Send child-nappers to gallows
Regarding the controversy about leaving children alone, we must remember that even five-year-olds were sent by train to boarding schools, hundreds of miles away from home, and none were molested or kidnapped in the 1940s and 50s.
At the outbreak of World War II tens of thousands of children were evacuated to the countryside by train, with just paper labels tied to their clothes for identity.
In 1950, aged 10, I was given a Freedom of Wales ticket, cost 7/6 (37 and-a-half pence), which allowed the holder to travel for 10 days all over Wales. I had a very enjoyable time, the only passenger in a steam train that chugged along narrow valleys, over mountains and by the sea, returning to Dorrington Station safely.
My parents thought nothing of sending a child on a tour of the country alone. People simply did not harm children until 1954 when a paedophile called Hooper, murdered 12-year-old Betty Smith at Atcham, throwing her body down a well.
This brute was hanged at Shrewsbury Prison, but the time of innocence was over. We need a return of the gallows for murder, child rape and kidnapping.
W F Kerswell, Picklescott
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