Foundling
Christine Simm is a foundling, discovered in the back of a cab on the 8th of December 1949.
It was close to Christmas so she was called Mary and given that she was abandoned close to Charing Cross Hospital, the day old baby Mary became Mary Cross. But bizarrely the details of this story were uncovered much later in life.
Adults Affected by Adoption-NORCAP is a national charity that provides support and services for adults whose lives have been touched by adoption, including adopted people, birth parents and other relatives. The organisation additional provides special services for people who were 'abandoned babies' i.e. Foundlings before they were adopted. AAA-NORCAP takes registrations from Foundlings on our contact register and assists them to make use of the very limited information available to them. In particular whenever it is possible to publicise the circumstances in which a baby was abandoned as Saturday Live did in carrying the interview with Christine on 3 December AAA-NORCAP is able to receive responses from anyone who may have information about the foundling featured or any other 'abandoned baby'. Channelling responses through AAA-NORCAP provides both support and protection for both the Foundling and for the person who potentially has information. Confidentiality is assured and potential connections can be researched objectively.
If any listener has any information at all please do contact AAA-NORCAP on 01865 875000 or by email to enquiries@norcap.org
the interviewer has just made the comment that an adopted was not wanted by the birth mother; how wrong he is ! I had my baby in 1970 in Australia and the stigma of the unmarried mother was still huge. I can assure you that my baby was very much wanted but becausr of my strict Catholic background abortion was out of the question, killing a baby for my was not going to make a bad situation right. i was also the eldest in a big family and in those days I would have "dragged all my through the mud". Very, very reluctantly my baby was adopted at a few weeks of age. The agony I felt and still feel even though we have found eachother after many years is heartwrenchingly intense. There is so much involved in a persons heart and mind and hearing that a baby wasn't wanted will carry on the myth for too many people. My baby is not a secret. I am proud of her and bless the fact that she was able to make another family happy and fulfilled.
Complain about this postI recently read KATE ADIE'S wonderful book "Nobody's Child" a sensitive history over 300 years of the Foundling. A Foundling herself, makes it all the more poignant.
Complain about this postIt occurred to me while listening to the story that the mother of 'Carol' was not the lady that put her in the taxi - that was the grandmother - the mother of the young girl who had just given birth to her.
Complain about this postThis is a very longshot but my mother told me that she had left a baby in the back of a London taxi. I was told that this happened before I was born and I was born in 1948 but she told me a number of things that were untrue. I have no idea whether it could beestablished whether the baby was Christine but if she wants to contact me she can.
Chris
Complain about this postI was very interested in Christine's story. My own mother, now 88, was told her mother was dead and via the workhouse and fosterings she and my aunt thankfully were taken in by the people I knew and loved as grandparents, although they were only allowed to call them aunt and uncle. When my sister was born in 1944 we discovered there was a woman very like my aunt who had been at one time in a local mental hospital. To cut a very long story short I recently discovered my grandmother was still alive in the 1960s although I haven't felt able to tell my mum this. She was thrilled to find out that she was 'somebody' after all when I first found mention of her and her previously unknown siblings in the Poor Law minutes but she sometimes feels her life is based on lies and is now very frail. My ultimate aim was to find her mother's grave for her but it doesn't seem likely now.
Another (unconnected) story which always fascinates me is that my friend has a family photo which I assumed was a mock up because one of the ladies is the image of her daughter. Both she AND her daughter are adopted. The look alike is her 'adopted' mother. She and her daughter were both born in the same hospital in Liverpool although they lived in Bristol at the time of her daughter's adoption.
I hope Christine does find something out about her mother as I know my mum always wondered about her unknown family, even though she has seven children of her own. She often felt she had 'let us down' because we were able to trace my dad's relations but not hers. I've tried to explain to her that, as a 5 year old child, she couldn't have done much about her circumstances anyway.
Yes Jacqueline French. I agree with you on birth mothers 'not wanting' their babies. I remember listening to a song once called "He would be 16", it was heart-breaking.
Complain about this postUnfortunately I did not hear the programme - but I would like to comment on something Jacqueline French said about adopted babies and the Catholic Church, many are loved but there are a great deal more (like myself) dumped as garbage - maybe I was lucky I was left on a doorstep with a nappy and a solid gold crucifix on an early April morning in 1949 in Caversham, Near Reading, Berkshire - not the warmest!!!
Complain about this postI was lucky I was adopted by some great people but they new nothing about me as there was nothing to give - I was given the original name of Sarah Jane - thats it - my new parents changed it when they adopted me.
I am afraid too much time and money is spent on looking for "dumping mothers" and then they give the baby BACK!!!