Adoption mystery

[grungefrog]

My Great Grandfather John Dowey, born 1877, was the illegitimate son of a Liverpool servant girl, Eliza Dowey: his birth certificate has a blank space for father's name. By the 1881 census (aged 4) he's living with a prosperous family called Beldham, who brought him up and educated him.

I'm wondering how this could have happened? Was it common for middle-class couples to "adopt" underprivileged children? Who might have organised this? Churches? Charities?

[avm228]

Churches and charities (often religious charities) did place children, yes.  Often they ran homes for single mothers and then placed the babies with "suitable" families.

However, children could also be placed informally between members of a family or community, or by contact through advertisement, or by those in charge of a workhouse.

I have two known instances of informal adoption in the 1860s-1880s in my tree.

In one case (Yorkshire) the child of an impoverished young widow was permanently placed with a very distant and childless cousin-by-marriage who lived a long way away.  The connection between them took some tracing, so I would be amazed if they knew each other, but first contact was presumably made through the family network.

In another case (London) my ggg grandparents only had one natural child, a son.  A few years later they took in an illegitimate girl from the workhouse as a "nurse child" (foster child) and she went on to become a permanent part of the family, described as an adopted daughter.  In due course her birth mother had another daughter in the workhouse, and my relatives "adopted" her too.

Do you know where John was born (home, workhouse etc)?  Did the Beldham family have other children?

[avm228]

Have you seen that when John Clarence Ernest Lloyd Dowey married Mary Hannah Sharp in 1904, he named his father as John Lloyd, a draper? It was then "struck out...according to rules for illegitimacy".

If John's paternity was known to him, then it may be worth investigating any possible link between the natural father and the adoptive family, as well as the natural mother.

[grungefrog]

Thanks so much for the two replies so far. My Gr Grandfather was born in a private house: 13 Rupert Hill, Everton. The Beldham's were no relation as far as I know, but they were in the drapery business according to the censuses.

avm228, I'm just wondering where you found the reference to "John Lloyd, draper" which was struck out? I've got the 1904 statutory marriage certificate and there's no mention on there...?

[avm228]

The struck out entry is in the original parish record (which you may be able to see on Ancestry).  Having been struck out in the parish register, it will not have been included on a statutory certificate.

[grungefrog]

I have free access to Ancestry.com at my public library: I'll definitely look that up tomorrow. It would make sense that the father's surname was Lloyd, as that is one of my Gr Grandfather's christian names. My Gr Grandfather's "foster father" was Robert Beldham, listed as "draper's assistant" in 1881. They were living at 13 Houlton street, West Derby (Liverpool). As John Lloyd & Robert Beldham were both drapers, perhaps they worked together....

[brigidmac]

It was very common practice to give the birth father's surname as a middle name to child ...it helped in paternity cases . My great -grandmother  Lottie Roberts put father's surname on birth certificate as a middle name for her daughter Maisie Fellman Roberts....then sued for maintanence once she received the affiliation order she had her child baptised as Maisie Myriam Roberts !  It's definitely worth seeing original records .

[grungefrog]

Would fathers have paid maintenance back in the 1880s or 90s? In this case it would have been to the foster parents not the mother...

[brigidmac]

The affiliation order for my grandmother is dated jan 1900  4/- per week until the girl is 14 years of age  plus£1-1-0 medical attendant .It must have been common practice if a dressmakers assistant knew how to apply .!
Wirral council carchives found document for me there wasn't a  newspaper court case record . we found no concrete evidence that money was paid to the foster family but the birth father did pay at least one lump sum  of £2-2s-6d in March 1900 as it's written in the margin of the original document .My supposition is that he paid the foster family instead ;
 because he was still around in the 1901 census ,
the birth mother had disappeared
 the 30year old daughter of the Foster family was not working as a shirt-maker (her job in 1891) so maybe she  became a paid child-minder of sorts  .