LYN Rodden is just one of many women still haunted by the brutal and humiliating treatment they suffered at England’s shameful secret baby homes.
“You would walk down the middle of the church and hear ‘Slag, prostitute, whore, slapper’,” she recalled.
ITVLyn Rodden was sent to Rosemundy House, a mother and baby home in Cornwall, when she fell pregnant aged 19 and unmarried[/caption]
ITVLyn wasn’t given the chance to say goodbye to her baby daughter[/caption]
The Rosemundy Mother and Baby Home in St Agnes, Cornwall, which housed young mothers between 1919 and 1964
Before being coerced into handing over their newborn babies, vulnerable teenagers were forced to attend church services where the congregation would hiss vile names as they passed.
The young mums were forced to attend church in distinctive tabards so the rest of the congregation could easily spot them.
“What had we done wrong?” asked Lyn. “Nothing. It really was hell. We were told, ‘Your baby is going to be adopted, live with it. If you run away and take the baby with you, you will be arrested.’
“A parcel at the post office would have been taken more carefully than the baby was. I cried all the way home.”
Lyn was just 19 when she was dispatched to Rosemundy House in Cornwall, which was funded by the UK government.
She worked as a cleaner throughout her pregnancy, then was cruelly forced to hand over her tiny baby without the chance to say goodbye.
“No matter how far pregnant you were, you had to wait on the staff and scrub the floors. It was all draconian and very cruel,” added Lyn.
Now a devastating new ITV documentary reveals the hidden horror of unmarried British mothers being forced to give up their children for adoption.
In Long Lost Family Special: The Mother and Baby Home Scandal, hosted by Davina McCall and Nicky Campbell, it emerges that an estimated 200,000 young women were coerced into handing over their babies between the 1940s and 1970s.
For too long the story of unmarried mothers was seen as something that only happened in Ireland, but sinister religious organisations were operating across England, too.
And campaigners are lobbying the UK government to join the Welsh, Scottish and Irish governments in apologising to those affected.
But time is running out for these traumatised women, both for an apology, and to find the adopted children still missing from their lives.
Shameful secrets
BBCLyn described the treatment of young mothers at the homes as ‘draconian and very cruel’[/caption]
“Towns and villages have been hiding a conveniently forgotten part of this country’s history,” says Davina.
“You might even live or work in one of these old buildings and have no idea of its secret history and what happened there to young unmarried mothers.”
The host meets three families who have been searching for answers for decades.
Caitlin Jones asked ITV to help find her grandmother Jean Byrne’s first child, whom she had named Maria.
Jean left school at 15 and fell pregnant by her first boyfriend Tony. Her father was disgusted and threw her out, forcing her to take refuge in a home run by a Catholic Moral Welfare Association in Haslemere, Surrey.
Jean said: “My dad was a bully. He called me ‘the biggest whore under the sun’ when he found out I was pregnant.
“You’d think he was the Prime Minister, not the caretaker of a school. I felt inferior, no better than a prostitute.
ITVJean Byrne left school at 15 and fell pregnant by her first boyfriend Tony[/caption]
Baby Maria – renamed Cathy by her adoptive parents – was taken from her devastated mother Jean at 10 weeks old
Host Davina McCall was visibly moved by Jean’ s tragic tale
Jean and her daughter Cathy were finally reunited after 69 years apart
“I felt everyone would feel ashamed of me. I’ve always felt I’m not good enough for people.
“If I was offered the choice of a million pounds or to find Maria, I’d take Maria.”
During her stay at the home, Jean and the other terrified girls were made to go to chapel every day to atone for what they had done wrong.
Shortly after giving birth, at her lowest ebb, vulnerable Jean was coerced into giving up her daughter when she was just ten weeks old.
Jean was only 16 when she and Tony reluctantly took their child to the offices of the Southwark Catholic Rescue Society and handed her over.
You would walk down the middle of the church and hear ‘slag, prostitute, whore, slapper’
Lyn Rodden
She was not even allowed to say goodbye, or a picture to remember her by.
“We weren’t allowed to take photos, I was too scared to do anything wrong,” Jean said. “It was a big house.”
Jean, now 85, went on to marry and have four other children but wrote to Maria – who was renamed Cathy by her adoptive parents – when she turned 18, saying: “I understand if you don’t want to see me. Please forgive me.”
She had no idea where her daughter was or even if she was still alive.
No apology
Nicky Campbell was delighted to reunite Cathy with her birth mother
Jean wept as she met her extended family for the first time this year
But dogged researchers eventually found Cathy, who was living in London.
Jean explained: “What I want from her is her forgiveness. I didn’t have a choice.
“I wanted to say that I am sorry. I hope she likes me and I don’t let her down.”
Cathy said: “I never ever blamed her. I’m sad she’s been looking for so long.
“I feel so sorry for what she had to go through – all of that, I wouldn’t wish that on my worst enemy.
“My own daughter is unmarried and has a daughter who lives with us, and she’s a delight.
My dad called me ‘the biggest whore under the sun’ when he found out I was pregnant. You’d think he was the Prime Minister, not the caretaker of a school. I felt inferior, no better than a prostitute
Jean Byrne
“I think it was an absolute disgrace the way women were treated in those days and how they were made to feel.
“We’ve been waiting nearly 69 years since she was last able to hug me. I had a hole in my life. It’s the best outcome possible.”
Following an official government inquiry into the scandal in 2023, there was no official apology granted to mothers.
But official documents revealed that local health authorities funded the homes that made the ‘problem’ of unmarried mothers and their illegitimate children disappear.
“The government actively supported these organisations and their practices,” Nicky highlights in the documentary.
Nazi-style regime
Dr Michael Lambert, an academic who has been researching England’s mother and baby homes for the past decade, explains how widespread the problem was.
“The overall picture is that if mothers are going into maternity homes, compared with homes where they’re accessing hospital care, the infant mortality is higher,” he said.
“They’re expected to work until the moment they’re giving birth.
“They’re in a very physical duress. It’s very, very hard while they’re there. So it’s worse than a home birth because of the regime of the institution.
It was an industry – if you were a little girl, blonde hair, blue eyes and between three weeks and six months old that’s the ideal
Dr Michael Lambert
“There certainly was an element that these women must be punished. It was an industry – if you were a little girl, blonde hair, blue eyes and between three weeks and six months old, that’s the ideal.
“It’s a form of state-sanctioned social engineering, families from working class families being adopted by middle class families.
“There’s no legal obligation for these religious organisations to hand over documents – they just disappeared on an astonishing scale.”
Abandoned during labour
Margaret, with friend Ann, was in the Royal Navy when she fell pregnant
Margaret’s daughter Helen was adopted and her name changed to Sian (pictured at The Haven Mother and Baby Home)
Sian was taken from her mother shortly after her birth
Margaret suffered further tragedy when she lost her son in a motorbike accident
Margaret’s emotional meeting with her daughter for the first time after 68 years apart
Host Nicky Campbell was delighted to reunite Sian with her mother
Another unmarried woman, Margaret, was in the Royal Navy in Cornwall when she became pregnant at the age of 20.
The father hadn’t revealed he was already married with a family of his own and abandoned her.
Margaret, 90, remembers being left alone for long stretches during her labour at the Baptist Union-run mother and baby home, called The Haven, in Yateley, Hampshire.
Her daughter Julie said: “Just before he was 30, our brother died as a result of a motorbike accident.
“And so Mum feels that she’s lost two children – one to adoption, and one to an early death.”
After months of scouring records, adoption specialists finally tracked down Margaret’s 68-year-old daughter, whom she’d named Helen.
Her name had been changed to Sian, but she has cerebral palsy and communicates via a computer.
Sian said: “I know that my mother had difficulties while I was being delivered, because the umbilical cord was wrapped around my neck, so oxygen didn’t get to me.”
‘Sorry’
A spokesperson for the Church of England expressed regret for the “pain and distress experienced by women and children connected to mother and baby homes”.
They acknowledged that societal attitudes to unmarried mothers, held by many in the church, “often put immense pressure on young women to give up their babies for adoption”.
The survivor’s testimonies of hundreds of women and children who were in these Mother and Baby homes were submitted as part of a government inquiry back in 2021.
In response, the government “agreed” with the Committee that “the treatment of women and their children in adoption practices during this period was wrong and should not have happened.
“Whilst we do not think it is appropriate for a formal government apology to be given, since the state did not actively support these practices, we do wish to say we are sorry on behalf of society to all those affected.”
The first planned exhumations of a Mother and Baby home mass grave, found in a disused sewage tank, are about to begin in Tuam, a former Irish Mother and Baby Home.
The hope is that the death toll of babies will be revealed and that families affected will finally have closure.
Many babies are alleged to have been sent for illegal adoption by Catholic nuns and their parents told that they had died.
But the question is – did this happen in England as well?
Long Lost Family: The Mother and Baby Home Scandal airs tonight (Wednesday 3 September) at 9pm on ITV1.
yateleysociety.org.ukThe Baptist Union-run mother and baby home The Haven, in Yateley, Hampshire, where Margaret gave birth[/caption]
ITVThe government has said it is ‘sorry on behalf of society to all those affected’ by the mother and baby home scandal[/caption] Published: [#item_custom_pubDate]
