A MEMOIR written by a Stockton woman who found herself among prostitutes and thieves after having been brought up by nuns in a Catholic orphanage has hit the shelves of a bookshop in Thirsk due to popular demand.

Anne Fothergill , author of Don’t Let the Riffraff In, was abandoned when she was just two and spent her early years largely sheltered from the outside world.

But by the time she was 17, Anne was itching for an adventure and left the orphanage to live in a boarding house with a group of enchanting people she has described as being on the fringes of society.

Riffraff details the unlikely friendships naïve Anne formed with the colourful characters she met and is now on sale at the independent White Rose Book Café on Market Place in Thirsk.

Set in 1966, is the sequel to Memoirs of a Nazareth House Girl, which chronicles Anne's experiences of being brought up by nuns in a catholic orphanage in Middlesbrough.

The Manchester boarding house she moved to after she left the orphanage was nicknamed The Den of Iniquity by those who lived there and the nights were broken by the cries of one of the tenants, an old Holocaust survivor who suffered from terrible nightmares.

Mrs Fothergill, 66, of Thornaby, Stockton, said: "All of a sudden I was living alongside a lesbian couple, and a gay lad called Liam. There were also a few prostitutes and petty thieves. I didn't know what had hit me."

She is now a mother-of-three and grandmother-of-seven and before she retired she worked with children in a community development role for Cleveland County Council. Don't Let the Riffraff In is now on sale at the White Rose Book Café in Thirsk and Strickland and Holt in Yarm priced at £7.95 and is also available on Amazon.