Doriscourt Nursing Home Whalley Range

[LizzieW]

I guess he just didn't get on with his parents then.  Not unusual for people born in the 1940s or 50s I would suggest, unlike today where the children seem to be friends with their parents and don't want to leave home.  I couldn't wait to leave home and a friend of mine just moved out and went to live with her gran, only a couple of doors away from her parents, but she never saw her parents. 

[michael Turnbull]

I have just picked up a new copy of my Birth certificate and it turns out that I was also born in Doris Court, Whalley Range in 1960. I always had been told that I was born in a nursing home near Stretford from my mother but now I know it's name. I have no details of the history of the building or even if it still exists but I will try to research. I'm hopeful of finding some old archive photo's?  My family are all Church of England.

[Barbara.H]

Hi Michael, welcome to Rootschat 

If you go to Manchester Local Image Collection
http://images.manchester.gov.uk/index.php?session=pass

and enter Doriscourt (all one word) into the Search box, you will get two photos from around 1960, one of which has already been mentioned in an earlier post by lib58 on March 31st.
Double-click on the Image Collection photos to enlarge them

  Barbara

[michael Turnbull]

Thank you Barbara!   I have now downloaded. they were taken the year I was born so it's how the building looked at the time.... Super!

[NickMG]

I was also born at Doris Court and would really appreciate a bit of help. I never got to find my birth mother and guess I never will. I am, however a writer and am researching about my past and the plight of others like me and indeed our birth mothers at around this time. Here is a link to a radio interview to the BBC in Northern Ireland which is where I now live
https://audioboom.com/boos/2351232-big-interview-nickmgarbutt-s-story-of-his-childhood-adoption-bbcnolan

I would be very grateful if any of you could share with me any details you can remember of Mary Walsh, what she was like, how she looked, anything like that plus any details any of you can remember from your time there, how you were treated, what the staff were like what the "skivvie" work involved anything at all would be really helpful
Nick

[LizzieW]

Nick - thank you for the nudge on another thread.

I'm sorry I can't help you. I have a vague memory of a large Victorian House,  I don't remember anything about Mary Walsh, I can't even picture her build never mind her face.  I was only there from Monday to Friday when my baby was born (I was suffering from severe backache) and I slept in a small room with just enough room for a single bed, on the Friday I  must have been in labour.  I remember walking along a hallway, oddly I don't remember any labour pains apart from backache.  My baby was born and I stayed there for 10 days.  I don't remember being treated badly as a patient, I can picture the first ward I was in which I think was upstairs (although I seem to remember the labour ward was downstairs) and my parents came to visit, then the next thing I can remember is the day I was going home and my mother came to collect me, (they didn't visit me the rest of the time I was there). I was in a downstairs ward by then and I had to leave my baby behind.  Of course in those days babies weren't left with mums all the time, they were just brought to you to feed them and then taken back to the nursery.  I know I must have been allowed to go out to the shops because I bought a beautiful dress for my daughter - I now have a photograph of her wearing it when she was a bit older.

My daughter asked me about it when she found me again but I couldn't bring anything to mind to tell her either.  I know the date of her birth but I have no idea what time of day it was.  I guess I've blanked it all out.

As I wasn't one of the skivvies, my parents having found a nice lady for me to stay with, I don't know how they were treated or what jobs they had to do.  I imagine it must have been cleaning the wards, helping out with meals etc. maybe even laundering baby clothes and nappies - in those days mums didn't bring in their own baby clothes until the day they took the baby home and, of course, there weren't any disposable nappies then.

Lizzie

[NickMG]

Lizzie -
Thank you so much for your kindness in responding. It was generous of you to share your thoughts. I'm not surprised that so much of that time is a blank - the whole experience must have been so traumatic. Even telling me that is very helpful as I try to understand the past. I will never be able to trace my birth mother now (the name Mary Brennan is very common in Ireland, the only address she gave was Doris Court itself and the space for my father was left blank, and as you know Mary Walsh did not keep records, I never bothered with the court records as I'm pretty sure they are more about whether mum and dad were suitable people to adopt) It is also obvious she was wanting to keep it all secret, and I respect that, nevertheless I think about her every year on my birthday, and hope she is okay and that all her wounds are healed.

[LizzieW]

Nick - the only thing I can say is that when I left Doriscourt when my baby was 10 days old, her new parents collected her the same day.  They have said there was no check on them or anything and they were so worried about this that they went straight to the social services (or whatever it was called over 50 years ago) to report the fact they had this new baby for adoption.  It seemed that after a few years of marriage they hadn't been able to produce a baby and they were told, possibly by their GP, about Doriscourt.  They applied there to have a baby and they had mine.

I did meet one of the girls who'd had to work there prior to giving birth, some months later. (I would liked to have kept in touch but my mother forbid me, in case anyone found out how we'd met!)  By coincidence, although she lived some long way from me, her grandparents lived quite near me.  What she did say was that she too, and other girls that had been there the same time as her, just left their babies behind at 10 days, so I assume their new parents just picked them up too.  It seems that Mary Walsh was running a private adoption scheme, at least as far as my baby was concerned no money changed hands, but whether this was the norm I don't know. 

I know I was told not to mention to anyone when I went to sign the adoption papers that I'd just left the baby, I was to say that I'd decided to let some people my parents knew adopt the baby.

I'm sorry you've not been able to find your birth mother.  I used to worry that, because of the nature of the adoption, my daughter's parents were either too old, or something else was wrong that had stopped them going through the normal channels, but as it turned out they were absolutely fine - and as often happens they produced their own child just over a year later.  The last time I went to see them (the adoptive parents) the mum said if people ask how many children she has she always says 2, then she looked at me and said "You don't mind me saying that do you, because 1 of them is yours really"  Of course I told her I didn't mind and that her daughter was no longer mine.  They were adamant from the day they picked up my daughter that when she was an adult they would find me, and when they did her father had photographs of the whole of her lifetime ready for me, which is wonderful.

Lizzie

[NickMG]

I am so pleased to hear this Lizzie. I think it is wonderful that things worked out so well in the end right down to being able to see those precious pictures. Further evidence for me of how good people are ...
I'm also as certain as I can be that no money changed hands at Doriscourt. From all my mum and dad told me Mary Walsh was actually a good woman who was helping people escape from the dreadful things that were done to "fallen women" at that time and the reason why there were so many Catholic and Jewish girls there at the time was because of how they might otherwise have been treated ... the launderies, those terrible childrens' homes with the physical and sexual abuse, the forced migrations to Australia and the USA etc. I had a happy home and a happy life and count myself very lucky ... I just wish my birth mother knew that and never felt bad about it .
Nick