Mother and Baby Homes

[ljweller]

Hi there

I am currently trying to locate where my great-aunt may have had her baby.  We have been told that she did go to a mother and baby unit to have her baby but that the baby was privately adopted afterwards (through the church we believe).  I assume the mother and baby home was not local.

These days I know that births have to registered at the place of birth even if that isn't at their usual place of residence but I am wondering if that has always been the case?  Could she have had her baby elsewhere and still registered the birth locally?

If anyone has any advice on how I might go about researching this I would be most grateful to hear it!  Thanks.

Laura

[Mary8]

Where & when was the mother & baby home ?

Mary

[AntonyMMM]

A birth always has to be registered in the district in which it took place - that has been the case since 1837.

If you know roughly when the birth would have been then you can look for potentially illegitimate births under your aunts surname. You may have to buy a number of certificates to find the one you want, and much will depend on how unusual a surname she had.

Mothers could sometimes go  quite some distance from home to have the baby - from Liverpool to Edinburgh in one case I looked at ...

[iolaus]

The birth would be registered in the district it occurred in.

Don't forget that some districts are not that small, and going 'away' to have the baby may have only meant going a few miles away to the next town - some areas are very insular, so 10 miles could be enough to provide annonimity, yet still be in the same district

[josey]

If you know roughly when the birth would have been then you can look for potentially illegitimate births under your aunts surname. You may have to buy a number of certificates to find the one you want, and much will depend on how unusual a surname she had.

You can do this on freebmd.org by looking for births with the same surname for registration and mother's maiden name [if after 1915]; if before use the GRO index at https://www.gro.gov.uk/gro/content/ although if you do not know the gender of the baby you will have to try both male & female. And as AntonyMMM says, if it is a common surname that will be difficult.

when was the baby born?

Useful if you could let us know this ljweller....