North East Post Adoption Service - Adoption Narratives - Maureen

Well, my name at the moment is Maureen but whenever I was born in ’47 erm, I had another name it was er, Mary Amanda Mulvane and then when eight months old an adoption order was taken out in Whitley Bay Court and my name then was changed to Maureen Marie.  Well from an age of about five or six remember being told that I was adopted at that time said, ‘oh we went down looked at all these little babies and we picked you, ye know ‘but you don’t tell anybody, you keep it to yourself’.  Erm, so I mean Christmas times it was lovely and we had a whole pile of things under the tree and ye know it was just like a toyshop and then after a while, er, they decided to adopt somebody else, a boy.  By this time I was nine, er so they, they, course we waited and we waited and went out to Whitley Bay, not to Whitley Bay, sorry, Newcastle and waited and watched the clock.   We had to be there by half past two but course we were there at one o’clock and we went over and got this little baby handed to us and we took him home and he was put down in a big drawer and so we thought then we’d have a family, like I was doing this for Michael and doing that for Michael, that was his name.  I don’t know what his name was originally but er he came in to the family but then er, it got to be er, I think at times I think I was more or less looking after him ye know.  Ye know cause I, don’t take me wrong I would have got good pocket money but I had, like a lot of housework to do and this and that, this to do and that to do but they would have went away on a Saturday and left me, holding the baby more or less as ye talk about now.  Now, I didn’t really mind ye know, but er, now there were different times whenever they would have come home and said I didn’t do this and I didn’t do that ye know and I was getting into bother and er and if anything happened in the house, or if there was a row, they would say to me, ‘well we picked you up out of the gutter’ er ye know, with more or less you should be grateful that we took you in type of thing.  And so it went on ye know and Michael was the blue-eyed boy and I was always seemed to be, started to be, the black sheep of the family.  Which felt to me at the time any way.  So as I say, Michael got everything, not that I wanted, I mean I always got what I wanted like I mean, I didn’t ask for anything really, was nearly fraid to say, ye know when they say’d to me, ‘what do ye want for Christmas?’  Well I’d say, ‘well I don’t know, a doll or something like that’.  I would always be afraid to say exactly ye know, ‘I wouldn’t mind like a scooter, cause my friend had one or’ but as I say I got a lot of stuff, a lot more than a lot of other people did but things got worse in the family with me and them and er, actually I ran away from home and of course where did I go? Down to the beach.  Don’t know what was in my head but I didn’t want to go home again until I was taken back and of course, ye know, reckoned it would be alright and it was fine.  No, I went back and it was just headed off again, just didn’t want to be there.  So then er, I decided then.  I said to them, ‘I’ll be a nanny, there’s this one in the paper and’, but I wasn’t allowed to.  I phoned up for the interview, got the interview, was going to get the job but wasn’t allowed to go.   I was what, coming to the end of the school years and I didn’t want to go on to further education at that time.  I’d rather have been a nanny, start a job.  No you’re not allowed to go erm, so then erm,