Unmarried mothers forced to give up babies for adoption in England

[littlemissmartypants]

Rosemundy Mother and Baby Home, in St Agnes, Cornwall. The 18th-century Georgian house, now a hotel, housed young mothers between 1919 and 1964

An ITV documentary reveals how young women endured the ‘hell’ of England’s mother-and-baby institutions funded by the government to shame them into adoptions

By Louise Eccles, Education and Early Years Editor

Sunday August 31 2025, 12.01am BST, The Sunday Times

Mother-and-baby homes that pressured teenagers to give up their babies for adoption were widespread in England and often government-funded, according to a new documentary.

The scandal around such homes is largely associated with Ireland, where between the 1920s and 1990s about 56,000 women were placed in institutions for “unmarried mothers”, mostly run by nuns, to conceal the perceived shame of being born out of wedlock. The homes were alleged to have been the scene of neglect, forced adoptions and high infant mortality rates.

Now women have revealed the “draconian” treatment they received at similar homes in Cornwall, Surrey, Hampshire and London. Speaking on the ITV documentary Long Lost Family Special: The Mother and Baby Home Scandal, the women say they were forced to do manual labour while heavily pregnant, shamed into giving up their child and denied the chance to say a proper goodbye.

Many of the homes were affiliated with the Catholic Church and the Church of England, but it has now emerged that many were also given money by the government via local health authorities. The programme says an estimated 170 of the homes — the vast majority — received funding from the state.
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https://www.thetimes.com/uk/religion/article/teens-england-give-up-babies-fktqxrzcp#Echobox=1756650719-1

[MIButterfly]

1. "Many of the homes were affiliated with the Catholic Church and the Church of England..."

Why does that not surprised me?

The whole thing was despicable.