My husband's aunt, Mary Murphy, was born in 1917 in Rutherglen, Scotland, the third of twelve children, born to James Murphy, a coalminer and his wife Mary Ann. Her parents had just had a terrible year as their second child, Elizabeth had died at only three months old of a bowel disease. The expectation of a new baby must have filled them with a combination of dread and hope.
We don't know when the couple discovered that Mary also had problems, but her problems were from birth and lifelong and she was termed in those days 'a slow learner' which, nowadays we know would cover a variety of developmental problems, both mental and physical. She went to a special school for children with learning problems but was taken out as she was being bullied. Mary was unable to work and she was looked after by her mother until Mary Ann herself died in 1968. Mary herself had suffered a stroke in the 1960s while on a visit with her mother to visit her sister, Frances in America. After her mother's death, her sister Teresa, my husband Martin's mother, took on her care and she lived with the Stepek family from then on.
Mary had gone from living alone with her mother to living in a family home with ten children. It must been a big change for her, especially given her limitations. She used to watch television a lot, mostly soap operas. She spoke hesitantly and rarely, with the most common thing she said to any of the family being, "A wee cuppa tea" and that came from from her initiative and not just a response, showing she could express at least some of her thoughts. She also would react to some of the characters in the soaps she watched, telling the children, "He's a bad yin!" which also shows she could understand storylines and characters. But apart from that she was mostly silent.
Despite her difficulties, Mary had seemed content with her quiet life. She died in the family home in 1992 and is buried in Bent Cemetery Hamilton alongside her sister Frances.
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