The day that changed my life:(Based on the life of Benjamin Joyce)

-->

 

-->

Chapter 1: My early life

I am growing older and I am sitting on my favourite bench over looking my beautiful land at Bo Bo Creak NSW, Australia, thinking of the amazing life I have had and what it could have been like if it hadn’t been for that fateful day long ago that had changed my whole life

Middlesex England

My Name is Benjamin Joyce I was born in Frome Somerset England on the 27 July 1821. I lived with my Father who was a weaver by trade also named Benjamin, my Mother Sophie and my brother Frank and my little sister Sophie.

 My Family was very poor, because my father couldn’t find enough work, so my family move to Middlesex.

The Little terraced house that we moved to could be described as nothing but squalid, cramped and damp.  The cellar rooms in which we lived were often flooded by effluent. There were two rooms each nine to ten feet square which we shared with another family. Many people caught diseases like cholera from the filth, sewage and rubbish left outside in the streets. Even worse, we children had to play in the sewage with bare feet.

 There was never enough food to feed the family, although my father found work as a weaver, the wage he received was hardly enough to pay the rent and the little bit that was left over had to feed & cloth five members of the family.

There was no schooling, Children as young as five or six were forced to work thirteen to sixteen hours a day for slave wages and barely any food, so I grew up illiterate.

I was always hungry and roamed the streets looking for any food I could find and in doing so I mixed with the wrong kind of people. This led me into a lot of trouble but thinking back I am very glad for the trouble I found myself in.