The kindness of strangers revisited: Fostering, adoption and illegitimacy in England, 1860–1930

Abstract

As Nara Milanich has shown, illegitimate children were primary candidates to move between families, foster parents, charities and institutions.1 Like orphans, illegitimate children had usually lost at least one parent; unlike orphans, these children’s existence signalled illicit sexuality. Some illegitimate children were brought up by both parents; most, however, were not, and the nature of their upbringing provides important evidence about the experience of illegitimacy. For the most part, despite the shame, relatives stepped in to care for their young kin, but when they were unwilling or unable to do this, children moved from relative to relative and in and out of care. In financial terms, the lack of a father was the crucial difference. Illegitimate children had no right to support; economic strain was all but inevitable. In the past, those children that families could not afford to keep went to the church or into large households as servants, but by the mid nineteenth century those avenues had largely closed.2 As a result, families rotated these children between households and, when necessary, used fostering or adoption.