Adoption Records

[graleystives]

Can anybody advise whether it is possible to obtain adoption records if you know the birth name but not the adoptive name?
Many thanks

[MaryA]

The short answer is no.

First of all the adoption system didn't begin until 1927, so anything earlier than that is probably "unofficial" of which there were many.

Secondly, if you ordered the birth certificate of the child, that is just what you would get, there would be no correlation between that and the adoption, it is as if the adoption didn't take place. If you think about it, that's as it should be for an outsider enquiring into what is a very personal event.

[dickiesam]

Hi,
I have sent you a PM that might be of help if the adoption was an official one, ie after the mid 1920s. If the adoption was before that, there is little chance of tracing the child.

Dickiesam

[graleystives]

Many thanks for your help.
It does seem that we wont be able to find anymore as I have the birth certificate but not the adoption name.
It is a rather unusual case concerning my husbands father who was born in 1932. His mother was unmarried and he was adopted (as recorded on his birth cert).
However, and I don't know how this happened but his mother reclaimed him when he was 7 and he reverted to his birth name.
Sadly he died quite young and my husband knows little about him. Through family history research we have found great aunts and uncles and second cousins - a whole extended family my husband knew nothing of.
What we know about the adoption is just hearsay but I understand he was adopted by a vicar (his mother was descended from a long line of vicars although her father was a civil servant), possibly in Hampshire as he was born there although his mother did not live there (she was from London). She took him to Middlesborough and he went to boarding school. That is as much as we (possibly) know!

Thanks again for your help.

[dickiesam]

RE: It is a rather unusual case concerning my husbands father who was born in 1932. His mother was unmarried and he was adopted (as recorded on his birth cert). However, and I don't know how this happened but his mother reclaimed him when he was 7 and he reverted to his birth name.

Hi,
Does the birth cert with the annotation that the child was adopted show a date as to when this actually happened? If it was soon after birth, being a direct blood-relative descendant your husband might be able to access the record.

If the formal adoption was later it would indicate that the child was 'fostered' as a temporary measure. From personal experience I would say there is a strong possibility that his mother had married by 1939, when the child was 7. Her husband might, as often is the case, have then adopted the child in order to make formal the relationship between himself and the child for legal [family law] purposes.

Dickiesam

[graleystives]

Many thanks for that Dickiesam.
His mother never married - she died in her 50s - at that point my husbands fathers only known relative.
On the birth cert there are 2 extra colums - one is name entered after registration (where an extra Christain name is given) and then in the margin "adopted" and the name of the registrar.
No date is given so I assume it was soon after birth.