giving a baby up without a trace

[coffeegossip]

Can anyone tell me if you gave a baby up for adoption in the 1940's there is a traceable record. For example if you were the mother and did not want a legal record could you have the baby, not name it and just hand it over to the authorities, or if you had a baby was it law to register it before handing it over?

[Just Kia]

Regardless of law people must have handed babies over that were not registered.
After all there are "foundlings" - children that have been left somewhere (sometimes with a note, but not always).

With home births being the norm it probably wouldn't be too difficult to avoid the authorities.
Not sure if midwives had a responsibility to ensure a birth was registered or not, but then again I expect many women gave birth without a midwife anyway.

That said adoption became official in 1927 - before that there was no official adoption process, baby would just be handed over to whomever the parents decided.

[alyson123]

Coffeegossip,
There should be a traceable record IF, the adoption took place through the authorities. There would also have been an original birth cert with baby's
name, mother's name and possibly father's name, place of birth etc.
All babies had to be registered by law.
Alyson123

[stanmapstone]

As this was the 1940s a birth certificate would have been needed to obtain a ration book, but the baby could have been registered by the the person who the baby was given to, the Registrar would accept what he was told by that person.

Stan

[coffeegossip]

I suspect my mother gave up a baby without a trace with the help of her parents - she has told me that she had a miscarriage (I dont believe her). I am curious how she could have done this legally/illegally and whether this child if it lived could ever track my mother down. (I wouldnt mind).

[Finley 1]

Hello

I cant help you with your search, but just hope that whatever comes out of it doesnt upset you .. or family... take care in digging out secrets, sometimes they are painful...
xin

all the best

[Shropshire Lass]

If the child was handed over unofficially and registered by another couple as their baby, there's no official way for him/her to find your mother's name.

The only possible way would be if someone who knew what had happened passed the story on.  It does happen, eg. a letter left with a will because one of the adopted parents felt the child should know but couldn't face doing it while alive or another relative/neighbour/friend who knew the mother had never been pregnant and tells the story.

It can happen in quite casual ways.  I have a friend who was completely shocked, as a pensioner, to find that her mother was her grandmother and that her sister was her real mother.  She was visiting two elderly relatives and mentioned her mother only for one of them to say, quite casually, "Of course, she wasn't really your mother".

[Shropshire Lass]

I suspect my mother gave up a baby without a trace with the help of her parents - she has told me that she had a miscarriage (I dont believe her). I am curious how she could have done this legally/illegally and whether this child if it lived could ever track my mother down. (I wouldnt mind).

There's always the possibility that her parents told her the baby had been still-born.

[carol8353]

Is the surname rare enough and the place of the birth known for you to check the indexes.You will not find the 1940's complete in Free BMD ,so would need to check the full indexes on Ancestry or Find My past.

Are you expecting this baby to have been born before she married-if so both the surname and mothers maiden name will be the same.

There is a separate still birth register,and don't forget to look for babies registered as Male or female,esp if they weren't expected to live.

Carol