Author Topic: Adoption in England in the 1920s  (Read 6981 times)

Offline jen56johns

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Adoption in England in the 1920s
« on: Wednesday 02 November 16 15:51 GMT (UK) »
Can anyone shed some light on how adoption may have worked in the late 1920s? I'm researching for a friend.  Her grandmother and two unrelated siblings were adopted as babies in 1926, 1928 and 1929 and appeared on the adoption register when it begain in 1934.  Amazingly, the adoption register listed their birth christian names as well as their adopted names so I've been able to find the original births of two of these children.

The adopting couple lived in Devon.  They adopted a girl from Devon born in 1926 and a boy from Manchester born in 1929.  How would they have come to adopt a baby from so far away?  I know adoption became legal in 1926 but who facilitated this - places like Barnardos?

One of the adopted children is still alive and I've just found his original birth certificate.  Who would have his adoption records and how could he go about getting them?  Now that he knows who he originally was, the question still remains on how he came to be adopted from Manchester to Devon.

Oh, and one last question - the birth certificate has the adopted notation on it.  Is that added after the adoption is registered?  So it might be years later?

Thanks for any help anyone can give.
Johns - Cornwall
McNerney - Manchester
Speakman - Manchester
Warman - Faringdon
Utting - Norfolk

Offline ScouseBoy

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Re: Adoption in England in the 1920s
« Reply #1 on: Wednesday 02 November 16 15:57 GMT (UK) »
It may have been the Church of England   or  another major Church  that facilitated the adoption.
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Re: Adoption in England in the 1920s
« Reply #2 on: Wednesday 02 November 16 16:07 GMT (UK) »
How the Locating Adoption Records database can help you find records

http://www.adoptionsearchreunion.org.uk/search/questions/

Child adoption had no legal status in Britain (including under the separate legal system of Scotland) until 1926, when the first Act was passed which regulated this in England and Wales. Until then, child adoption was an informal and generally secretive procedure which gave the adoptive parents no rights whatsoever: a biological parent could (and in some cases, did) appear at any time and demand custody of a child they had neither seen nor contributed to the care of for years at a time.

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Offline dawnsh

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Re: Adoption in England in the 1920s
« Reply #3 on: Wednesday 02 November 16 20:09 GMT (UK) »
In the first instance, an adopted person should contact the GRO at Southport and arrange to view their files but will require counselling before access is made as the adoption was before 1975. It shouldn't be a problem though.

https://www.gov.uk/adoption-records/accessing-your-birth-records

If you have found the entries in the adopted childrens register, then you'll know from that when the adoption was granted by the courts. It's at that point the Registrar General issues instructions to the local Superintendent Registrar for the original entry in the birth register to be annotated with 'adopted', likewise the duplicate copy at the GRO is also annotated.

The adoption register came into existence in 1927, along with the introduction of legal adoptions.

Many adoptive parents chose to, and still do, give adopted children new names as if they were giving birth and chosing names for them. It's hard to quantitfy how many children were completely re-named but if the child was adopted later in life there is more chance the original birth first names would have carried through to adoption.
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Offline jen56johns

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Re: Adoption in England in the 1920s
« Reply #4 on: Wednesday 09 November 16 11:57 GMT (UK) »
Thanks everyone for the information.

Dawnsh, it was you who provided me with invaluable information from the adoption register two years ago.  This allowed me to trace the original birth certificates of 2 out of 3 children adopted by the same family.

Thank you.
Johns - Cornwall
McNerney - Manchester
Speakman - Manchester
Warman - Faringdon
Utting - Norfolk

Offline medpat

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Re: Adoption in England in the 1920s
« Reply #5 on: Wednesday 09 November 16 12:19 GMT (UK) »
How did he get from Manchester to Devon?

My aunt and uncle in mid 1950s started a process to adopt after several years of trying for children with no success. They became aunt and uncle to a boy who was from somewhere in the south of England. He started to stay at their house at weekends. We were however in what is now the West Midlands. The boy's father died about 1947 of wounds he sustained during WW2 and his mother became ill and died when he was about 7. The local homes had no vacancies so he was sent where there was one.

My aunt and uncle hesitated about the final step and in the meantime relatives of his mother decided to adopt him and he went back down south. I can't remember where he was from but remember he had a strange accent. :)

Just as a postscript the following year my aunt and uncle, to everyone's surprise, had a son followed by a daughter 3 years later. They did however become foster parents having seen the number of children needing parents in post war Britain.
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Offline Gillg

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Re: Adoption in England in the 1920s
« Reply #6 on: Thursday 10 November 16 12:02 GMT (UK) »
A few years later, but my brother was adopted in 1937 as a baby.  My parents lived near Manchester, but my brother was born in Plymouth, so my parents had to travel down there to collect him.  The adoption was arranged by one of the big adoption societies which covered the whole of England.  They must have selected my parents because they thought that they were suitable for that particular child.  As it happened, both my mother and my brother had red hair and blue eyes and both were very musical, so maybe that's why.  Although I was born naturally to my parents some time later, I didn't have red hair, much to my father's disappointment!
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Offline PrawnCocktail

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Re: Adoption in England in the 1920s
« Reply #7 on: Thursday 10 November 16 12:32 GMT (UK) »
My great aunt's husband was abandoned in a Home by his mother when he was a small child, round about 1906 when his father died, along with some of his sisters. He was bor and up till then lived in Yorkshire. We found him in Essex in 1911, boarded out with a family, labelled "Home Child". One of his sisters was in an orphanage in Alverstoke, Hampshire, and another in an orphanage in Sutton Coldfield. Clearly no attempt was made to keep them together, and it all seems very random, where they went.
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Offline Quaker22

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Re: Adoption in England in the 1920s
« Reply #8 on: Saturday 29 April 17 14:38 BST (UK) »
Hi, how did you find the info on the 1934 adoption register? I'd love to check it. My dad's younger brother was allegedly adopted as an infant in about 1928. Despite searches over more than 6 decades, nothing more than his birth certificate has ever been found. My dad's father abandoned his family, then the boys' mother left them with their paternal grandparents in London, who didn't want them (despite being wealthy and able to keep them). The boys were fostered together and my dad remained with his foster family in West London. After a while, however, his brother was taken from the foster family and my dad was told he was adopted. It's possible that this was done informally, as I understand that, despite the new regulations, these weren't yet consistently observed in the late 1920s. We've considered that the little boy may have died (but have found no death record under his birth name) in England. He could have been taken overseas. There are so many unknowns and, given the mores of the time, nothing much was spoken of. Would it have been common for a young child with two living parents and extensive paternal and maternal families to have been fostered and/or adopted then? The parents were married and both boys were born legitimately. What processes would have been followed? What did fostering (with the foster child, my dad, retaining his full birth name)? Thanks for any insight or referrals to info. This has been frustratingly puzzling for so long!