Adoption Question

[AInightingale]

My late father was adopted in the 1930s and never knew his real parents, we just had a tiny bit of info about their circumstances - that he had a brother and that his parents were married (not sure about that tbh). I've done DNA testing and believe I've tracked down the families concerned from the number of second cousin matches, also have an (uncommunicative) first cousin match so that seems to bear out the sibling theory. However, I can't find any evidence of a marriage between members of the two families. My question is, given the way in which adoption was such a secretive, tightly controlled process back then, would the marriage record of the parents also be removed from the public register, in the same way the child's birth record was? Or even the public birth/death records of the parents? There's quite a large gap in the births of children in one of the families I am looking at, which has made me wonder if there are some phantom individuals or a marriage that I'm not seeing as they've been blocked from inclusion on the databases. Or am I overthinking this?

Or his parents weren’t married? I know you say that your info says that they were, but could easily be false (as you suggest).

Impossible to remove a marriage entry from the index. even the original birth is left on there.

Have you pursued all the options for paperwork relating to the adoption, via Social Services and the adoption agency?

This. Also, there may be no adoption paperwork whatsoever. It may have been a private, informal arrangement where a child was simply handed over to a childless couple, 'hidden' within a relative's family etc.

Did your father not have his own birth cert, OP?

That's surprised me @OccasionalHope. Even the original birth? I must go back to the indexes, though in Ireland post-1924 it will only be a very short entry, and it's such a common couple of names in that part of the world.

I am dubious too that they were married @McSpoot ; it sounds like something someone of my granny's generation would just say anyway, to make it sound more respectable!

He did have his own birth certificate @FishwivesSalute but it's just a copy of the short version with no detail, issued in the 1960s I believe. My mum and dad liked their holidays when they retired and I'm surprised that he never needed the long version for a US visa or anything like that, but he seems to have managed without it.

As I understand it, adoption was not formally legalised until 1950s so there would be no legal record until then.

Birth certificate could be tricky. I presume the short certificate is in the name you know him by. Can you find his entry in the birth register? Do you know if his name was changed by his adoptive parents?

(I ask because I have the short certificate in my adopted name, but when I search the England birth register that name doesn't come up. I only appear in my original birth name.)

I don't know what he was named at birth @DisplayPurposesOnly. His Christian name (not ultra-common, and given to him by his adoptive parents) seems to have been a family name within one of the families I'm looking at...but was also his uncle's middle name! So it's anyone's guess.

I can't find anyone of his name + (putative) family name on the Irish index. The adoption took place in the north probably for religious reasons though I'm not sure on which side of the border he was actually born. There's no NI index post 1924 to check.

I doubt the GRONI will help me for family research purposes, but no harm in ringing them I suppose.

You should have been reregistered, but it will only show on the index for the year You were adopted not the year you were actually born.

That's surprised me @OccasionalHope. Even the original birth? I must go back to the indexes, though in Ireland post-1924 it will only be a very short entry, and it's such a common couple of names in that part of the world.

It's possible Ireland was different TBF.

In England & Wales the index was physically compiled at the end of the quarter, and originally it was a handwritten list, although at some point they went over to typed. The actual birth entry would be marked up that the child was adopted.

My grandfather was born in 1911 and given the surname X but we always knew him has Y.

I used irishgeneaology.ie to find his original record.

He wasn't coming up in search returns due to the name change. But when you get a hit it returns the original page register and has other people's details on it. So I found him by zoning in on his date of birth and looking at the entry's on either side

I did know the general area he was born. If you don't know that it may be harder. Also the website only have NI records until partition so it won't show if he was born there in 1924.

GRONI are surprisingly helpful so definitely contact them.

I ordered birth certificates for two family members who where born in mother and baby homes in the 30s.

The date of registration on the birth certificates for both, where at least 10 years after they'd been born.

I knew they'd been been re-registered once their mother's had married. I asked I could have the originals. They said no (unsurprisingly). But did confirm the original birth place and that no father was listed on either.

I think the law did change recently @PlattyPlattPlat to enable people to access M&B home records. But it's a battle to get the original birth cert with the mother's name on.
There are no birth register records available in the North after 1924, nada. It's got to be the worst part of the UK to do family history research in! We have no free access to the 1939 Register or 1920s census either. 🙁

You can access the 1939 registrar. You just email [email protected]

You need an address or an unusual surname for them to check. They will copy it and redacted the details of anyone in the home who was born less than 100 years ago. It's a faff and not a nice accessable database but the team their have been very helpful with my searches

if I was in your shoes id definitely ring or email GRONI, just be sure to have the birth certificate in front of you as the reference number on it will help them locate the original. since it was 100+ years they should be ok with disclosing what was on the original verbally without letting you see the cert.

I just checked my emails with them about my relatives. I didn't mention the mother and baby homes. I just played a bit daft asking why the births where registered so late and could I have a copy, if not could they confirm if there where any differences in the data, which they did.

It wasn't +100 years ago unfortunately @PlattyPlattPlat. It was only 90 or 89 years ago. Not sure if it makes a difference. Obviously the parents' generation are all long gone but there may be siblings or half siblings still living. If they gave me the mother's surname over the phone it would be great, but I wouldn't be hopeful since it was a formal adoption (a very early one - the process was only formalised in law in 1929 I think) and records are still closed.

Obviously I am not going to track his birth family down and go marching round the home of an elderly person to announce, 'your mother had another child out of wedlock' but they don't know that, of course. There are still potential sensitivities, I guess.

Just checking - is it a search in Northern Ireland or the Republic of Ireland @AInightingale ?
Because of the War of Independence and the Civil War and the division off the country it is very problematic. There was no Census in Ireland in 1921 because of war.
If the search is in the Republic the Adoption Authority of Ireland might be helpful.

I don't know @deeahgwitch. Sounds ridiculous, but I'm not sure of even that. All my matches are to people with forebears who lived in border areas of what would have been the Irish Free State, yet Fermanagh was mentioned by an old aunt in our family - but they were Church of Ireland people so perhaps they used the authorities in the North? He may have been born in a MAB home in the north, or just brought there. Religion was the be-all and end-all then, obviously. Apparently many Protestant adoptions were to England (via Dublin) or to the North. None of it is straightforward unfortunately.

If it’s any help Adoption was legalised in Ireland under the Adoption Act of 1952 and was first formalised in Northern Ireland in 1926.

Yes, that seems to me to be the key issue here.

I did contact GRONI a few weeks ago and they said no, I couldn't have access to his BC if he was registered then adopted in the North, which would have been post 1929 and a very formal legal process. Obviously he could have requ'd this himself in his lifetime, if he'd been interested (he wasn't). No harm in emailing the ROI agencies I suppose, just to see what their position is.

I do hope you get answers to your questions soon @AInightingale
It’s a shame the first cousin is not communicating. Can you pursue that further ?

I just checked the ROI website and interestingly there is an application process for the child of an adopted person, so I will give that a go, in the hope that it happened on that side of the border.
The first cousin thing is frustrating @deeahgwitch. I've messaged him twice but no reply, don't want to keep on at him in case he reports my account for harassment! I've tried to get the messages neutral, just asked for a bit of detail on his forebears, but no joy.

But if it happened in Ireland, there was no legal process before the early 1950s, @AInightingale -- so it will have been an informal/private adoption. At least, as I understand it.

It wasn't necessarily a secretive or tightly-controlled thing, either. Absolutely it could be, if it involved illegitimacy, rape, infidelity, a Mother and Baby Home or a Madgalen laundry etc.

But there were also situations where a family member simply 'gave' one of their children to a married sibling who couldn't have children, or had secondary infertility and couldn't have more children, and the child was raised by an aunt or uncle in their family, in loco parentis, with everyone in full knowledge, but no official record. I can think of at least two instances in my own family.

It doesn't seem the most likely possibility in the situation you outline, obviously, but then neither does a married couple giving one of their children up for adoption, as you say, especially if they only had one other child. (The cases where parents gave one of their children to another family member to raise tended to be in larger families, where resources were stretched and it was felt the child adopted out would do better in the other family.) It could be there's more to it, and it might explain why the cousin doesn't want to respond.

(Another complicating factor is that, when adoption was legally formalised in Ireland in 1952, some families took the opportunity to register the adopted child's birth in the name of the adoptive parents, thereby removing any reference to the biological parents from records. But your instance is too early for that. )

Many unmarried Irish women travelled to England and Wales or Scotland to give birth (there was a specific term in English records Pregnant from Ireland) and placed the child for adoption in England and Scotland. They may have then gone on to marry in mainland Britain - so no record in Ireland.

Records in England and Wales are separate to those in Scotland. Might be worth widening the search?

I read a PhD thesis which I found online about pre-1952 adoption processes @FishwivesSalute and it seems that there were arrangements for the birth of 'given up' children which the state holds records for, including 'Protestant' children's homes, one of which was in Dublin. This researcher was able to access them for her work; she refers to six children who were taken to England and to the North in the 1930s - anonymised of course. So it's possible that there may be access to records of some nature for anyone applying through this ROI portal. But it wasn't formal adoption as regulated by the Irish state, as you point out.