A white foster mum was my inspiration
THERE has been a furore over the fact a five-year-old white, Christian girl was fostered by a Muslim family (Mail). This was the pitch for a foster family for me made in 1957 from the pulpit of a Catholic church in Rossendale, Lancashire: ‘Could anyone offer a home to an 11-year-old little black orphan girl from London?’ Jack and Queenie Payne, who had two young daughters, Catherine and Daphne, around my age, stepped up to take me in. Queenie proved to be a real role model. She was a white workingclass woman with middle-class aspirations, who worked in a cotton mill. Jack worked in a slipper factory. Their leisure time was spent running a concert party of local children, doing shows for charity. When the Payne family discovered my singing voice, they discovered the ‘colourless’ me and gave me the confidence to be myself. Would they now be chastised for dressing me in a white trouser suit, with top hat and cane, to belt out Shirley Bassey songs? My early years had been spent in the care of nuns at Nazareth Houses in London and Manchester, and my generation of foster kids lived with the threat of being sent back to the children’s home if we misbehaved. We had been well-prepared for the language used towards us, but insults were like water off a duck’s back to me. After training as a nurse and singing with a band, I became a teacher and ended my career as the head of sociology and psychology in an innercity London comprehensive. I also give talks about the debt I feel I owe to this country for the life I have been blessed with.
SUZETTE QUINN, Blackburn, Lancs.