The Secret Life of Dorothy Soames

November 9, 2020
Attorney Cowan debuts with an impressive memoir about the unearthing of her deceased mother’s secret past and a generations-long cycle of family trauma. After her mother’s death, Cowan set out to discover what caused her emotional instability, cruelty, and “blind idolatry of status and wealth.” She learned that her mother’s mother left her at the hospital not long after birth, then reclaimed her at the age of 12. In between, Cowan’s mother lived at Foundling Hospital, a London orphanage where she was raised under the name “Dorothy Soames” in grim conditions, working long hours doing menial and often degrading tasks. “For two centuries,” Cowan writes, “thousands of children like Dorothy Soames were raised to mend socks and clean chamber pots, to work in factories or be sent to sea.” Cowan’s mother never discussed her upbringing, and Cowan writes of how learning the details of her time in the orphanage helped her reach a posthumous reconciliation never achieved during her mother’s life. This frank account of a real-life Dickensian dystopia captivates at every turn.

November 15, 2020
An attorney and environmentalist probes her troubled mother's past as the child inmate of the centuries-old Foundling Hospital of London. Cowan's English-born mother lived in "blind idolatry of wealth and status" and claimed to be descended from a line of Welsh nobles. But behind the facade and her hypercritical ways lurked a secret that the author began to uncover only after her mother's death from Alzheimer's. Haunted by their unrelentingly difficult relationship, Cowan began piecing together her story by investigating a carefully prepared memoir her mother had sent to "acknowledge her role" in their painfully adversarial relationship. The manuscript offered details of the years she had spent growing up at the Foundling Hospital, later renamed Coram after its 18th-century founder, Thomas Coram. The author's mother--renamed Dorothy Soames--had suffered multiple traumas in her life as a foundling. From the foster mother who instilled a fear of Coram from an early age to the cruel nurses who routinely humiliated her and thought nothing of using physical violence as a disciplinary tool, Dorothy's caretakers showed her little love. Her later education prepared her only for "a life of service" and offered no latitude for "independent thought." The only refuge in her otherwise dreary and isolated existence was friendship with a fellow foundling. After reading the memoir and visiting the hospital, Cowan realized the terrible impact of her mother's past, partially to blame for her raising her daughter according to a "warped, dystopian version of what she imagined a proper British upbringing to be." The author's historical analysis of the misogyny and classism that underlay the institution's outwardly humanitarian mission makes this memoir especially compelling. Well-researched and highly personal, the book presents a fascinating narrative tapestry that both informs and moves. A candidly illuminating debut memoir.

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December 1, 2020

Cowan's mother possessed an elegant bearing, a mysterious past--and a volatile personality that left Cowan with psychological scars and eventually led her to cut off contact, including ignoring a handwritten manuscript her mother sent her years later. Only after her mother's death did she examine the document and learn the truth: far from being a secret aristocrat, Cowan's mother had been surrendered by an unmarried farm woman to London's Foundling Hospital, an institution established to raise "deserted" illegitimate children and prepare them for lives in service or industry. In this debut, the author tells of her experiences traveling to London to view her mother's records and explore family history. Given the name Dorothy Soames, her mother was raised in an environment of physical and emotional abuse where educational and practical needs were frequently neglected. Drawing on her mother's manuscript and her own personal research, Cowan unpicks the threads of the hospital's history and how decisions made by its founders and governors decades and centuries earlier irrevocably shaped her mother's life and her relationship with Cowan. VERDICT There are no easy resolutions in Cowan's story, but this title should appeal to readers interested in family histories and complex mother-daughter relationships.--Kathleen McCallister, William & Mary Libs., Williamsburg, VA

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December 1, 2020
Cowan grew up at odds and angry with her mother. Not until she was in her forties and had lost both parents was Justine able to read her mother's own written memories of growing up in England. Her mother had always claimed a family connection to royalty but in writing she revealed the truth, that after her birth in 1932 she was raised at London's Foundling Hospital. In researching this institution, from its origin to its closure, Cowan discovered the harsh conditions her mother and countless other children endured. This is not only a daughter's memoir about the realities of her mother's life, but also a work of history about an inhumane system and a reminder to always consider the pain others may be hiding. Readers will find it hard not to flinch over the fraught lives of Dorothy and her family, but this thoughtful account creates a context for compassion. Book groups will find as much to discuss here as they have with The Glass Castle (2005), by Jeannette Walls, and Educated (2018), by Tara Westover.

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