North East Post Adoption Service - Adoption Narratives - Maureen
What about your birth father?
He drowned, I think it was in the middle, excuse me, in ’74, ’76 and I was, it’s Dougie’s Uncle and he didn’t know exactly what had happened and some say he died, drowned er at Whitby and another one said he drowned in Shields and not too sure where abouts but I think he was the type that whenever he come on shore, see he was on the boats mid week and he was drunk and drunk and drunk and then he just went back on the boats again and I think he missed his footing on the planking anyway, and with the water going up and down at the side of the quayside he was sucked under, sucked under the ship and that’s how he drowned. So.
So you weren’t able to meet him either
No. I don’t know what happened there either because I mean they got married in ’45, I was born in ’47 and yet, they must have split up ye know and that come along and Dougie’s Uncle Peter which would have been my Uncle, ye know John’s brother Peter, maintained he was never married.
Who was never married?
My father, yet at that time I had all the details and I’ve got a photocopy and I sent them to Dougie to let him see I wasn’t ye know somebody that was making the story up.
Dougie is your birth father?
No Dougie was, Dougie Raine was my cousin. John would have been my, John Raine’s my birth father and Alice Johnson Laws Adams turned Raine when she got married. But then Peter, Peter Raine always maintained that John was never married. So I don’t know what happened. Just, I haven’t asked ye know really, ye know, I have never seen Peter because Peter has always been ill, ill health, bad hearts and stuff like that and erm, he’s been in and out of hospital. Well ye wouldn’t want to go and start to really annoy somebody like that and I don’t know whether he would really know much, I think they would only know what John told him or didn’t tell him. I did, I did meet my Aunt Sarah er the first time we were over here in the February she, we had heard she was in the hospital and I went to see her. She looked at us as we went through the door and she knew us and she just held on to my hand and kissed my hand. I’d brought her flowers and that, never spoke, just, ‘thank you for she sitting there’ and the hand up and she was hold, she held on to me and I tried to explain ye know, different things about my life and family and don’t worry, I says we are together now, ye know and then er, that was the first time, and then the second time was whenever we were over in March she hadn’t, she’d been in the home and she’d had to go back in to the hospital again and she wasn’t very well and she didn’t want to leave go of my hand or Alex’s either. When I come out the first time, I come out I didn’t cry I just said, ‘why?’ ye know, ‘why did I see this Aunt of mine?’ very sick ye know, we could have had a very few years knowing her, getting to know, because heard she was a great bowler and ye know she had a good social life ye know, I’d have loved to have meet. I’d have loved to have ye know, a bit, a good conversation with her and then we went, as I say we went to see her the next time but she hadn’t long to go.
