"I always knew my mother had a secret." As a young girl, Justine Cowan found her mother writing a name over and over again—Dorothy Soames. Decades later, Justine traced the mystery back to London's Hospital for the Maintenance and Education of Exposed and Deserted Young Children, established two centuries ago to house illegitimate children and train them for menial labor. It was here that Dorothy Soames withstood years of abuse at the hands of a sadistic headmistress, and as Justine recounts here, she made a daring escape during the Blitz.