Spectrum 259 and Spectrum 260. No home for Mary

Rights Information
Year
1977
Reference
22202
Media type
Audio
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Rights Information
Year
1977
Reference
22202
Media type
Audio
Duration
00:55:31
Credits
RNZ Collection

Spectrum was a long-running weekly radio documentary series which captured the essence of New Zealand from 1972 to 2016. Alwyn Owen and Jack Perkins produced the series for many years, creating a valuable library of New Zealand oral history.

Part 1
Mary “M” tells of her childhood in a broken home and her subsequence life.

Jack Perkins meets Mary aged 19 and her 2 year old son in a Christchurch flat. He says her life is better now and finds out about her life so far of unremitting hardship and dissolution. Mary’s story could be our story. There for the grace of god go I.

Mary recalls her mother and father fighting, lack of love from her parents, no affection.
About her mother having a boy friend living with family, sleeping arrangements and that her parents were heavy drinkers. Her father worked for the council.

Mary hated school and describes her feelings. No friends, the world against her.

She liked her father more then her mother, though he spent time at Sunnyside [mental institution]

She describes being taken to a family home run by a couple, the strict woman she called big bird. How religious they were. Spent 3 years there until she was 15 years old and how she still hates big bird.

Mary tells how she got herself expelled from school so she could leave the family home , only to be put into a girls home and then the Girls training home, with 140 Māori girls and 4 Pakeha girls.
She ran away to Kaiapoi.

Part 2
In the second part, we continue to see life through Mary’s eyes, a view that contains warps and distortions bought about by her experiences.

Mary made her way to Auckland to see her sister and mother and describes what led up to her being placed in another girls home where she tried to hang herself. She was committed to Oakley hospital before returning to Christchurch where she met a guy and became pregnant.
Living in a cricket shed at Hagley Park, she was eventually taken by the Police to Princess Margaret hospital into the psychiatric ward where she stayed until she went into labour and was sent to Christchurch Women’s hospital where her son, Carl, was born.

Mary describes not knowing how to look after a baby.

Jack asks her about her future and fears and if she would get married and if she was bitter about her experiences.

Produced by Jack Perkins.