Hopeless Town
Hopetown Asylum was anything but. Nicknamed Hopeless Asylum by its inhabitants it was a place of little hope and no joy. Joe Franklin had lived at Hopeless for many years. He had been left there when his parents died in a coach accident* when he was 6 months old. A horse bolted and the wayward carriage ran over his parents killing them outright. Joe was thrown clear by his panicked mother. He was found lying a few yards away from his dead parents, staring straight up with his big brown eyes. He grinned a big toothy smile at the person who came to pick him up.
"Aw gee, he's a cutie pie, wish we could keep him?"
"Well we can't and that's a fact. He's gotta go to the orphanage they can look after him there."
He was placed in Hopeless then and grew up within its unfeeling walls; never knowing the love of his poor parents. At two he moved from the infant nursery to the toddlers room. He was brought up by older children, mostly girls, who were themselves under nourished and overworked. To them he was just another squalling mouth. He learnt not to cry when he was unhappy, nothing ever came of it. He made a few friends, but it seemed to him that they were usually adopted out and he never heard from them again. Sometimes they died of illnesses that ravaged the asylum, such as the diphtheria epidemic when he was six. He stopped making close associations after friends left him either from death or adoption.
When he was eight he moved up into the boys dormitory. If it were possible, this was worse. The age range was from eight upwards. The big boys made the younger ones run errands, beat them, and sometimes did worse things. At night the place was pretty well ungoverned, giving free reign to the abusers.
A few months earlier a red headed girl came to live at the asylum. He wasn't particularly interested, new children arrived all the time. This girl was unusual though, she had a spark about her that you didn't usually see in an orphan. She used big words, in fact he wasn't always sure what she was talking about.
Boys and girls their age didn't have much to do with each other, they slept apart, why he wasn't sure, but the Matron sure took it seriously. Any child found out of bounds in the wrong bedroom was walloped and deprived of dinner, such as it was. Sometimes the food was so awful that going without was a mercy.
Despite this, he became aware, as did the rest of the asylum population, of this girl, Anne. She was forever getting into trouble and back talking the matron. He rather admired her spirit. He made a point of sidling up to her whenever he got the chance. Anne had an excellent imagination and would spin stories when she was supposed to be doing chores. If you worked next to her she made the job and the time fly by. Some of the other kids thought she was stuck up and teased her for her imagination but Joe thought she was marvellous. Anyone who bought a spark of joy to bleak Hopeless was all right in his book.
So he was devastated all over again; when much to everyone's surprise she was adopted out. That didn't happen all that often to eleven year old girls. He assumed she'd be a scullery maid or unpaid servant to some woman with too many children, he knew she'd done that before. Hopeless seemed particularly sad without her around.
Then a miracle occurred and the word came to him that the Matron wanted to see him. He was fearful, no one went to see the Matron for happy reasons. But then she said the words he had barely dared dream of:
"Joe, something amazing has happened. As you recall Anne Shirley was adopted recently, apparently her guardians in fact wanted a boy and they have requested that you be sent to them."
Joe couldn't help it, he sank to the floor "They want to adopt me?"
"Yes they asked for you by name. You'll have to make your own way there, I will make the arrangements."
So the next day he was packing his meagre possessions in a old bag before walking out the gate and boarding a train. He hadn't spent much time on his own, he had always been surrounded by people, but he wasn't about to let this opportunity slip through his fingers on account of nervousness.
Still he was very relieved to see Anne Shirley at the train station as soon as he alighted the train. Her familiar red hair shone out like a beacon. Anne threw her arms around him and told him how pleased she was to see him again and introduced him to Mr Cuthbert. It seemed his luck had changed, maybe he could hope again.
* I chose to kill the Franklins in this manner because it's how my own great grandfather was orphaned in Ireland in 1860. He was sent out to Australia to live with an uncle after a spell in the workhouse.