Work in the Hampstead War Nurseries

Although I knew Anna Freud for 42 years, I have chosen to speak about a period during which we worked particularly closely together: the years from 1941 to 1945 in the Hampstead War Nurseries.

I met her first in 1940, soon after she opened the first War Nursery in Wedderburn Road. I was then working in the evacuation service helping to organize homes in various parts of the country for disturbed children who could not be settled in billets. I had not met her before and went to spend a weekend in the Nursery in order to learn about her approach, having worked for several years in children's institutions in France and Austria. She told me then that she and Dorothy Burlingham were planning to open two more Nurseries and asked me to come and work in Netherhall Gardens from 1941 onwards. The American Foster Parents Plan for War Children were ready to finance these additional Nurseries, one in London and another in the country in Essex. I accepted with great interest, which grew still further with the opportunity, in the following months, to get to know more about the observations to be collected on the children and the plans for training the staff who would look after them.

In order to understand the thoughts Anna Freud and Mrs Burlingham had when they decided to open a residential nursery in 1940, it is best to recall their aims as they formulated them in their first publication, 'Young Children in War Time' (1942). They said: 'Our efforts are directed towards four main achievements:

• 1To repair damage already caused by war conditions to the bodily and mental health of children. We therefore accept children who have suffered through bombing, shelter sleeping, indiscriminate evacuation, and billeting. We try to serve, on the one hand, as a convalescent home, and, on the other, whenever necessary, as a home for problem children.

• 2To prevent further harm being done to the children. If small babies have to be separated from their mothers we try to keep them in compara