Donald Hume biography

He was then only seven years old.

Finally, Hume experienced some youthful happiness when he was adopted by his grandmother and taken away from the home. But any sense of security was short-lived as he was soon sent to live with his mother's sister, Aunt Doodie, who was headmistress of a small Hampshire village school.

Far from being loving, Aunt Doodie turned out to be as cold and unforgiving as the proprietors of the orphanage. Doodie also had two daughters, Peggy and Betty,

and while the girls offered opportunities for Hume to play and feel involved in some kind of family life for the most part he was excluded from social occasions. The situation began to reflect a Cinderella scenario with Doodie, her husband and the girls going off on holiday while leaving the young Hume at home to look after the house and chickens. On one occasion Donald was so miffed at being left out of a holiday excursion that he took the house shotgun and blasted Doodie's favorite cockerel, before throwing it into the cesspool. When Aunt Doodie returned the boy told her that the poor creature had simply drowned.

Hume's eventual distrust of human nature and descent into becoming a full-fledged member of the misanthrope society, occurred when he discovered from the mouth of the family maid, that Doodie was in fact his real mother and not his Aunt.

This revelation, according to Hume himself, was the catalyst to make him bear a grudge against society even more. His feelings of rejection and betrayal were exacerbated by this disturbing truth. Together with the fact that Aunt Doodie prevented Hume from attending grammar school, sending him instead to work in a kitchen, increased his hatred for her and desire to escape. Aunt Doodie, who taught religion and saw herself as a good Christian, kept up the pretense that she was his aunt.

Originally Hume planned to get a job on cruise liners, but abandoned this idea when, after hitching a ride one day, he was befriended by a truck driver who helped him find accommodation and a manual job. But first Hume made his way to Somerset House where he was determined to find out the truth about his parentage. The brutal truth was recorded for him to see with his own eyes on his birth certificate. Aunt Doodie was indeed his mother but there was only a blank where the father's name should have been written.

The man who had befriended Hume later wrote a letter to Aunt Doodie to inform her where Donald was and if she required him to go back home. She replied that she did not. Shortly afterwards Hume wrote her a letter detailing without restraint what he thought about her. I was vomiting the vindictiveness of my soul in words, he later recalled in Confession. This was to be the last time Hume ever contacted his mother.

First Murder

From that moment on Donald Hume, barely 15 years old, vowed to make life dance his own tune. Over the next 20 years he would become involved in everything from joining the Communist party to taking up joy riding, petty theft and eventually graduating to fraud and criminal activity that would bring about quick riches in any way he could.