Betty Purcell - A woman on a mission

When Betty Purcell was just two-and-a-half years old, her mother placed her in an orphanage.

She almost ended up in Goldenbridge, but fortunately someone warned her mother that bad things were happening there; so she was placed in St Joseph’s, along with her sister, where the nuns were kind. She was there for two and a half years. Her mother had brought here there “for a while” so she could organise her life, after separating from Betty’s father. Was Betty damaged by the experience?

“I suffered the deprivation of being away from home,” she says. “There was nobody hugging me on a daily basis, but I learned things there. The nuns taught me gardening and I played the cymbals in the school orchestra, and Baby Jesus in a play.”