Foster Mother to Eleven Children

From the collection of

East Anglian Film Archive at the University of East Anglia

The East Anglian Film Archive, the UK's first regional film archive, offers a unique record of the East of England's social and cultural history. As part of the University of East Anglia, we continue to lead moving image heritage research and inspire audience participation through community projects and events. Our collections represent a broad range of amateur and professional creativity, from 1896 to the present day.

Foster Mother to Eleven Children

East Anglian Film Archive at the University of East Anglia
1970-02-11
Sound
4m

Miss Christie, aged 64, shares her home with eleven foster children, a donkey, three dogs and twelve cats. Anglia TV reports.

Miss Christie and nine of her eleven foster children return home through the snow. Anglia Television interview Miss Christie about her circumstances and motivations to care for eleven children who all come from black and ethnic minority backgrounds. Miss Christie explains that the mothers of the children are student nurses, and the fathers work in the evenings, so Miss Christie has agreed to give the children a foster home.

The reporter for Anglia Television uses the termed ‘coloured', referring to the ethnicity of the children. Clearly not an acceptable term one might use today, however, it appears it was acceptable at the time the footage was produced. Perhaps this might be considered more as ignorant than malicious.

Black Lives

Portraits of public and private lives against the shifting social climate of 20th century Britain.

Black communities, like many Global majority groups, have long been ill-served by a mainstream British media accustomed to reflecting predominantly white, middle-class lives - a problem entrenched in the second half of the 20th century with the rise of television. Yet a rich tapestry of work from across the boundaries of fiction and non-fiction, film and TV, made for (though not always by) black people, does exist. This selection contains many surprises – some joyous, some sobering, some heartbreaking – and highlights the often painfully slow progress in addressing negative representations and stereotypes on screen. Impassioned and sometimes violent dispatches from the front line in the fight for racial equality can be found here, but so too can records of progress: in the pioneers breaking new ground in culture, politics and sport, and in the more mundane glimpses of everyday life. And this story is not just London’s story: the selection takes a journey around Britain, to a Nigerian wedding in 1960s Cornwall, an ‘African village’ in Essex and a Caribbean restaurant opening in West Bromwich; Newcastle