'My baby was ripped away as I breastfed her. I was hysterical'

The Observer, 9th July 2000

by Amelia Hill

Pat Basquill recalls the 'nightmare' of an unmarried mothers' home.
SOME of the babies were taken after relentless bullying and others were removed by brute force. Pat Basquill is one of thousands of British mothers forced to give up their children between the mid-1940s and mid-1970s. But her story is heartrendingly familiar to all those involved in a fight for recognition that is now finally gathering pace.
Basquill was only 15 in 1961 when she became pregnant. 'I was so innocent,' she said. 'For eight and a half months I thought I had a tummy bug. When the doctor told me I was pregnant, I didn't have a clue. I asked how the baby was going to come out of my belly button.'
When her father, a passionate Ulster Protestant, discovered his daughter was pregnant by a Catholic boy, he sent her to an unmarried mothers' home run by the Church of England in Newcastle upon Tyne. 'It was a living nightmare,' said Basquill, who now lives in Manchester.
'We were treated like criminals, but as soon as I gave birth I swore that I was going to keep that baby. I looked after her day and night for nine weeks, but the pressure was relentless. It was like Chinese water torture: we were told we were incompetent and that we had no choice.
'We were told we were entitled to no financial or material help at all, so how could we bring up a baby. We were warned that if unsupported mothers left the home they would be arrested as a moral danger to themselves and others, and our babies would be taken away from us.
'The day they came to take Elaine away I tried to bathe her, but my fingers were shaking so badly another girl had to help me do her clothes up. Then I sat down to breastfeed her. A few of the other girls stood around me and I heard footsteps coming up the stairs.
'Two women held my arms and forced me down and the third ripped my daughter from my breast. There's no other word for it - she was ripped away from me as I breastfed her. I was completely hysterical, and she was screaming.'

Photograph: Christopher Thomond

There are more than 750,000 women in Britain with stories like Basquill's, according to new research by the Natural Parents' Support Group, and they are angry. Six of the women are preparing cases against their local county councils for professional misconduct and negligence. These cases, if successful, are expected to open the floodgates to thousands of other claims detailing how, in the years after the Second World War until 1976, when the law was changed, young single mothers were routinely and regularly coerced into giving up their babies for adoption by pressure and deception.
The group believes that adoption agencies, including those run by local councils, the Church, Barnardos and private organisations, repeatedly lied to mothers about the benefits available to them, making them believe that adoption was the only option.
Lorraine Legate, who fell pregnant in 1972 at the age of 15, said: 'I was told that if I didn't give the baby up, we'd both end up on the streets and then the child would be taken away from me and I wouldn't be allowed to have any more children.'
The group claims to have the support of more than 100 MPs, with Sir Teddy Taylor, Conservative MP for Rochford and Southend East, and Dr Peter Brand, a Liberal Democrat member of the health select committee, leading the call for a public inquiry and official apology.
'The evidence is overwhelming that, from the Forties to the Seventies, the whole structure of society was such that agencies pressured unmarried mothers to give up their babies,' said Taylor. 'Something terrible happened in those years and many young mothers were forced to give up their babies. Those mothers have felt hugely guilty since and their children have gone through life believing that they were abandoned at birth.'
A range of alternatives to adoption was open to young mothers between 1948 and 1976, including national assistance, welfare support and housing benefits. Mothers under 16 also had the right to be placed with foster parents along with their baby.
But the first survey into the experiences of young single mothers, carried out over two years by the the support group and completed last week, has found that few, if any, mothers of that period were told of these options.
According to the survey, 77 per cent of those questioned felt the adoption of their child had been obtained through deceit, coercion or false information. Around 95 per cent did not know other options were open to them, and a further 1.5 per cent thought abortion was the only other alternative.
'Our philosophy has always been that the interests of the child are paramount,' said a Barnardos spokesman. 'As child care practice has developed over the past 60 years, views of what constitutes the best interests of children may have changed.'
Last week the Government rejected calls for an inquiry. 'Public opinion and private moral standards at the time created enormous pressures on single mothers, making it impossible for many to retain care of the babies,' said John Hutton, Health Minister. 'The circumstances under which some mothers relinquished their babies were undoubtedly traumatic, but in the intervening years society has become less judgmental.'
His words are cold comfort for the many thousands of women who claim their lives were ruined.
'In the weeks after the birth, I used to spend hours touching baby clothes in the shops and looking into prams,' said Basquill. 'If I'd seen any baby that looked like mine, I would have taken it and run away. I needed help badly but there was nothing.'
It was only when Basquill discovered that she had been eligible for support and benefits after the birth that she decided to trace her daughter. It took two years but eventually she spoke to her daughter, renamed Julia and now living in Scotland.
'It was terrible,' she said. 'I'd contacted her through an intermediary, but when she called it almost killed me. She was an ice queen. During our first conversation she said it was amazing but she felt no emotion at all towards me.
'She had no curiosity about me, and just blamed me for making her illegitimate and for giving her away. She couldn't believe that I'd had no choice. It was like talking to a block of ice.'

amelia.hill@observer.co.uk

For 30 years, thousands of teenage girls in Britain who got pregnant had their babies forcibly taken away for adoption. Now they want justice.

Pat as a pregnant 15-year-old

Copyright © Patricia Basquill, 2002 - 2008