Family as Cause and Cure: The Emergence of Adoption

Abstract

I want to begin this chapter by evoking a picture of the unmarried mother from the 1860s, taken from a study by the French historian Barret-Ducrocq (1992). She describes how in the mid-nineteenth century, unmarried and deserted working-class women approached the Thomas Coram Foundling hospital to have their illegitimate babies permanently or temporarily looked after elsewhere.

The internal rules of the establishment required an unmarried mother wishing to place her child permanently, or for a limited period of time, to conform to certain criteria. She had to be able to show that her good faith had been betrayed, that she had given way to carnal passion only after a promise of marriage or against her will; that she therefore had no other children; and that her conduct had always been irreproachable in every other respect. She must also be without any sort of material aid. Finally the child had to be under one year old. This was thought the best way of ensuring that the children would be brought up under good conditions and of promoting the moral rehabilitation of single women deserted by their seducers. (1992, pp. 40–1)