St Mary''s School Parrock Road Gravesend

Hello there, I believe my father was sent to this convent sometime between 1917 and 1931. Would this place have existed then?

A Remembrance, 1953-1957. St mary's. - A loveless institution, administered by delusional women whose fantasies are preoccupied with an image of a slaughtered male in the throes of an ecstactic death.
Love to their charges dissipated and overwhelmed by an auto erotic drive towards an ecstatic congress with their divine phantasy.

A preface that expresses a belief and experience towards the nuns at St Mary's
during my time with them in the early 1950's.

Far from an environment of love and compassion for the infants in their charge,
I endured a regime of; fear, distress, constant anxiety, with an ever present corporal punishment to be endured in the bath house on the first floor; this with a junior cricket stump.

I am now 71 years old. The images/ feelings in my mind is and has been a constant intrusion during my life.

Exactly. Wicked women, torturing tiny little children (I was four). I wish those criminals could see me now.

"We Were Just Children": Survivor's Letter from St Mary’s Orphanage
Subhead:
Decades after leaving a Catholic orphanage in Gravesend, I’ve finally found the strength to share what happened behind those walls.
Byline:
By Richard Canhan

We were just children.
Innocent. Small. Vulnerable. I was three years old when I was placed into St Mary’s Children’s Orphanage in Gravesend, along with my brother Gary, who was two. It was April 1961. And that was the day my childhood effectively ended.
Our mother, overwhelmed and alone, signed an agreement with the Southwark Catholic Rescue Society. She believed—hoped—that the Catholic Church would care for us, raise us with love and faith. We were her boys, and she trusted them.
She couldn’t have known what we were about to face.
Documents Tell One Story. My Memories Tell Another.
Recently, through the Freedom of Information Act, I obtained official records of our time in care. Cold, administrative language. Terms like "a bit scruffy" and "undisciplined" to describe two toddlers. Notes on our mother being “not very bright.” A clinical tone that utterly misses the human story beneath it.
But those papers also confirmed what my brother and I had long suspected and feared—our memories were real. They weren’t imagined, or exaggerated, or a child’s confused dreams. The pain, the fear, the punishments—it all happened.
Gifts Taken, Blankets Withheld, Love Absent
Visitors would sometimes come, often bearing toys, sweets, and warm clothing. But as soon as they left, so did the gifts. We never saw them again. And we learned quickly not to ask.
I remember being cold all the time. We weren’t allowed an extra blanket, even in winter. “You need to toughen up,” they told us. My brother, who had a bladder problem, was forced to sleep in wet sheets, with the window jammed open to let the cold air in.
When we rebelled—by tossing rugs out the window—we were punished. Harshly. Collectively. Even if we hadn’t done anything.
The nuns. The very people meant to protect us. Their image of purity and compassion didn’t match the hands that struck us, or the voices that shamed us, or the silence we were forced to endure.
Memories That Never Faded
I’ve often wondered if it’s really possible to remember so much from such a young age. For years, I doubted myself. But trauma doesn’t play by the rules of memory. It imprints itself deep in the bones, in the reflexes, in the nightmares.
Even the parts I can’t remember feel like holes torn into the fabric of who I was supposed to be.
What I do remember is the loneliness. The fear. The constant mistrust. I barely spoke. I was called rude, cold, rebellious. But I wasn’t any of those things—I was surviving.
I Wanted Something. I Just Didn’t Know What.
By age ten, I was already lost. Smoking cigarettes, playing in train tunnels, setting fires—not to hurt anyone, but to feel something. To be seen.
I didn’t see the building as a home. So I set it alight. Another day, I set my classroom on fire. Then, as if by cosmic intervention, I was hit by a car two days later.
I wasn’t seriously injured. But I took it as a message: enough.
We Weren’t Alone
Decades later, the truth continues to surface. Other children, now adults, who were at St Mary’s have come forward. Their memories mirror ours and in them, I finally found a strange comfort: we were not alone. And we were not crazy.
The Scars That Don’t Show
What happened to us wasn’t just neglect. It was betrayal—by the Church, by the system, by the adults who looked the other way. It left scars. Ones you don’t see.
I never trusted authority again. I struggled to form relationships, to believe in my own worth. People thought I was antisocial, a loner. Maybe I was. But they never saw what shaped me.

Why I’m Speaking Now
I’m not writing this for pity. And I’m certainly not writing it to open old wounds. They’ve never really closed.
I’m writing this because, for the first time in my life, I have confirmation. Documents. Witnesses. Testimonies. Proof.
Proof that we were failed. That what we experienced was real. That the Catholic Church, through its institutions, allowed suffering behind closed doors. And that suffering has followed us every day since.
To Those Who Ask Why We Don’t Just Move On
We do try. Every day. But how do you move on from a stolen childhood? From the knowledge that the people meant to care for you inflicted pain instead.
Some of us survived. Some didn’t. Some of us are only now beginning to understand the impact those years had on our lives, our choices, our relationships, our mental health.
We were just children. And we deserved better.
________________________________________
If you were placed in care at St Mary’s in Gravesend, or another institution run by the Southwark Catholic Rescue Society, and would like to share your story, support is available.