Genealogy Chat

hi, i have a relative who i know had a child when she was still a young woman in 1948. the only way i know this is from the letters she sent to my grandfather at that time. i have traced the address she lived at and it has since been knocked down for flats, and although i have found the birth certificate for the child she gave birth to in 1948 i do not know the where about of her or her child, or if they are still alive.
i know that the house she lived in at the time of giving birth she was working as a domestic servant, so she says in her letters, but i would like to find out where she went next or what happened to them both. as a single young mother, what options would be open to you in 1948? i assume that things like workhouses had been abolished and since the area in question is west london i wonder what was availible to a young mum back then. she doesnt mention any family in her letters so presumabley she had nobody to help her, and i know my grandfather was unable to trace her because he had a letter return to sender addressee gone away, so she must have moved away. if anybody could give me a few tips about what i could look at, or what she could have done next, i would be very grateful.
scott

Hi Scott, Several possibilities really,she could have moved to a different area,and told people she was a widow. The child you dont say whether male/female. If it was a male you have at least a name. Females sometimes marry. You could try Electoral registers for the area at that time,to see if they still lived in the area. Just a thought. regards trish

Hi Scott, Have you tried marrige records for several years after the birth, she may have gone on to meet someone and marry, that why the letter was returned to sender. Sheila It is possible that the child may have been adopted, but even in those times may women went on to marry afterwards.

A lot of single women had children in the 1940's. The war years saw many young men trying to continue their Gene Pool before they went to battle. (Perhaps someone should tell today's young men that the war is over). The knowledge that an illegitimate child was the son of a dead war hero did much to kill prejudice at the time.

i have already put there names on the trying to find message boards, last year. i do have. i have the electoral register result for the house she was living in 1948 but she is not in it, but i dont know how long she was at that house, not very long by the sounds of it as the return to sender letter was returned not longer after she sent her origional letter to my grandfather, all i got was the name of the people living there at the time, which was van santen, which ties in nicely because in the letter she says she is living/working for jews and i believe van santen is a jewish name. anyway, since electoral registers are in street and house number order, it would mean going through a whole book (have you seen how thick they are?) and that could take forever.
her child was female, i have the childs birth certificate. it may be worth me looking through marriage indexes to see if she maried a few years later, i will do that next time i am at the frc, i might also look for celina's(the single mother) birth certificate and see what family and area she was born in, might give a clue if she moved back home? the mothers name was celina Handley and her daughter was sheila Handley, born ealing, london 1948.
i will keep on searching, just wondered really if there was like a single mothers 'home' they went to, or something like that, i mean i dont know what the social situation was like in 1948 for single mothers, but i suspect it wasnt one of acceptance.
thanx for your replys.

I take it you didn't get to watch the 2-part series "Love-Child" which was on recently? Options - very few: Magdalene House or equivalent, where she could have plenty of time working hard to atone for her wicked sin. [Curiously, it doesn't seem to have been all that much of a sin for the male parent.] Hand over child for adoption - under possible threat of being sectioned, for the madness of getting herself into the situation in the first place, if she didn't give up the child - that's assuming she hadn't already been "put away" for her wicked folly. High risk of being cast out by parents - or having the parents claim the child as theirs and throw the young-mum out anyway. Risk the dangers of backstreet illegal abortion. Marry the (probably unwilling) father of the child - assuming that the young parents were old enough to marry without parental consent, or that parental consent was forthcoming if teh youngsters were both willing. Christine

it did seem rather odd to me that she had the baby, then took it back to where she was living with these jewish people, and they made her work that night, so obviously they wasnt very simpathetic to her problems. so it could be they also got her taken away or something and put in a correction home? i am gonna try to go to the frc in the next week and continue looking for marriages 15 years either side of the birth date of her child. if i find nothing then maybe she was institutionized and id have to look at various local places. i have never used church registers, do you have to view them at the church? is there so many years before you can look at them?

scott my nan had an illegitamate daughter in 1921 i have the birth cert for the baby and she was born in northumberland st,marylebone,which was i believe a workhouse.my nan is described as a kitchen maid. but the address of my nan was the same as her parents,here in high wycombe. a few months after my aunt was born ,my nan married my gramp.although he wasnt the father of the baby.andnan and baby were back in high wycombe. it is possible that the people your relative worked for re employed her. susie

HI Scott, I normally searched for marriage records on 1837, but I think they are held on microfische at the libraries or GRO offices. Hopefully you will not have to look as long as 15 years, the name is quite unsual, but the marriage may not be in the area she was born or worked, she may have started a new life somewhere else, it was still thought of as quite shameful in thos days to have a child out of wedlock. If she moved to a new area it may of been possible to pass the child of as her husbands, so make a note of any matches you find for that name, let me know if you have her new surname, and her husbands and i will do an elecotral roll look-up for you if you like. Good Luck with your search. Sheila

My Mum came from Greenford and Dad from Ealing, and mum says there were homes for single mums there. But as she (My Mum) is now in her late 70s thats all she can recall. One thing that frequently happend to Single mums who would not willingly give up there Children for adoption was they where put in Asylums, some times for years. Is there a chances your relle was. I do not know if this will Help but this is a site that lists hundreds of Homes, Asylums. Hospitels and a dozen other similiar places www.institutions.*org.*uk remove*

Hi Scott Am I missing the point here? (Yet Again!!!) Are you saying this woman gave birth, returned to her employers on the same day and had to work? In that case, she was not in an Institution and would have been unlikely to come to the notice of "the Authorities". Also, not sure when the National Health Service started, it was around 1948 I think, but up till then you had to pay to have a baby in hospital. Is it possible her employers paid for this? Is it possible they adopted the baby, either formally or informally? What hospitals were in the area? What workhouses)? Workhouses were used as maternity hospitals during and after the war, I know, I was born in one!( And it only gives an address on my BC, doesnt say Workhouse.) Many women who "got caught" in the 1940s pretended to be War Widows, that opened doors for them that otherwise would have been firmly slammmed in their faces. Good hunting Marjorie.

Scott, Im not altogether sure about the 1940s but my GGG grandmother was illegitimate when she was born in 1864, so maybe not as unheard of as we think??? xxx

i want to thank you all for your replies and help, i have to say the documentary that one of you mentioned above called 'love child' which was on tv recently i have now watched. i missed it when it was shown but i have downloaded it from uknova.com as they upload loads of tv shows there and my luck was in, so having watched that show, my feeling now is that the child would have been given away for adoption.
as for the disapearance of the mother selina Handley, it could be that she was institutionalsed, or married very shortly.
and in reply to marjorie peek, the letter i have which was writen from selina to my grandfather, she does clearly say that she had the baby and after 10 days bought it back to the house and they made her work that very evening, and she was very unhappy about being there with them. so it sounds like she must have felt she didnt have much choice but to be there.
the letter actually says and i am quoting it " this lady i work for thinks i am going to have the baby adopted or put in a home, otherwise she wouldnt let me stay here". "i have been looking for a place to work where i can take the child because i will never part with her, its not her fault she was bought into this world, but i am finding it very hard to find a place on account of the baby"
so .....given her opinion there perhaps she refused to part with the baby and was put away in an asylum. if thats the case i am very very saddened, i mean its a sad letter anyway, but i would like to find the rest of this story out.
the birth certificate for sheila Handley says she was born at 30 twickenham road, isleworth. having looked on streetmap.co.uk at the start of twickenham road in isleworth you will find west middlesex university hospital, so it would be very probable that she had the baby there as she says in the letter she went into hospital on a friday. she also says at the end of the letter that she will write and let my grandfather know what happenes to her, but as far as i am aware she never did and i know he tried to trace her at the last address because he says so in a letter he wrote that came back to him saying addresse unknown.
i definately feel they must have stepped in and forced her to give the baby up and or she locked up. she talked about using an agency on bakers street to find work which i suppose would be bakers street london?

be such a shame if they locked her up just because she wanted to keep her child.

Oh Scott! Lets hope she found somewhere to live with her child. I remember seeing a programme once about an unmarried mother, late 1940s, managed to get a live in job at a minor boarding school, with her child. Her accommodation was a disused railway carriage in the grounds! She hated the job, was treated like an absolute skivvy, very low wages. Eventually she married the local milkman who was 35 years her senior, as she said, just to get a roof over her head. Women were still being committed to Asylums for having an illegitimate child in the 40s (right up to the middle 1960s in some places) but I think if she lived in London, she might have escaped this fate - you can be quite anonymous in London if you want to be. I remember when I lived in London in the 1960s, there were lots of Domestic Employment Agencies in Baker Street, but I really don't know how you would find out anything now. Good luck.

thanks marjorie, i will post any results if any, of next weeks trip to frc. how would i go about viewing baptism records from the 1940's? is there a closure time limit on them? i wont leave any stone unturned in the search.

There's not a closure date for baptisms but more recent ones that are in registers which are still in use will still be at the church and you'd need to apply to the vicar for details for which he/she is supposed to charge a fee. If the register has been deposited in the records office (which it may well have been if its a London parish, as they fill up quite quickly) you can view it and take a photocopy. London parish registers are mostly at the London Metropolitan Archive, just round the corner from the FRC and you can check on the LMA website whether they hold the registers you need.

thank you judith, very helpful.

i have been told to watch the film that is at the cinema called VERA DRAKE as aparently it is set in 1950 and deals with the issues i am researching, so it might give me some idea of what it was like, as its only two years after the events i am researching. it is supposed to be a good film though, so worth watching anyway.

Just renewing this search because i have restarted my family history research after a few years break.

On the childs birth certificate it states she was born at 30 twickenham road, isleworth on 23rd april 1948. The mothers address is given as 35a gordon road, ealing, as stated before. no father details on the certificate.

I am very very curious to find out what happened to this young woman and her child, if anybody knows twickenham road in isleworth, are you able to tell me what resides at number 30?

were there still workhouses in london during 1948?

I have a feeling that 30 Twickenham road may be west middlesex university hospital, is anybody able to confirm it?