Adoption
Researching adoption presents particular challenges for family historians. Gill Rossini explains the records that you need to access
Piecing together the diverse and tantalising fragments of an adoption frequently involves painstaking research. Until the late 1920s adoptions were largely informal, rarely generating any meaningful paperwork and not enforceable in law. Organisations such as children’s homes and adoption societies were sometimes short-lived, and their records have not survived; other adoptions were intra-family adoptions, or ‘stranger’ adoptions, with no paperwork at all.
The situation changed significantly on 1 January 1927, when the 1926
Adoption of Children Act became law. Adoptions could now be legally recognised and recorded, and the adopted child had the status of a parent’s biological child, although it’s important to note that informal adoptions still continued for years. This
‘From 1 January 1927 adoptions could be legally recognised’
legal process could be supported by intermediaries such as adoption agencies, charities and individuals.
Over the decades, the secrecy surrounding legal adoption intensified, and this development eventually led to birth families being entirely shut out.
Because pre-1927 adoptions had no legal weight, there was no compulsion on either the birth or the adoptive family to stick to the arrangement. They could end abruptly, creating an unstable environment for the child. Some adoptees were claimed back by their birth parents once they reached working age, while others were returned by their adoptive parents for reasons that may seem hugely trivial, such as the child having the ‘wrong’ hair colour.
The only ‘permanent’ arrangements were those that were made by the local board of guardians, who managed poor relief and could foster out children in their care. Without legal formalities and proper supervision, a child’s origins were soon lost.
How Can I Trace Pre-1927 Adoptions?
First, if you suspect that a child was informally adopted into your family, study their name. Do any middle names or changes of surname hint at birth parentage? Also, place of birth on the census may be different to that of other siblings, and variations in surname and relationship to head of household can occur with each census. Family stories may have been passed down of a child’s ‘mother’ actually being the grandmother, while their sister is in fact the biological mother, and so on.
Second, most adopted or fostered children were illegitimate, which widens the range of useful records to bastardy papers such as affiliation orders, as well as poor-relief records such as workhouse admission and birth registers – where the mother resorted to the workhouse infirmary as a place to give birth. From c1900, the Board of Guardians could assume parental rights over a child and organise their foster care. Pauper foster children could be illegitimate or from abjectly poor or neglectful families. Poor-relief and bastardy records are housed
‘Some adoptees were claimed back once they reached working age’
at county and local archives, and may be available online.
Third, search for records of institutions. Hospital records
An adopted person’s relatives can use an intermediary service to make contact with biological and non-biological relatives, if the adoption took place before 2005. may reveal information about mother and baby, as could the records of mother and baby homes and adoption societies from c1900 onwards. Early examples are the National Adoption Society, the National Children Adoption Association and the British-American Adoption Society. The likes of Dr Barnardo’s and the Waifs and Strays Society recorded the fostering of hundreds of children in their care in the late Victorian and Edwardian eras, although note that some institutional records are sealed for 100 years for privacy reasons.
Finally, local solicitors sometimes drew up private maintenance arrangements between birth parents until such time as the child was adopted or the mother married; these may be deposited in the local archive. Occasionally, a birth father might acknowledge illegitimate offspring in his will, or adoptive parents may refer to the adopted child’s status in their will.
How Can I Trace Adoptions From 1927?
First, check the Adopted Children Register. The register is maintained by the General Register