How can I track down my missing adopted cousin?
QCharles David Dougherty (born 4 October 1919) was the legitimate son of my uncle, Charles Edward Dougherty (born 13 August 1895). Sadly, Charles Edward’s wife later died of TB at the Tuberculosis Hospital, Llangfenfri, Wales, on 25 November 1924, about three years after Charles David’s birth. The word “adopted” appears on his birth certificate. How can I find out what happened to him? Colin MacGrath, by email
AThe word “adopted” was typically added to birth records from 1927 onwards, after a child was officially adopted and when an adoption certificate had been issued.
Charles was born in 1919, around seven years before it was legally possible to adopt a child. The first Adoption Act was passed in England and Wales in 1926: prior to that time, an adoption was made on an informal basis only and the adoptive parents had no legal rights. For the registrar to have added this word means that the adoption was official and must therefore have taken place after 1927, when this child would have been at least eight years old.
Tracing a child’s adoptive name is not possible via the usual genealogical sources and there are very strict guidelines concerning the disclosure of adoption files. However, a potential source for such an early official adoption would be the local petty sessions court’s adoption register.
For early post-1927 cases, magistrates were responsible for approving adoptions in a local petty sessions court. In Wales the courts’ surviving pre-1942 adoption registers can be viewed at the county archives (those after 1942 are closed to the public under the 75-year rule).
The depth of information available in these records varies from case to case and from court to court – some include the children’s names and ages along with details of their birth parent(s) and adoptive parents, while the content of others can yield hardly any clues as to the identity of the child or parents.
As the Dougherty family appears to have been living in Llangefni, Anglesey, during the mid-1920s, it may be worthwhile starting your search at the Anglesey Archives where the local Adoption Register is kept ( www.anglesey.gov.uk/ leisure/records-and-archives). Eilir Ann Daniels