Haydn on the boys balcony, age 7, 1931
I have just received the following email from Gillian Beynon:
"I thought I should tell you you that my dear father- in- law passed away during the early hours on 16 July rather suddenly - he was 84 and had been enjoying our son's birthday only hours before his passing.
I would like to thank you on behalf of all our family for including him in your book and for the enjoyment he took in the reunions and helping you to gather information to put your findings in print.
The book is remarkable thanks to the testimonies of people like my father in law and many others and you have done them proud by setting the record straight and producing a book to be proud of and be of interest to many for years to come.
His experiences like others will live on in print and the book is a marvellous keepsake for us all."
Extract from "The Children of Craig-y-nos", Haydn's story:
"My bed was on the balcony and I can remember sitting up in bed with pyjamas on and my mother and father with overcoats and scarves and hats on, the snow and the rain coming in, and they'd be shivering. It was cold but you didn't feel it after a while.
...You were given four squares of Cadbury's chocolate, and I didn't qualify because if you didn't eat your afters, you couldn't have chocolate. I can remember vividly...every few days the curtains would go around a bed and porters would wheel somebody away who had died. I was only a youngster but it seemed that there were lots of people dying at that time, like every other day.
Craig-y-nos was monotonous, one day after the other. The difference between Highland Moors, where I went in 1932, and Craig-y-nos is that there you were encouraged to play."
"The Children of Craig-y-nos" by Ann Shaw and Carole Reeves, published by the Wellcome Trust Centre for the History of Medicine, UCL, price £9.99p is available online Amazon.co.uk or from any good bookshop, Brecon museum, Val's newsagent in Ystradgynalais and through the Welsh Book Council.
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