawrence's, it's very frightening. You'd think you were going to a madhouse because of the noise.