My shocking idea

[pippin_999]

No: HPFGUIDX 74058

--- In HPforGrownups at yahoogroups.com, "Wanda Sherratt" 
<wsherratt3338 at r...> wrote:
> --- In HPforGrownups at yahoogroups.com, "James Redmont" > 
(p. 244, 
> U.S. Edition)
> > "You are Muggle-born?"
> > "Half-blood, sir," said Riddle.  "Muggle father, witch mother."
> > "And are both your parents-?"
> > "My mother died just after I was born, sir.  They told me at the 
> > orphanage she lived just long enough to name me - Tom 
after my 
> > father, Marvolo after my grandfather."
> > 
> Rowling writes this sort of thing, and it looks straightforward, 
but 
> it's really hard to visualize just what might have happened.  I 
guess I picture a sort of Oliver Twist scenario, with the poor 
 pregnant woman who crawls to the workhouse, delivers her 
child, and  with her last breath murmurs his name then dies.  I 
don't think it quite fits in with Britain as it really was in the
30s, but 
I've made my peace with the many ways Rowling's England 
differs from the  real England.  <

Some British orphanages have put their history on the web, so 
you can look up how orphans were treated in the thirties. What I 
discovered was that the orphanage would have made a 
concerted effort to identify the father, so that they could collect 
child support. This information was not given to the child, 
however.  The infant's name would have been changed and he 
would have been sent to live with a foster mother for the first five 
or six years of his life. Then the child would have been returned 
to the orphanage (this was horribly traumatic) where he would 
have lived and been educated until he was sixteen or so, and 
then he would have been sent out to work. Orphan boys were 
raised to become soldiers, so this could be where Tom got his 
imperialist notions. 

I guess Tom wouldn't have learned  his real name till his 
Hogwarts letter arrived. This would have marked the second 
time his world was turned upside down, and it must have turned 
upside down again when he discovered he was the Heir of 
Slytherin...not an upbringing that would foster a trusting soul.

Pippin