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Peckham Cry - Janice's Book
Read some of the reviews on Amazon here
Since the age of four - I have always been fascinated by the written word and could easily read the headlines of a newspaper.
I had to obtain special permission from the headmaster of my primary school in order for me to join the library. It wasn't long before I was reading three books in a week.
I think I always knew that when I grew up I wanted to be a 'newspaper reporter!' Journalist was such a big word for me back then.
Unfortunately due to home circumstances - I wasn't allowed to stay on at school and take my exams. As my adoptive mother so nicely put it; 'We brought you up and spent money on you - so now it is your turn to pay us back by going to work.'
So at the age of fifteen and three months I left my beloved school to start work at a job that I hated. I cried buckets only to provoke my adoptive mother to remark what a strange child I was. Every other child was happy to leave school - so I must be a bit of an oddball! Truth to tell I was really very happy at school as it was only there that I felt really safe and among friends.
My job paid the princely sum of £3.5 shillings a week and out of that mother took £3 and left me with 5 shillings to buy clothes, pay for my dinners at work and bus fares.
I was desperately unhappy at home and had been abused sexually, physically and mentally since the age of seven, so the inevitable happened and I ran away.
Suffice to say that lots of things happened to me and one day I was to write my story as I needed to bury the ghosts of my past.
My published book is called Peckham Cry.
This book is written as fiction but is fact - actually based on my childhood growing up in South East London.
A harrowing story I guess although some parts are really funny. I look through it occasionally and wonder how I survived to be the person that I am today - but I do feel enriched by everything that happened to me.
My only regret is that for a number of years I led a nomadic existence, with no real purpose, no friends and just a lonely bedsit.
Today I am happily married with three grown up children, eight grandchildren and six great grandchildren.
You can buy my book from the shop at the special price of £5.99 to include postage and packing. This is for the UK only...
ALL PROCEEDS FROM THIS BOOK WILL GO TO HELP AUGMENT CHILD ABUSE!
(All international buyers are charged at the postal rate as laid down by the Royal Mail postal system. All orders are sent by small airmail package)
This book is written in the third person and Sylvia is my middle name.
The synopsis:
Sexually abused by her adoptive father.
Physically and mentally abused by her adoptive mother.
Sylvia grows up in London in the 1950's.
Coffee bars, juke boxes, rock n'roll.
Thrown out of her home and sleeping rough on the streets, Sylvia is arrested and put into one children's home after another. Desperately absconding, a life on the streets means starvation or prostitution and it is only when she becomes pregnant that Sylvia resolves that her life must change.
If only for the sake of her child.
Pharaoh Press
ISBN 1-901442-05-5