St. Margarets Unmarried Mothers Hostel - 262 Victoria Park Road Hackney

[LizzieW]

My guess is that up to the 1960s there were lots of places like St Margarets that took in unmarried girls and gave their babies to people by-passing the official system.  The girls were probably sent by their employers or GPs.  Whether any money exchanged hands I have no idea.

When I got pregnant in 1959, my dad spoke to a friend of his who was a GP and he found such a place for me which was a maternity home.  Many of the pregnant girls had to live in and worked as assistants (skivvies) and after their babies were born, they were "given" at 10 days old to couples who wanted babies.  I was more fortunate, in that there were no places left for me to work in the home at the time, so I went to stay with a lady and her two young children.  She was getting divorced (a famous at the time TV personality) and was happy for the company.  I stayed 10 days after I gave birth and then walked out without the baby, who was picked up the same day by her adoptive parents.  There was non of the 6+ weeks looking after a baby before giving it up for adoption.

When I went to sign adoption papers a few weeks later I was told not to say anything to the officials (whoever they were, ?social workers) about what had happened, just that I agreed to the adoption.

For years I worried about why a couple would not be able to adopt by the official channels, were they too old or something.  However, I've since met the adoptive couple (and my daughter) and they were not too old or anything, just a normal couple who had been married for about 7 years and hadn't had a child.  They told me that someone had told them about the home and that they could ask for a baby and just be given one    However, they went straight to social services (or the 1960s equivalent) the following morning to tell them about the baby and worried until I signed the papers.

Lizzie

[Atlanta1]

Thank you so much for your message - I believe my mother stayed in lodgings until her baby was due, but I have heard awful tales.

It looks like I will never find my brother and just hope that nice respectable people adopted him from this terrible place. 

It seems that this would make great TV invesigation?
x

[maxbuddy]

that would b a brilliant idea for a tv investigation the bbc are brill at doing things lyk that. there are so many of us that were adopted from there and have birth relative adopted from there that dont know anything or cannot find out, i only found out  thru the identity passport service and getting my orig b, cert that the address was on there. maybe we should do something like that

[maxbuddy]

through the identity passport office i have now found out who my birth parents were and have manged to go back 300 years on birth family, my local adoption counselor is brilliant and has helped sooo much, i have found out i have a brother, and she is dealing with all the paperwork and contact,so now i wait and see what happens next

[dawnsh]

There was a program on ITV recently - Long Lost Family - with Nicky Campbell & Davina McCall, which helped reunite families that had become fractured for many resons not only adoption.

http://www.itv.com/longlostfamily/

I would like to add that there are hundreds of very grown-up adults out there in the world that have no idea they have been adopted. They usually discover this fact after both of their adoptive parents have died and they are required to provide a copy of their birth cert for which no entry can be found in the GRO index. They are then in the awful position of not having anyone to ask about their birth cirmcumstances.

These are adults who were adopted as children well before the adoption laws changed so they don't have an automtic right to see their files without having an interview first.

In these enlighened times, there is very little stigma to having an illegitimate child, not so 40+ years ago. Some children were put up for adoption because of family circumstances, others beause they were born as a result of physical abuse.

These mothers gave up their children in the knowledge that they would not be contacted in the future and then went on with their lives. Many have families that have no idea of what happened in the past.

For each story where there is a happy ending with a reunion, there will always be many that do not end in this way.

I would like to remind you all that Rootschat does have a 'no living person' policy, this is one of the reasons why.

[Atlanta1]

OK the next step - who is up for trying to get a programme/investigation done on St. Margarets?

[maxbuddy]

definitely, if it comes up with something that helps people then im all for it cant hurtx

[Atlanta1]

great can you send me a private message with your email address - don't quite know how we can go about this, but it will be fun trying.  First thing I suppose is to get as much information about the place IE when built / closed - pictures etc what do you think?  maybe we should also try and produced a website specifically for this place and people with an interest in it?

[Valda]

Hi

By 1943 there certainly was a list of registered adoption agencies.

http://hansard.millbanksystems.com/written_answers/1943/dec/08/adoption-of-children-registered-societies 

St Margaret's Nursing Home seems to have been nursing the elderly as there is evidence of their deaths at the home, so it is likely there was an attached small unmarried mother's hostel at the same institution. They would not be registered as an adoption agency like other similar small institutions at the time. There is no reason to necessarily believe that adoptions from this hostel were not applied for through a registered agency (though records are likely to be much more scant when not handled directly through the registered agency itself and much more likely to seem 'unofficial' and like many other similar small 'hostels' probably were) which is why the 'Adoption Search  Reunion' website suggests checking with Barnadoes and the National Children's Home to see if any 'paper trail' at all still exists.

http://www.adoptionsearchreunion.org.uk/search/adoptionrecords/homeDetail.aspx?id=15

It seems from some of the replies to this topic that it is variable whether paperwork has been possible to find or not.

If the adoption was done through the London County Council (Hackney council did not exist until 1965) the London Metropolitan Archives will hold the files. They also hold court adoption proceeding files for some London courts.

http://217.154.230.218/NR/rdonlyres/FA09DD39-F5B1-41D9-8ED2-CFD1CB839254/0/InfoIncareAdoptionEnquirer.pdf

The scandal of the way adoptions were handled in this country until relatively recent times is the 'scandal'. St Margaret's itself is unlikely to be unique in this and was probably viewed at the time as doing 'good or at least necessary work' though of course this was the sort of work a small private organisation gained an income from. The income may have been in part used to help maintain the nursing home.

Searching the internet doesn't seem to give any evidence that the nursing home existed after 1965 but it probably lasted longer than that. With adoption regulations tightening and the arrival of a local council that would increasingly have responsibility for the legalities, the hostel may have ceased to exist before the nursing home which may have been in existence before the hostel (the internet gives evidence of births there from at least 1943 up to the early 1960s). By the late 1960s attitudes and with it legislation were changing signalling the end for unmarried mothers' private hostels such as St Margarets, which was an institution from an earlier time reflecting the prevailing atitudes of society at the time. There seems no evidence that it was any worse or better than any of the others.


Regards

Valda