As an adult, I was always expecting bad things to happen. These yellowing images reminded me of a time when they had
It’s not often we see portraits of our childhood distress. When families brought out cameras in the late 60s, it was usually to capture smiling faces on special occasions, such as Christmas and birthdays. But here I was, 18 months old, in two pages of a yellowing national newspaper, dated January 1969.
The first, under the headline “Suffer little children”, showed me in tears as I looked away from the camera into the distance as if I was looking for someone. In the second, I was inconsolable again, looking up and still waiting for a grownup to pick me up and comfort me. That one came with the words: “Be grateful that little girl isn’t yours. She so easily could be!”
