Hi, the mother and baby homes were no more than glorified magdalene laundries and used to secure babies for the adoption industry and save the government thousands of pounds in benefits. My birth mother tells me that she had to write an essay when she first went in the home I was born in, to say how bad she had been and that she had sinned against jesus. She refused and the matron would not let her have a pram for me when I was born. She and the other young women there had to do hard physical work, even cleaning the outside drains in winter.

My mother stayed at the home 5 months, abit like a prison sentence.

Hi Kerry,

I was at Barsham House briefly in the summer of 1970 so a few years later than your mother.

Most of the young women stayed for a good while, as tansley92 says, probably from when they started to ’show’ until they gave birth...it was all about being hidden away.

Apart from cooking we did all the housework and I recall it being done before breakfast. It was hard work and difficult when you’re pregnant and all on top of my parents paying a lot of money for me to be there that they couldn’t afford.

I was so incensed at the way we were treated that I eventually gave the horrible manager a piece of my mind and I went back to my parents home after a week.

I had been at art college and tasted freedom so I wasn’t as meek and mild about being made to feel ashamed in the way that was expected of me. I wasn’t prepared to be subjected to the Dickensian way of life there. Malvern was a very snobby disapproving place to be as a young pregnant woman and the way Barsham House was run was typical of the class ridden attitudes of institutions at that time.

I ended up giving birth to my son at Bromsgrove hospital.

I’m happy to answer any questions if I can.

Jean

My mother had to wear a whalebone girdle before she was 'incarcerated' in the home. Her back, to this very day, has thick welts across it where the bones dug in, as it had to be very tightly secured to 'hide me'. Beyond despicable.

So glad you stuck up for your self, must have been a terrible time for you.

Hi Tansley92

Despicable is a very apt word to describe what went on....your poor mother. I hope she has had some understanding and support since that traumatic time in her life. The fact that you know each other is wonderful and that you, her offspring, show such empathy and understanding towards her and the situation she found herself in must mean so much to her. I think your empathy is what all of us mothers crave. The vulnerability continues right through life to fearing rejection should we be lucky enough to meet our children.

We carried so much shame yet the fathers were free from any judgment. All that Free Love in the Swinging 60s was available to the men and the women invariably paid the price.

What year were you born? The girdle and the pram reveal such dark and Dickensian attitudes!

The callous prejudice of so many masquerading as moral superiority !!

I had a phone call yesterday from someone working for ITV (last week I responded to a message via the MAA Facebook group post) so I‘ve literally just been back researching online since yesterday. So much more information now available including this site. The woman from ITV also told me about howtobeadopted.com with subtitle ‘Just your average Grateful/Angry Adoptee here in London UK’ where the writer Claire thankfully challenges a lot of pre-conceived ideas and hopes that the blog will connect adoptees from the UK and beyond - very good stuff to be found there.

My year at art college was a world away from my former life at home, and the contrast between the art college life and the Victorian values of the ‘home’ were extreme. I’d also been reading George Orwell, the french existential writers etc and generally I’d become more politicised so my sense of injustice just built up until I couldn’t contain it any more. I’m pleased to say that Barsham House closed the following year, in 1971. I just discovered online via the National Archives that it was run by Worcester Diocesan for Moral Welfare Work - I’ve registered with them so I’m looking forward to accessing the House and Management minutes Jan 1969 - Jan 1971....

‘Despicable’ because the majority of homes were governed by the various churches and the so-called Moral Welfare workers deprived us mothers of our rights by withholding information that could have given us a choice - we didn’t have any ‘choice’ as it was presented as a fait accompli ... not only that but we were shown no respect or sensitivity instead it was a given that we were unfit as in morally unfit. It took me nearly 20 years to feel that I was ’allowed’ to be a mother. As for me I consider it an abuse of human rights issue.

It means a lot to be able to have this exchange with you !

Hi Jeanhands, I'm glad you found it beneficial to write such a profound and lengthy message. So many women and their lost babies, adoptees, really need a voice. Everyone of us have suffered needlessly for too long. It is very, very sad that, for twenty years you felt unable to allow yourself to be a mother. It is tragic. No woman should ever have to feel this way, and the fact you did shows clearly the psychological and emotional scarring, caused by such a brutally shocking trauma.

I see, within my own mother, the same scarring, shame and guilt, suppressed anger and sense of injustice alongside an inability to come to grief because she had no support.This is psychological warfare at it's very worst and must at some point in time, sooner rather than later, be subject to an inquiry. It will be up to us, adoptees and mothers to demand it.

Hope all goes well with reading the archives - those cruel moral welfare workers, masquerading their 'abduction skills' as 'gods work' needed stringing up!

All the best.

I would like to clarify that all these years since my feelings were not about shame or guilt but anger. I never accepted the values being used against me, rather I learnt to mistrust the authorities. The previous year at college I had enjoyed the enlightened teaching of a young sociology teacher and I’ve never forgotten her. She revealed to me the way the press operated and the imbalance of power in society.

Like most social engineering via the government, church and, in the case of children of the poor, with the support of charities, the important component is ‘othering’.

A deliberate misrepresentation of mothers was essential, especially I would think in order to assuage any guilt of the adoptive parents and society in general. This attitude prevails.

We are still ‘outsiders’.

There was a deliberate withholding of information by state and church re alternatives, especially that of financial support, and a deliberate manipulation of vulnerable women and their parents sense of value and agency by this abuse of their power.

This was psychological coercion by the authorities using isolation, undermining self worth, shaming etc etc

Imagine the outrage via press coverage if this was taking place in China today.....

’Moral welfare’ was a dog whistle description - if you didn’t agree with their judgement then - ergo - you were immoral! The authorities were still peddling the Victorian mentality of punishing ‘fallen women’ and perpetuating the discipline of the workhouse. Social workers as we know them today didn’t exist and the systemic abuse by moral welfare workers on behalf of their church governors was not scrutinised.

There was no interest in my moral welfare before, during or after pregnancy. It was a total sham.

(They were still exporting young children in care to Australia and elsewhere right up the 1970s. They were a free labour force. Frequently these children were told that their parents were dead - not true!!!)

There was no evidence of the unsuitability of mother’s required, the important factor was their being ‘unwed’.

Thankfully Gingerbread was formed soon after, divorce laws relaxed, the pill made available to single women, safe abortion made more accessible and suddenly the supply of babies dried up. Scapegoating of single parents never really went away though; everyday sexism is alive and well.

The trauma that we mothers endured is still being ignored in the 21st century. The government is probably waiting until we’re all dead before they’ll apologise.