North East Post Adoption Service - Adoption Narratives - Alex
Well, starting
from the beginning. I was born in 1943 at Gosforth, and four years later I
had a baby sister born. Now with it being just at the end of the war years
things were very difficult and the parental erm, situation in those days,
are not like today, the head of the house said something and that was it.
That was the law, it stood and unfortunately with us being such a big family
with er, me aunties and uncles and the grandparents erm things were really
tight so the Grandmother said, ‘you are going to have to get Mary Amanda
Mulvena Raine adopted. We just cannot cope and we’re overcrowded to start
with.’ This was a great thing that mam had to bear but everything was done
and one of the cousins of the family actually adopted Amanda Mulvena. I
will keep saying, ‘Amanda Mulvena’ that was her name but, of course, with
her being adopted erm, they changed her name, they changed her religion and
every time that anybody tried to find them they came to a blank end. It
would be a nice hot lead, you would go there and erm, knock on the door, ‘no
they are not here. They don’t live here’. ‘Any idea where they have gone?’
‘No they just upt and left’. And the main thing I can remember about me
sister is erm, when she was four weeks old we took her to the High Church of
England church in West Avenue, Gosforth to have her Christened. Well I was
only a toddler, four years old, ye know, and er when the vicar took Maureen,
as she is now called, to baptise her I raised merry hell because he poured
water over me sister. And anybody ever looked at me sister I used to
scream, ‘get away, that’s my sister, leave her alone.’ It was like that
until the 19th November 1948 as Maureen was born in ’47 er, well
no it would have been ’47, sorry. The 19th November 1947 was my
birthday, my fourth birthday and I was taken to the court with mam and sis
was adopted and I screamed and screamed and shouted and everything but no
matter what I did erm I had to bear it and mam brought us home again and
life went on er, mam had, had to go out to work as every penny counted in
those days.
