The Courier & Advertiser (Fife Edition)
A brother’s parting gift
The astonishing decades-long quest by a Dundee man to reunite his family of 17 siblings will be told in a BBC Scotland programme tonight. Michael Alexander reports.
George was the driving force to bring the family together
Torn away from their family home and taken to a remote farm in the dead of night, the traumatised brothers were forced into slavery from the age of four and made to sleep in a filthy chicken coop and steal dog food to survive.
It sounds like a nightmare from centuries ago.
However, it’s a true story of post-war Scotland which, against all the odds, was given a happy ending, thanks to the dedication of a Dundee man.
Now the remarkable tale of how George Clark helped reunite many of his 16 siblings after decades apart is being told in a BBC Scotland documentary being screened tonight.
Growing up in Greenock in the 1950s and 1960s, he and his brothers and sisters were effectively swallowed up by the welfare system when their mother was deemed unfit to look after them.
Some were adopted, some went into foster homes and others to institutions – often knowing little or nothing about each other. Tragically, some died in infancy or their early years.
George, Jimmy and Tommy Clark were aged four, six and nine respectively when they were sent to a farm in the Highlands under the “boarding out” system, whereby children in care went to rural areas with the intention of getting them away from urban ills and into the fresh air.
However, in tonight’s documentary – A Family Divided – surviving siblings tell how the system was effectively a form of “modern day slavery” with children dressed in rags, kept in terrible conditions and beaten
James Clark remembers his older brother Tommy was regarded as useful, because at nine he was deemed large enough to do work on the farm, while he and George were just seen as nuisances.
Chicken shed
While Tommy was allowed to live in the farmhouse, the younger boys’ “home” was a chicken shed with a couple of old beds without mattresses and just potato sacks for bedding.
This would be their accommodation for three years until the authorities moved them into care homes in Aberdeen.
George worked in the South of England as a young man but his heart was set on returning to Scotland, particularly Dundee, where his oldest sister Mary-Ann, who hadn’t gone into care, had ended up. The pair renewed contact, sparking the beginning of a 40-year quest to track down the other members of the family.
Initially George, a businessman who founded the Dundee Music Shop, believed there were nine siblings but as time went on he kept uncovering details of more.
Eventually he concluded there were at least 17 and in 2014 he decided to go public with his story in the hope of contacting some of his missing brothers and sisters.
Died
Film maker Bianca Barker, of Steadipix, was attracted to the story of the family after seeing the resulting coverage and got in touch with George. Sadly, however, he had been suffering from ill health and died in March 2015 before filming could begin.
Other members of the family agreed to keep going with the project and during filming they managed to track down their youngest brother, Andrew, through adverts in local newspapers in England and Facebook postings.
There is just one last known brother to locate – Tommy, who was last heard of in the 1980s when he was living in the Felixstowe or Harwich areas.
Responsibility for keeping the family archive together has now fallen to Bernard Clark, who was 59 when George knocked on his door one day in 2011. Bernard, who lives in the Inverclyde area, says his brother slogged tirelessly for years, often coming up against officialdom and missing and incomplete records, in his quest to find his siblings.
He says: “The programme is a tribute to George. Through the extended family I’m now hearing that there may even be an 18th child, maybe born out of wedlock but it would be great if, through the programme, we could find Tommy – the last brother we definitely know about.”
Ian Savage, who was tracked down by George in late 2014, was originally named Peter Clark in 1950.
He was taken away as a baby and adopted but grew up near to Bernard and Joan, who were fostered together, in Greenock – although they didn’t realise it at that time.
Ian said the brothers and sisters would forever be grateful to George for introducing them to one another. “George was the driving force to bring the family together,” he adds.