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Record #23364
Name :
: Leonard AUSTIN


Father
:
Mother
:
BMD and other details
Date of Birth
:

Marriage (1)
:
Marriage (2)
:

Date of Death
:
Abode (1) : Place of BirthEngland
Abode (2) : Place of Death / Burial
Sailing Information
Date of Arrival
: 2 Sep 1922
Country
: Canada

Ship
: Metagama

Placement Family
:
Homes / Agencys
Institution (GB)
:

Agency
: Salvation Army
NotesLen Austin was in this latter category. Coming at the age of 5 he was too young to object to anything that would happen to him. He recalls running away from his first placement but isn't quite sure of the reason. "It?s hard to say. I think I was likely abused or something. I don't know for sure because it happened to me afterward and I ran away again so I imagine it happened in the first place." His next home was a happier one. "I really enjoyed living there. They were very poor and had nothing but they were nice to me. But it was dirty and infested with flies." The inspectors decided the environment wasn't healthy for a young boy and they took him away. "I can remember bawling about that," he says.

The next eight years he spent on a 150-acre farm in the St. Lawrence valley. "When I got home from school," he recalls, "I had to get right down and milk so many cows, or else. Same in the morning, before I went to school, I had to milk the cows and clean out the barn. If it wasn?t done right I got a beating. The farmer had two sons and they worked too, but I had to do all the worst stuff. Then after Grade 8, I was pulled out of school and became more or less the hired hand. The other boys were off to college and I had to do everything.

The inspectors visited about twice a year but you couldn?t tell them much or else you?d get beat up more. You know I even didn?t eat with the family. I eat in the back kitchen with the dog."

Austin was pushed to the extreme. "I was so young and trying to work as a hired hand and not being able to do it. One time we were loading grain and I couldn't keep up. He'd yell 'H'raw, h?raw, c?mon, c?mon, and then all of a sudden I?d see a fork tyne going by my face. I was standing up and just grabbed it like a baseball bat and hit him across the back as hard as I could. He was screaming. I started climbing down and just when I got to the bottom this other guy was coming in. He asked me where the old man was, I just killed him." He ended up in bed for five weeks-

When he was about 15 Austin finally ran away and sought refuge with one of the boys down the road. He was older and worked for another farmer. The old man came looking for me and this boy, he was pretty husky, told him to get back in his car and never bother me again or else he'd push his head in the gravel. And that was where it ended." Austin went on his own, working as a hired hand with various farmers. He never received any money for his eight years labour. "The last year 1 was supposed to get $180 but I ran away and didn't see any of it." 
ContributorsCreated : 2013-12-02 08:18:07 / From original database

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