Pete Price - Early Life

Early Life

Price was adopted at three months old in April 1946 by Hilda Price and David Lloyd. He was raised in West Kirby on the Wirral Peninsula. He was notably closer to his mother than his father, who repeatedly was violent towards Hilda Price. When he was twelve he came to terms with his homosexuality, but when consulting his doctor he was told he'd "grow out of it". Two years later Price went back to the same doctor, only be to prescribed some Valium. A combination of his homosexuality, problems with school and problems socially put him into a state of despair. At the age of fourteen he attempted to overdose on child-strength aspirin, only to wake up the next morning.

At fifteen Price was working as a hairdresser at the weekend whilst studying cookery at Wirral Metropolitan College (then Birkenhead Technical College). He soon got a job working for the wealthy Ward family, catering for their dinner parties, as well as being a close family friend. He soon got a professional catering job, a summer at the Cavendish Hotel in Eastbourne and went on to manage a Fullers Tea Shop in Worthing.

Price was sent to an institution in Chester to receive aversion therapy when he came out to his mother at age eighteen. He left a further day later after being exposed to people being "treated" using electrodes. A few days later he recognised one of the psychiatrists from the institution in a gay bar. Price couldn't control his anger and assaulted the psychiatrist. The psychiatrist did not wish to press charges and Price kept the events in the institution, and why he assaulted him, a secret. However, in 1993, after stories been coming out of others being treated this way in hospitals he decided to go public with his story, in order to encourage more people to come forward.