by Knight, Lynn
Mostly, Willie favoured a saloon car: a Ford, an Austin, a Riley, a Singer or perhaps a Morris Cowley. ‘You Can Buy a Morris on Terms to Suit Yourself: a two-seater Morris Cowley could be yours for £40 12s 8d, plus 12 monthly payments of £10 17s 4d.’ (A baker’s average weekly wage, around this time, was £3 3s 5d.) Occasionally, Willie fancied something racy with a dickey seat. But a car, at any rate. Jotted beneath the ingredients for almond paste and almond tarts in his bakery book is a different kind of list altogether: ‘Ford Com Wires: Green Blue Red Black’. Each time Willie scrubbed the bakery table, his dream came that little bit closer.
11
Motherless Mites
MY GRANDMA WAS BEGINNING TO REALISE THAT FIERCE DESIRE was not enough. No matter how much she and Willie longed for a baby, longing was not making it happen. They were past reassuring one another that all would come right and they would have their own child. Annie was in her late thirties now, and any desire between them long since strained when, month after month (year after year), there was no baby.
In recent years, the law had changed. The 1926 Adoption of Children Act enabled you to adopt a child with the sanction of the courts. And a baby too. Annie very much wanted a baby; she still ached to hold that warm bundle. An orphanage child was not the same as a baby you could bring up from scratch. And the Adoption Act meant the baby was yours for keeps. There was no chance of the mother reclaiming her child, as had sometimes happened in the past. There was talk in the press of ‘Bought Babies’ and the dangers of taking on someone else’s child, but the latter held no fears for Annie. How could it? Her whole family was founded on doing that very thing.
Willie was every bit as keen as she was; he was pleased as punch at the thought of adopting a child. Annie’s doctor told them about the National Children Adoption Association, based in London and highly regarded; the NCAA had been established to help people just like them. Its annual report doubled as a promotional booklet with photographs on glossy paper and details of the Association and its hostel, Tower Cressy, where young women training to be nursery nurses helped to look after the babies. They were nearly all babies in the NCAA’s care; every single bed was occupied and every vacancy filled straightaway.
You only had to open the report to see the whole thing was top drawer. Chairman: Her Grace the Dowager Duchess of Abercorn; Vice-Chairman: The Lady Violet Brassey; President: HRH The Princess Alice, Countess of Athlone; Lady-this; Viscountess-that – the list of Vice-Presidents was almost overwhelming, and included Right Reverends and prime ministers’ wives: Mrs Stanley Baldwin and Dame Margaret Lloyd George. Even when you turned the page, the list of Honourables kept coming and, some pages later, there was HM the Queen, dripping fox fur, photographed with the NCAA’s founder, and Princess Alice, who was wearing the most extraordinary hat.
The Foreword emanated sunshine: ‘Peace and happiness are the order of the day in the beautiful nursery and new sun balconies… It must be jolly to be a babe at Tower Cressy.’ The hostel’s nurses wore the whitest of white uniforms to hold the white-draped babies. Chubby toddlers played in a nursery whose cots had pristine canopies, lace-edged sheets and bows. There was a picture of the toddlers’ bathroom – lucky toddlers – Annie and Willie made do with a zinc tub that hung from a nail when not in use. It was a real-life sunny story.
Grateful mothers had written to the NCAA expressing thanks: ‘I am very glad that Baby has been adopted by such nice people. I feel sure she will have a good home. I am thankful to you for all you have done for me.’ New adopters sent reassuring messages: ‘Will you write and tell Michael’s mother that I will do my very best for him and she need never worry about him at all…’ Some adopters brought their children back to the hostel to see its Christmas tree, or returned to adopt more children. You could choose a child from a photograph or go to the hostel yourself. This one small biscuit-coloured booklet was a rich gift.
Annie’s doctor assisted with their application. There was a form to fill in, photographs to send, and two referees to provide: Dr Duthie, of course, and, possibly, Jim, though not in a brotherly role, but as businessman and respected councillor. The procedure required a local associate or health visitor to assess prospective parents if they lived too far away to be interviewed by the NCAA Case Committee or one of its Branch Committees.
I picture the health visitor coming into the living room behind the cake shop and asking questions over tea and one of Willie’s cakes, her eyes flickering all the while over Annie’s best cloth and the shine on her silver teapot. Her glance takes in a home-made picture glinting with sweet-paper foils and observes how the nap of the velvet chaise longue has been brushed so it all stands the same way.
Before she comes to the house, Annie takes all the basins from the scullery shelves and washes them in the hottest soapy water she can stand, even the glassware on the topmost shelf, lest their visitor glance skywards. Though her stomach clenches in knots that would challenge Houdini, Annie hears herself sounding persuasively calm as she speaks of her days teaching little ones, and Willie, though equally nervous, does not offer to smoke until both upstairs rooms have been inspected, his cake complimented and small talk exchanged on how to make the perfect sponge.
[L]ately in the Press adopted babies have been described as Bought Babies. This is an entirely wrong and misleading expression, so far as the work of this Association is concerned…
The transaction is in fact based on sentiment, pure and simple, in which the men play a conspicuous part. I myself have watched unseen in a private room at Tower Cressy a great, strong rancher crooning over a child whom he wished to make his own, and in the big ward I have seen men go from cot to cot yearning over the little ones, torn in their choice between this child’s fine physique, that child’s blue eyes, this one’s smile, or that other one’s fearless friendliness. And when after much discussion between husband and wife, the final decision is made, it would be difficult to say which of the two is the more happy and triumphant as they bear the child off to fill the void in their lives. On one occasion when I was present, the new parents were already settled in the taxi when the wife discovered that she had forgotten her satchel. Said the husband: ‘Why bother about that when we’ve got our greatest treasure safe and sound?
– Beatrice Harraden, Foreword, The National Children Adoption Association Report 1927–28, read by Annie and Willie
It was one short visit and, at the end of it all – they were told to be patient; enquiries generally took a few weeks – they and their home were approved and, I assume, pronounced satisfactory: those pithy syllables that recur again and again, and are as mean as they are inadequate, but which, in this one extremely special instance, held out enormous promise for Annie and Willie.
The National Children Adoption Association (NCAA) was one of the two key adoption agencies of the day. Unlike the children’s charities, Dr Barnardo’s and the National Children’s Home and Orphanage, which regarded themselves as adopters, with most of their charges brought up in residential care, the NCAA acted as an intermediary to bring together prospective parents and children in need of homes. Like the National Adoption Society (NAS), established on similar lines, the NCAA evolved in the changing climate of the Great War.
Its founder and director was Miss Clara Andrew, whose work with Belgian refugees and munition workers convinced her of the need for the organisation. Described at her death as ‘the spiritual mother of all little children’ by a somewhat gushing Viscountess Snowden, and photographed in an almost beatific pose in an NCAA report, she was a redoubtable committee member, vocal supporter of adoption and the rights of adoptive parents, and firmly behind the 1926 Act.
Adoption did not have universal support but, in the aftermath of the First World War, there was a greater willingness to debate the issues. The birth rate was declining, mothers had lost sons; informal ‘adoptions’ were on the increase. Moral distaste at the thought of War Babies was translating into women wanting to adopt War Orphans, the illegitimate b
aby segueing into the child whose father had died, a more uplifting prospect – and patriotic, to boot.
They enter our offices with the tremulous anxiety and excitement which are characteristic of motherly little girls going to a doll shop. They have some definite image before their eyes; most of them look for some of their own family traits in colour or form, and they want to see several children. With the establishment of the Hostels, it will, of course, be possible to allow adopters a wider choice than can be given now.
– Clara Andrew, founder of the National Children Adoption Association, NCAA booklet, c. 1919
Of course, some war widows did struggle with children they could barely afford to raise, but the majority of children placed for adoption were illegitimate. The phrase War Orphan performed a neat elision: by airbrushing out the mother, it reduced the taint of immorality many found disturbing.
The road to legalised adoption was long and hard, tying up two committees of enquiry and involving considerable debate. (And even after the 1926 Adoption Act was passed, there were still difficulties to resolve; further legislation was needed to regulate adoption procedures.) While agreeing that there should be some legal foundation (and redress) for the large number of informal adoptions already taking place, the National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children (NSPCC) was concerned for the vulnerability of children – in 1923 alone, the Society dealt with 38,027 cases, with only 922 prosecutions. The National Council for the Unmarried Mother and her Child (later, the National Council for One Parent Families) wanted young women to take responsibility for their actions and not be offered the easy let-out adoption seemed to give. There was one point, however, on which everyone agreed: the women they dealt with should be deserving cases. To err once was forgivable, twice was not.
The 1926 Act laid the foundations for adoption as we know it today. The Act gave adoptive parents the same rights and responsibilities as birth parents, and adopted children the same rights as a birth child. A woman placing her child for adoption was relinquishing that child for good. This did not mean informal arrangements ceased altogether: agreements were still made among friends and families, and the Courts none the wiser, but the only binding adoptions were those verified by law. Until now, the only legal agreements were the wardships orchestrated by the Chancery Courts, usually involving complex estates, or those at the other end of the social scale, enforced by Poor Law Guardians taking children like Eva into their care.
By the time Annie and Willie learned of the NCAA, the Association was firmly ensconced in its offices at 19 Sloane Street and its ‘babies hostel’, Tower Cressy, in leafy Campden Hill: addresses entirely appropriate for an organisation whose lengthy list of supporters reads like an extract from Debrett’s. By now, the NCAA had connections overseas and aspirations to make its work ‘Imperial’ (though it was not involved in the controversies associated with ‘exporting’ children at that time). A Scottish branch existed in Edinburgh and in 1933 the Queen would open a further hostel: Castlebar, in Sydenham, Kent.
The Association received Ministry of Health funding, but money also came from donations and events like the annual Three Hundred Ball at Claridge’s, where the well-connected outbid one another to take home an evening gown or mah-jong set. Prospective adopters were, for the most part, less well-to-do than NCAA supporters. Giving evidence to the Hopkinson Committee in 1920, Clara Andrew reported that 15 to 20 per cent of those applying to adopt children were upper class; 25 per cent working class, and the rest, middle class, whom she defined as ‘including the professional classes, tradespeople, clerks and sergeants in the police’.
Until the 1926 Act was passed, adoption continued to be an extremely loose arrangement. It was ‘like choosing kittens’, Mary Gordon said, of her own ‘adoption’ by suffragette Emmeline Pankhurst, founding member of the Women’s Social and Political Union (WSPU). Mary was one of four girls taken on with Mrs Pankhurst’s characteristic zeal and autocracy during the First World War. Fired by a concern for ‘War Babies’, Emmeline Pankhurst, then in her late fifties, established a home for the girls, each about six months old, under the care of faithful retainer, Sister Pine. Christabel Pankhurst soon adopted one of them; the four were brought up together ‘off and on’.
Composer and suffragette Ethel Smyth described Mrs Pankhurst’s ‘underlying idea’ as ‘experimental. As a keen student of the Montessori and other educational systems, she wanted to see what could be achieved by bringing up four children in ideal conditions towards fitting them to play a worthy part in the new world she saw opening up to women.’ Originally, Emmeline Pankhurst hoped for sponsorship from wealthy supporters but, when this was not forthcoming, was undeterred.
In 1917, WSPU funds were used to purchase and furnish Tower Cressy, a five-storey Gothic house in London’s Campden Hill. The original plan was to adopt more children, though the number remained at four. Mary Gordon recalled running down the steps at Tower Cressy to kiss Mrs Pankhurst repeatedly – ‘Oh, Mother darling,’ – until she and her fellow adoptees achieved sufficient spontaneity to satisfy a press photographer. On another occasion, Mary was shown a gold chain that had once belonged to her birth mother, and when she enquired about this some years later, Mrs Pankhurst replied, ‘Fancy you remembering that.’
The girls were encouraged to ‘read and read’ and to think for themselves, but were not cuddled or shown any affection, and were only presented to Mrs Pankhurst at four-thirty if they behaved (and even then, did not have her undivided attention); an exceedingly cool response by today’s lights, but one that chimed with the experiences of many young women of Mrs Pankhurst’s social class.
Like so many before them, the girls were enthralled by Emmeline Pankhurst. Mary Gordon adored her. She was ‘our God. She was everything to us. Nothing mattered but Mother.’ If they earned it, she promised them, they would one day carry the Pankhurst name. ‘That was our great ambition.’ It was not to be.
Emmeline Pankhurst was now in her sixties, and in financial difficulties. Two of the girls were sent away. Until then, they and Sister Pine had accompanied Mrs Pankhurst on lecture tours and other travels, but Sister Pine left her employ and, in Mary’s words, fellow adoptees Kathleen and Joan, then aged about ten, ‘came on the market’ and were re-adopted.
This was not that rare. Children were re-adopted as easily as they were returned to Industrial Schools. After Mrs Pankhurst’s death, Mary herself was re-adopted, having already been sent to live elsewhere. Her adoration remained undimmed, however. She described her childhood as ‘marvellous’. On her thirteenth birthday, shortly before Emmeline Pankhurst died, Mary visited her for the last time. On that occasion, she was hugged and kissed, and wept over: ‘She was delighted to see me again, her last chick.’
The young mothers who came to the Association for help were recommended via the usual sources – doctors, clergy, health visitors, Poor Law Guardians, welfare workers, and so on; sometimes, friends or relatives applied on a child’s behalf. Mothers were required to supply ‘a very complete history of the case’, as well as referees, a doctor’s certificate, a birth certificate and a photograph of their child. No child was admitted unless judged to be ‘sound in health, or likely to become so with care and proper feeding’. (Susan Musson of the National Council for the Unmarried Mother and Child advised adopters to ‘insist on the strictest medical examination’ of the child in case of ‘physical or mental taint.’)
Between 1919 and 1928, 1,200 children passed through Tower Cressy, a large number of whom, but for NCAA intervention, would, according to its own literature, ‘certainly have come on the Rates’. By 1932, the number placed in private homes reached nearly 4,000. They ranged in age from one month to five years old, although the majority placed for adoption were aged less than twelve months.
In a Voluntary Social Services handbook from the period, the NCAA was defined as placing ‘destitute or orphaned or friendless or neglected children with people who are prepared to adopt them for love alone’, the f
inal phrase, with its quiet insistence on no money passing hands (though some adopters subsequently made donations) distanced adoption from the far more lurid taint of baby farming. Though the notorious cases of this practice belonged to the past, prosecutions were still taking place into the 1920s and beyond.
The children discussed by Clara Andrew’s Case Committee were not necessarily ‘friendless’ or ‘neglected’ but, in the days when stigma and economic necessity combined to make it practically impossible for women to choose lone parenthood, those who became pregnant out of wedlock (and with no prospect of marriage or family support), had little choice but to surrender their child. Many unmarried mothers must have felt that nothing had changed since the eighteenth century, when desperate women paced London’s streets before handing over their babies to Thomas Coram’s Foundling Hospital.
Of all the tokens left by mothers at the Foundling Hospital, and now on show in London’s Foundling Museum, the tiny beaded purse is, for me, the most resonant. Its silk has practically perished, but the beading is intact and steadfastly spells a woman’s initials. Worldly goods may vanish, it seems to suggest, but my love for you will survive.
I don’t know what message this mother would have written for her child (if she were able to do so), but, whatever her sentiments, she did not envisage that, more than 200 years later, this intensely private item would be a museum piece, under glass. The child for whom the purse was stitched with loving care never saw it.
Mothers left tokens – and there are many of them – with Thomas Coram’s Foundling Hospital, to prove a connection with their child should circumstances allow them to be reunited in the future. However, few mothers were able to reclaim their infants; the tokens remained with the institution. Even when the children grew up and left the Hospital’s care, they did not receive them. A minuscule ring or coral bracelet (telling reminders of how slight eighteenth-century women were) would have been something for a child to keep in later life. Instead, they suggest heartbreaking stories. Many tokens express poverty as well as love. The handmade ones, such as the flower-shaped ornament fashioned from card and decorated with a scrap of lace, are perhaps the most poignant. What loving thoughts went into the creation of that sad flower? Perhaps the crudest of all is the necklet spelling one word, ‘ale’, and thereby suggesting a double tale, a factor in the mother’s undoing and a token left by a woman with nothing else to give.