For Companionship, or for Charitable Motives

Charbonneau, Jean Baptiste, Cornwell, Bernard, de Rossi, Giovanni Battista, Garrison, William Lloyd, Gaveston, Piers, Jones, Stewart Whyte McEwan, Tamaiti Whangai, Vanunu, Mordechai, Winterson, Jeanette,

Charbonneau, Jean Baptiste

Charbonneau was the son of a French-Canadian guide and his wife, the famous Sacagawea , both hired as interpreters for the Lewis and Clark expedition to the American West, and was born at ... [more]

Cornwell, Bernard

Cornwell was born to an English WAAF soldier named Cornwell and a Canadian airman. His mother placed him in an orphanage and soon afterwards he was adopted by the Wiggins couple from Essex ... [more]

de Rossi, Giovanni Battista

De Rossi was born into a happy country family in Voltaggio, near Genoa. When he was 10 a wealthy Genoese couple, who had become enchanted by the boy on their holidays, persuaded his parents... [more]

Garrison, William Lloyd

Garrison was born, his parents' fourth child, in Newburyport, Massachusetts. His father deserted the family before he was three (he never saw him again) and after a few years, when his moth... [more]

Gaveston, Piers

It has always been taken for granted that Gaveston, executed in 1312, was the lover of King Edward II. He had been introduced to the court by Edward I and brought up in the royal household ... [more]

Jones was born to an unmarried school teacher in Scotland before World War II. She could not keep him and he was adopted by an elderly single woman who had had a nervous breakdown, as part o... [more]

Tamaiti Whangai

Tamaiti whangai is the New Zealand Maori term for a foster or adopted child. "Tamaiti" (plural "tamariki") means "child" and "whangai" means to feed ... [more]

Vanunu, Mordechai

Vanunu was born in Morocco to a religious Jewish family who emigrated to Israel in 1963. After service in the Israeli Defence Force he started working at a nuclear research station. In ... [more]

Winterson, Jeanette

Winterson was born in Manchester, England and adopted as a baby by a working-class Lancashire Pentecostal couple who wanted a child to dedicate to God and she had a bizarre upbringing, port... [more]