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Northamptonshire / Re: N0RTHAMPTON - Home for illegitimate babies
« on: Tuesday 21 July 15 23:02 BST (UK) »
Dear Colette,
No problem at all. If you would rather communicate privately then perhaps we could use the Personal Messages on the Forum?
The court would be unlikely, on the basis of a phone call, to send you the full original paperwork. In fact they may not hold it. The website adoptionsearchreunion has information on where the records might be (everything depends upon how your mother was adopted, through what agency if any and so on) and also how you, as the child of an adopted child, might go about obtaining access to these records (especially the original full birth certificate, which will have your grandmother's name on it).
For instance, if she was adopted through the National Adoption Society, then you would have to contact Brent Council, (the person to contact and her email are on the adoptionsearchreunion website) because the NAS no longer exists and all of their records are held at Brent. (This I know because my son was adopted through this agency.)
Very possibly your grandmother had little or no choice about giving up her daughter for adoption. There was little or no state support for unmarried mothers and many parents wanted (as in my case) nothing to do with their grandson. His existence equalled shame, shame that I had brought on them.
The age of the mothers usually ranged from mid-teens (15-16) to mid-twenties. There would occasionally have been younger girls, of course, and so too women in their later twenties, perhaps even early thirties. But the majority of unmarried mothers-to-be were between 17-23, I would guess, by the 1960s at any rate.
Best regards,
Anne
No problem at all. If you would rather communicate privately then perhaps we could use the Personal Messages on the Forum?
The court would be unlikely, on the basis of a phone call, to send you the full original paperwork. In fact they may not hold it. The website adoptionsearchreunion has information on where the records might be (everything depends upon how your mother was adopted, through what agency if any and so on) and also how you, as the child of an adopted child, might go about obtaining access to these records (especially the original full birth certificate, which will have your grandmother's name on it).
For instance, if she was adopted through the National Adoption Society, then you would have to contact Brent Council, (the person to contact and her email are on the adoptionsearchreunion website) because the NAS no longer exists and all of their records are held at Brent. (This I know because my son was adopted through this agency.)
Very possibly your grandmother had little or no choice about giving up her daughter for adoption. There was little or no state support for unmarried mothers and many parents wanted (as in my case) nothing to do with their grandson. His existence equalled shame, shame that I had brought on them.
The age of the mothers usually ranged from mid-teens (15-16) to mid-twenties. There would occasionally have been younger girls, of course, and so too women in their later twenties, perhaps even early thirties. But the majority of unmarried mothers-to-be were between 17-23, I would guess, by the 1960s at any rate.
Best regards,
Anne