Minority Parenthood, Guardianship and Adoption -- Pre-1930

[Wyresider]

May I pick the brains of our legal historians on adoption around the turn of the 20th century? -- before the Adoption Act but hopefully into an age of some legal enlightenment.

Suppose a minor had a child and no father was registered. Presumably the grandfather would be the child's legal guardian? Assuming this to be correct, the question is this: would the guardian's powers extend to giving the child up for `legal' adoption (to such extent as the term meant before the 1930 Act, eg a formal contract) against the mother's wish? Or would both guardian and mother have to sign the contact?

[Falkyrn]

It is unlikey, I believe, that there would have been any formal contract for any party to sign. Many adoptions were informal arrangements often within the greater family although some orgnisations did become involved Barnardos, The Church, Salvation Army etc and quite possibly only then would there have been any paperwork involved.

Scots law regarding minority is complex and provides rights at differing ages for different events however I don't believe that the grandparents "right of guardianship" would over rule the natural legal rights of the birth mother. Although whether she would choose to enforce those rights is another matter.

Whether the family kept the child or it was adopted depended very much upon the family circumstances ... I have come across examples where a child was raised by its grandmother as a sister or brother to its own mother.

A number of factors would also influence the mother
1) her family - supportive or not
2) the father
3) peer or group pressure ( the shame on the family etc etc)
4) The church - depending very much upon the dates concerned but the attitude of the kirk could be a very powerful weapon and could influence 1 2 & 3

Pressure could be brought upon the mother "to do the right thing" guided of course by her "elders and betters" - Society was very different then and options were limited (i.e. do what you're told or get out sort of attitude)

[joette]

My Granny had two children out of wedlock in 1919& 1920.They were both raised by her parents as their children.
Any decision over their education,recreational activities etc were taken by the grandparents with no reference to my Granny who was off age when they were both born.This was common practise then.
When her son was dying of TB & calling for her saying "Mum Mum" for the first time & telling his Granny "Not you I want my Mother" they waited until he had died & then told her of his last few words which I thought was an especially cruel act.It seems that an unmarried Mother had no rights to feelings or consideration.
In fact when my Aunt was visiting from London & my Granny refferred to her as my "Daughter from London" in the corner shop her sister was very upset saying "They will think I am a liar I have told them she is my sister".
.
My Granny was a strong character & over 21 so how a under-age lass would have had any say or power over what happened to her child legally or otherwise I very much doubt.
Her daughter pre-deceased her too & I can remember the pain & anger in her voice when her sisters came to break the news
"Again my place is not recognised"
She burnt their birth certificates & her first marriage certificate on the fire that night-I had never seen her lose control like that ever nor did I see her do so again.
I will add also that many many girls/ women were placed in Asylums as being found "morally degenerate" in having a child out of wedlock.So a family raising the child & in Granny's case two was seen as fairly benevolent & enlightened for those days.

[Falkyrn]

The experiences related by joette speak very eloquently of the attitudes of the period much more so than my simple observation.

During my working life I occasionally called in at a residential home where I met a woman in her 70's who had been institutionalised in the 1920's for the crime of having a child out of wedlock and "disgracing her family".

When looking back it is sometimes difficult to realise how much society has changed and the effects that this would have had on our forebears. Things which we would consider intolerable and probably illegal would have been accepted as common place.

[Alan SHARP]

My Granny had two children out of wedlock in 1919& 1920.They were both raised by her parents as their children.

Greetings.

My extended family research, finally lead me to a family I had been trying to locate for 20 years. A lady within that branch was a Genealogical Society Member who gave me a well researched tree with 247 names on it. What a find.

The source data notes indicated that a teenage girl, in one quite large family, had had a child (son) which had been raised by it’s Grand Parents, as though it was an after thought of theirs. So well prepared, and documented, was the material, that I mistakenly assumed the material therein, was common knowledge to that branch of the family.

The boy grew into a man, who had a successful career employed by our government; married and raised a family. When I phoned him to seek more information about his late grand parents (who raised him) he completely caught me by surprise, by continually referring to them as his parents. I was left feeling it was not just a case of him having been raised, calling them Mum and Dad, and could not help wonder what, if any thing, he had told his kids.

Having been involved for many years in an adoption support division, of a Parent Centre Group, I know how confusing such white lies can become, for some young adults.

So I've found one has to tread carefully, when doing research that extends to the living.

Alan SHARP.

[Wyresider]

Thanks to all contributors for the above.

There are some horror stories there. I knew that illegitimacy was "frowned upon" but I thought that things like putting the mother in an institution had died out with Dickens. I had no idea it could still be done in the 1920s.

It looks from some of these stories like, even if Falkyrn was right to say that the grandparent's powers as guardian would not over-rule the natural legal rights of the birth mother, the law might not always be given much say in the matter.

If the grandparents wanted to get rid of the child rather than adopt it themselves, I wonder if there were any cases of a (grand)father trying to "save" his teenage daughter from growing up encumbered by an "accident" by registering the birth in the name of A.N.Other who could then quite "legally" (ignoring the gross illegality of the registration) arrange a remote adoption, perhaps with an orphanage who might want the birth certificate?

I know of a case much further back (the child was born about 1855) where the lad was raised by his widower natural father (who gave him his own surname) then, on his father's death by his half-brother (who gave him back his mother's surname) then, when he married, gave his parents' names and his father's occupation as a muddle of his mother's late husband and his natural father! I wonder how often, by accident or design, wrong names are in the register?

[AnneM]

Hi

Before 1986 neither the mother not the father of an illegitimate child was his tutor or curator i.e. his guardian. This effectively means that no-one held this role as of right. Certainly a grandparent did not. It is also worth remembering that until 1929 the legal age at which a girl could marry was 12 and a boy 14 i.e once she or he entered their minority and gained control over their own 'person'. In addition legal adoption only dates from 1930 so as someone else has said it is likely that arrangements before that were less formal. Looks likely that a young woman may have yielded to family pressure even when illegitimacy was common.

My own grandfather was brought up by his grandparents whom he acknowledged as his parents though he and everyone else knew who is mother was and as far as I can make out most people in the village knew who his father was. I never thought to ask my other Granny before she died though, which is a shame. Mind you she might not have told me and I'm pretty sure I've got the answer right.

Anne

[Montrose Budie]

I can only add to Anne's excellent answer by commenting that there would originally have been some sort of paperwork pre-1930 if the child was adopted from an institution, i.e. an orphans' home. Sometimes, as with Quarriers in Renfrewshire, the paperwork has survived, but, in terms of informal adoptions within a family, be that grandparents or other close relatives, there never was paperwork.

In some communities, such as fishing villages on the Aberdeenshire and Moray coast, and other very 'close' communities such as small mining villages, where death rates of the fathers were very high, it is quite common to find that the family adopting the orphan is unrelated (in a direct sense), the more important factor being which family had the capacity at the time to take on another kid.

I write 'in a direct sense' since, just to complicate matters, the surname might be the same, but the common ancestor could be quite a few generations back !

mb

[Montrose Budie]

On a related subject the illegitimacy rate between 1855 and 1895, as calculated from registrations, was as follows, -

Year Total Illegitimate

1855 93,349 7,357 (7.9%)
1861 107,009 9,929 (9.1%)
1871 116,128 11,077 (9.5%)
1881 126,214 10,466 (8.3%)
1891 125,965 9,647 (7.6%)
1895 126,454 9,146 (7.2%)

As can be seen, the rate was between 7.2 and 9.5%.

While an illegitimate birth was regarded with great shame in some families, it wasn't exactly a rare event !

I shudder to think how much that figure might increase if 'short' first pregnancies were taken into account ...............

mb