Hello UKkat, I am very sorry to hear your mum and uncle were in NH. I couldn't say if they were the pair I remember though. The children I remember were slightly built tho I thought the girl was around my age, so perhaps born around 1953. Maybe your Mum was a little older than that. Most of the NH kids seemed shorter than us, and I'm average height now. Beating left-handed children on their left hands was pretty widespread before the 1950s, tho it persisted in Irelandlong after this, from what my Mayo mother told me, and many nuns came from Ireland, so that may well have happened to your mum. Kids in orphanages were also beaten for bed wetting, and yet that is often as sign of distress displayed by children who are taken from their parents. Is your mum still with us? I hope she had a happy adult life. I have subsequently met several children who were in NH and none was happy there. I think the main problems, as if being separated from their families were not enough, were physical abuse and being constantly told they were 'bad' or unwanted kids. For some reason, none of them want to talk about it. Was that all your mum would say about the place? If she were unhappy, at least she probably experienced one happy childhood - yours.