Sisters Dolly and Frances Broadhurst were born in Freetown Sierra Leone in 1887 and 1890. They were of mixed background and called ‘octoroons’ on their personal records - an outdated term used to describe a person who is one-eighth black by descent.
The girls lived with their mother, who had no choice but to leave them with a group of elderly women described as ‘grandmas’, when she traded goods to earn a living. The ‘grandmas’ kept the girls in dirty living conditions and left them vulnerable to abuse. Their Barnardo’s admission report stated that one of the ‘grandmas’ made no secret of her plans to use the girls for prostitution.
To protect Dolly and Frances, their mother handed them over to a friend who promised to bring them to England and find them a good home.
The sisters were admitted to Barnardo’s on 13th November 1899. Both couldn’t read or write and only spoke ‘pidgin English’.
The girls left Barnardo’s care in 1904 and 1907 after they found work in domestic service.
Dolly met a man from Portugal and they married in Cardiff in 1918. Two years later they welcomed a baby boy.
