Or you can read Matthew’s story below:
It was a normal sunny afternoon in the summer holidays. I was about 11 years old and playing outside with my younger brother.
After a while, my parents called me inside and said they had something important to talk to me about. I thought I was in trouble again, but when I went inside, I realised something was different. They had been going through a rough time and I had heard them mention divorce when they were arguing. At first, I thought they were going to tell me something about that, but instead they went on to explain that I was not their biological son and they’d adopted me when I was three months old.
They had been told they couldn’t have children of their own, but longed to have a baby and thought adoption would be the way to make this dream come true. I can only imagine their surprise when four years after me, my little brother was born. They gave me an old fashioned dark blue photo album, which contained the story of my birth mother, Lorraine.
Lorraine was from Ireland, and I also had a brother called Patrick, who was two years older than me. When Lorraine found out she was pregnant with me, she thought it was best to come and stay with her sister in London, and have me adopted because of the strict Catholic religion in Ireland, at that time.
My parents assured me that I was still their son and that the adoption didn’t make any difference. They said that I could try and contact my birth family once I was 18, and they would fully support me if I wanted to do so, but by the time I was 18, finding this family in Ireland was the last thing on my mind.
My parents had finally divorced less than a year after telling me about the adoption, and my dad moved out taking my little brother with him. My poor mother had struggled to cope with all that had happened, and eventually I was taken into foster care in Essex. I wanted nothing more than to go home and be with all the family again.
Eventually, I was allowed to stay with my grandparents full time, but it was a very different environment to the family home I remembered. They had not progressed with the times and still used an old fashioned twin tub washing machine, which would always come out routinely every Thursday if you miss wash day. That was it until next week, they would work away stirring the clothes around with a wooden stick, then rinsing them in the kitchen sink.
I was about 15 years old when I went down to West Ham to watch them play Manchester United with my best mate, Jamie. After the game, we ended up getting served in a pub for the first time. This quickly became quite a regular habit, and I would often end up staying out late most weekends. Not much good came of all that really, but I did meet a girl called Vicky in the railway tavern at Stratford.
I wanted my independence and needed a job, but the opportunities were few and far between. I did odd jobs here and there, such as window cleaning and washing buses at night. I was a dustman for a little while, but I wanted something more stable.
Around this time, I met up with my mate, John, in South London. We had a mutual love of history and he mentioned being part of a Napoleonic re-enactment group, The Port’s Open Volunteers. He took me along to the Middlesex Street Estate in Aldgate, where they used to meet each Tuesday evening for training.
One of the volunteers was the caretaker at The Aldgate School and got us permission to train on their playground. We would march around the playground, practicing drill with old Flintlock muskets. The playground was right next to the place where Jack the Ripper had murdered one of his unfortunate victims and guided Ripper tours would stop by regularly. They used to lose interest in their tour guides and take photos of us instead.
After our training, we used to go for a drink, usually at The Bell Pub on Middlesex Street or the Market Trader as it was known. Then one of the volunteers, Terry was a fellow West Ham supporter and worked for the City Corporation of London in charge of the Middlesex Street Estate.
I got to know Terry very well, and he must have realized I was struggling a bit. I’d recently walked out of a job at the Southbank Centre and had nowhere permanent to live. Terry told me to go to an employment agency on London Wall and that he could get me some cleaning work on the Estate to see me through until I found something else. I was sceptical at first because lots of people had offered me opportunities, which had come to nothing, and I didn’t really want to be working as a cleaner again.
Eventually, my cousin Trish met Terry after she came to see one of our re-enactments, and he mentioned to her that despite his nagging, I still hadn’t signed on at the agency. The next morning, Trish ordered me out bed and dragged me through the door. Despite the raging blizzard outside, we had a snowball fight at a bus stop and protesting all the way. I eventually found myself at the agency, true to his word, Terry asked for me, and after a few months of filling in gaps here and there on the city’s various estates, the Corporation took me on permanently and I was appointed caretaker of my own Estate in Stepney.
Shortly afterwards, my mother passed away and I felt more uncertain about the future than ever before being aware that I had nowhere to live and often slept in the cleaners store. My manager encouraged me to join the housing list, and I soon moved into a studio flat on the Middlesex Street Estate with my new girlfriend, Vicky, who I’d first met in Stratford all those years ago.
When Terry retired, I was promoted to take over his job in charge of the Estate. He was a hard act to follow, but having understudied him for so long, I was able to continue his work, particularly his care for the community that he had served for so long.
I never felt I’d done anything special in the job, but in 2018, we came home from a friend’s wedding in Ireland to find a letter on the doormat with On Her Majesty’s service stamped across the top. When I finally opened the letter, I was amazed to find out that I’d been awarded a medal in the Queen’s birthday honours for services to the communities of the City of London and City Fringe.
I told Vicky that I’d got the MBE and passed her the letter in disbelief and oh, she soon corrected me that it was a British Empire medal instead. I don’t know who put me forward for it, but when it was my turn at the investiture to go up and receive a medal. The lady who read out the citations of what each person had done called out Matthew, has been a cleaner with the City of London for eight years. I was, in fact a senior estate officer by that point, and I must have looked offended by what she said. Returning to my seat with the metal pins in my chest, Terry passed me a handkerchief and suggested that the chairs were dusty and could do with a clean.
A year later, Vicky and I married at St Botolph’s Church in Aldgate with the Port’s Open Volunteers lined up either side of the steps outside. It really was the most wonderful day of my life.
After the wedding, I started to think more about my pre-adoptive family in Ireland. I talked to Vicky about it, and using Facebook, she was able to track them down. Lorraine was wonderful and contacted me back straight away. She told me that in addition to my older brother Patrick, who I knew about from the album, I had a younger brother called Ryan who had been born after I was adopted.
By coincidence, Patrick had left Ireland and was working in London at the time in Aldgate, just a couple of streets from where I was living. I met up with Patrick for the first time later that week and discovered a part of me that had always been missing.
We found out that we used the same cafes and pubs in Aldgate, and after several hours of many pints concluded that we must have passed each other many times without realising the connection.
A few weeks later, I met Lorraine, Ryan and a whole load of other relations. The strangest thing was they all looked just like me, but spoke with Irish accents. I told them about my life in Aldgate and how living there had made such a positive change for me.
Being Irish, I’m not sure they ever fully understood the concept of a British Empire medal, but they certainly recognized the impact that a good community and belonging somewhere can have.
