St Agnes plaque to be reminder of the pain of forced adoption

Victims of forced adoption have gathered in Cornwall for a public event condemning the treatment of unmarried mothers in post-war Britain.

They unveiled a plaque at Rosemundy House in St Agnes – formerly a home for unmarried mothers – while calling for a formal “adoption apology” from the Labour government.

Dr Phil Frampton, who was born at the Rosemundy Mother and Baby Home in 1953, said: “We want an apology, not only for the mothers but also for their children who suffered.”

Lyn Rodden, from Camborne, who was one of those forced to give up her baby, said: “It means everything that we’ve been recognised at last.”

It is estimated up to 250,000 women in Britain were forced to give up their babies in the decades after World War Two.

Campaigners also want “restorative actions” from the government, such as providing counselling and search support for mothers and those forcibly adopted.

Dr Frampton, a member of the Rosemundy Commemoration Committee, said he spent years in foster care after he was separated from his mother as a baby.

He said: “It’s really pleasing to be here today, it’s the start of a new chapter in the struggle for an apology for all those unmarried mothers who suffered in the post-war period.”

Mr Frampton said the day was “part of a day of healing, part of a day of recognising the grief of those mothers…”

He added: “This is not something that’s just in the past, for a lot of women they lived with this, you hear women today 80, 88 years old, who are still having to live with what happened, and the children live with it, and families live with it.”

Mr Frampton said it was “important” to be able to give the mothers, children, and families affected by forced adoptions “a sense of relief and release”.

Another plaque is due to be unveiled by the campaigners in Kendal, Cumbria, on 23 May.

In September 1956, 19-year-old Lyn Rodden from Camborne, Cornwall, gave birth to her son at the Rosemundy home.

She said she was forced to get on a train and take her son to Bath to be adopted.

Ms Rodden said: “For everybody else the parents came here and took them away from here, but I had to get on a train and take my son up to Bath, and leave him in an office.

“A woman just came out and said ‘name’ and ‘I’ll take the baby’ and she took him into the back office, came out and said ‘hurry up’ she said, ‘catch your train’ she said, ‘and back to St Agnes, you’ll be there for another six weeks’.

“That was it. I cried all the way home…”

Ms Rodden said she was eventually reunited with her son 50 years later when he found her.

“[It was] like the final piece of a jigsaw being fitted,” she said.

She added: “To think that although slavery was abolished in the 1800s, a Dickensian way of life was gone, but not at Rosemundy.

“It was still in the past, and that was it really, and it means everything that we’ve been recognised at last…”