A woman who experienced forced adoption as a teenager has stated that crucial questions regarding the UK's mother-and-baby homes remain unanswered, including the number of children interred in unmarked graves. Diana Defries, who successfully lobbied for a state apology for forced adoptions, believes that improved access to records held by religious congregations could help families understand past events.
Defries, originally from London, was sent to Nazareth House in Southampton in 1974 at the age of 16 after becoming pregnant. The home, operated by the Catholic Sisters of Nazareth, received public funding alongside fees from the families of the women residing there. The mother-and-baby wing, which opened in 1960, reportedly housed 1,552 women and girls before its closure in 1985.
Unmarked graves of children who died in Nazareth Houses and similar institutions run by other religious orders have been discovered across the UK. Sister Anna Maria Doolan, safeguarding lead for the Sisters of Nazareth, expressed the order's support for the government's apology for forced adoptions. In a statement, Doolan noted that requests for information are welcome in line with the archive access policy, but acknowledged that records pre-1980 are often incomplete due to differing guidelines for record-keeping.
After giving birth and returning to the home, Defries recounted being discouraged from holding her baby to prevent bonding. She was only able to hold her daughter properly on the journey to an adoption agency in London, accompanied by her mother. She described a woman from the agency taking her daughter away, an experience that left her feeling "broken."
Defries reunited with her daughter in 1992, describing the meeting as a mix of grief, joy, and expectation. She later chaired the Movement for an Adoption Apology, which led to a state apology for forced adoptions delivered by then-Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer in July. This apology was accompanied by a promise of £4 million to fund a national online resource, managed by the charity CoramBAAF in collaboration with the Archives and Records Association, to aid individuals in locating adoption records.
Defries has attempted to obtain her own records from the Sisters of Nazareth, receiving a redacted register entry. However, her requests for administrative and financial records, intended to provide a clearer understanding of the home's operations, were met with the response that many records were legally required to be destroyed. Despite this, she maintains that privately held archives could offer significant insights.
"What hasn't yet been explored here is all the babies who died in the homes, and were buried in unmarked graves, and the women who suffered birth injuries that weren't repaired, and the women who died," Defries said. "And the different things that have gone on that are not being explored because they're yet to be properly recognised. And the records are hidden, or protected."
Dr. Michael Lambert, a historian at Lancaster University who has researched mother-and-baby homes, argued that archives held privately by religious congregations could be key to "unlocking" vital historical information. His own research, conducted with access to diocesan records, indicated a higher number of infant deaths in a Church of England home than previously reported. Lambert stated that it is difficult to ascertain the extent of records held by individual congregations without independent access. He noted that records have sometimes been destroyed due to being considered bulky or containing personal information, but on other occasions, records purportedly lost to