wrj,
could u please put up for which country the soul was alleged to have been born... so you get correct answer.... as different countries not always follow the Westminster principles , and I would also consult St Barnardos regarding the time period as the laws did change slightly once the equality and human rights laws started to alter family law court matters....
a verbal with St B will give you a thorough indicator, and sometimes it is even worthy to pay the nominal sum to have them send any data file they may be able to find on the soul in question.
on one hand it is a good thing that someone wants to establish contact if they are distant kin but I do put caution to the wind on these sorts of events confronting genealogists that have a lot of material using electronic means
there is a moderate article on this link >
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adoptionfor those generally interested in this topic and I would say that if one googles adoption + country name + legal, there are sites that do come up
(i would also like to make comment here , that I have done numerous adoption genealogy files and some are easy to spot from 1837 to 1910 through our usual research methods , but thereafter are almost impossible to find unless you have government information)
but its all good hopefully
