Answers in search for historic justice at home for unmarried mothers

Posted on by Michael Lambert

A picture of a mother holding her baby's hands.

On Monday 8th June I submitted a report to Cumbria Constabulary into the circumstances surrounding the birth, life and death of Stephen Holt at the St Monica’s Diocesan Maternity Home. Stephen was born in the home for unmarried mothers on 13th January 1964 with spina bifida. Because he was born with a disability and ‘unadoptable’, he was not afforded access to modern medical care, dying from hydrocephalus on 2nd April.

Stephen was one of 61 infants who died whilst under the care of St Monica’s from its establishment in 1918 until its closure in 1970. A further 54 stillbirths were reported over the same period. For a home with 20 beds accommodating between 55 and 75 mothers a year at its peak, this indicates a high perinatal mortality rate. Particularly in comparison to rates in Westmorland, where the home was situated, and England and Wales.

The reason for the high mortality centres on the tenure of one Superintendent over a 27-year period from 1938 to 1965, when the majority of the deaths and stillbirths occurred. Such career longevity was unusual in a residential social work field marked by low pay and status, poor working and living conditions, and lack of progression opportunities, leading to significant turnover. The Superintendent lacked the necessary skills to deliver babies from young mothers posing significant risks given their age, leading to avoidable birth injuries and deaths. Children born with a range of congenital conditions were not referred for specialist consultation or treatment, effectively leaving them to die.

These conditions were known to those who oversaw and regulated homes for unmarried mothers.

St Monica’s was an Anglican home managed under the Diocese of Carlisle’s Board of Social and Moral Welfare, which was in turn affiliated to the Church of England Board of Social Responsibility. Correspondence among religious officials and social workers revealed knowledge of poor practice and other concerns of the home’s domestic regime, but there was unwillingness to act given the Superintendent’s influence.

The home itself was subsidised through the National Health Service as the recognised means to provide care for unmarried mothers, through the adoption of their children, enabling them both to live separate lives, free from the stigma of illegitimacy. Westmorland Local Health Authority as the responsible organisation failed to represent the interests of the health service in the management of St Monica’s, and did not act upon concerns, which the Ministry of Health also failed to resolve.

The report found this system of oversight and governance across religious and statutory authorities ‘wholly ineffective’.

Stephen’s mother, Judith, returned home and embarked on a career as a paediatric nurse, training at the very hospital her son should have been sent to from St Monica’s. The Church social worker who sent her to St Monica’s writing that: ‘This girl has learned her lesson and wishes to live a useful life’.

Judith met and then married another Stephen, Stephen Hindley, He subsequently lived through her lifelong struggles to come to terms with what happened to her and her son at St Monica’s, leading to more than a hundred attempts on her own life over the following decades. Finally, on 22nd October 2006 Judith was successful, ending her life not far from where Stephen had been buried in Parkside Cemetery, Kendal.

Stephen has spent the best part of two decades seeking justice for his late wife and the horrors she experienced at St Monica’s which so profoundly shaped her life. I had the privilege of being beside him at a ceremony at Parkside Cemetery last year to honour all those infants whose short lives were a result of the failures of care at St Monica’s. Whilst the report offers a clear narrative of events and associated accountability, it is not comprehensive, reflecting the fragmented and limited source base from which it has been assembled. Problems of record destruction and accessibility remain a persistent problem in the search for answers. This problem is mirrored as adoptees, now adults, also search for answers about their own family histories.

Judith was one an estimated 250,000 across Britain who were sent to homes for unmarried mothers from the 1940s to the 1970s on the expectation that their baby would be adopted in their best interests and that of their child. St Monica’s one of more than one hundred homes run by the Church of England, and of 180 in operation over the period. The scale of tragedy incomprehensible, with its consequences being lifelong and intergenerational.

The Church of England has committed to making a formal apology for its role in historic forced adoption, whilst the UK Government says the issue is ‘under active consideration’. Although without a clear roadmap for action. Time is running out for those, like Stephen, who are seeking answers and – above all – justice. Whilst the UK Government continues to delay justice, it denies justice. The investigation into St Monica’s exposed a catalogue of harms and failures including avoidable infant deaths centred on the home and its operations, but these were not unique, even if they might be exceptional in character.

The buck for the circumstances surrounding Stephen’s short life and avoidable death does not stop at the Superintendent or even local health authority and the diocese but at the corridors of power in Whitehall, Westminster and Lambeth Palace.

Dr Michael Lambert is a Lecturer in Medical Humanities at Lancaster University and a historian of the welfare state, specialising in social and health policy in twentieth-century Britain. His research focuses on inequality, welfare institutions, and the lived impacts of policies, including extensive work on mother and baby homes and historic forced adoption. He has contributed evidence to Parliament and public debates on these issues, bringing historical insight to contemporary policy discussions.

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