HOPEDENE
- ZARA PHILLIPS
- 2 days ago
- 6 min read
November 20, 2025 | by Zara Phillips
I am an adoptee from the forced adoption era. I am an adoptee activist that has spoken and written for many years on the lifelong impact of being adopted.
I spearheaded the first ever historical protest on July 16th, 2025, along with the Movement for Adoption Apology and the UK Adult Adoptee Movement, to ask for a long overdue government apology. We had a huge turnout.
After the protest a few of us went to deliver a letter of petition.
I knocked on the door of 10 Downing Street. I was full of hope and excitement for what we accomplished that day.
We were all over the news, we made the 6pm ITV news and hit the BBC and all the radio outlets. It felt that we had achieved something so special. For the first time in history, we all stood together, adoptees and birthmothers letting the world know how it felt to have experienced what we had.
However, we are still waiting for our apology six months later.
We got all the usual murmurs ‘Yes that was a terrible time in history, and we feel so badly for the mothers at the time. They SHOULD be apologized to.’
‘Should means nothing, it’s the same as the ‘thoughts and prayers’ that the government gives after a mass shooting of children in the USA.’
We are all growing older. Time is running out.
A couple of weeks after the protest ITV’s Sarah Corker did a news piece on Hopedene, a mother and baby home in the Elswick area of Newcastle Upon Tyne. It was operated by the Salvation Army between 1950 and 1973 for unmarried women.
To earn their keep for the shame of being pregnant with bastard babies, they had to scrub floors and clean rooms. The mothers felt it was more institutional than a supportive environment.
There were many mother and baby homes in the UK during that time, around 200 at least. From 1758 fallen women were living in Magdalen Hospital in Southwark, London, and in 1790 in Manchester, in Bristol, Liverpool, all across the UK, although we do not have a complete record of all of them.
This has come as a surprise to many, as Ireland has been the country known for these homes and dreadful treatment of mothers - a deeply Catholic society where Church and State were closely intertwined.
In England the welfare state and secular charities took over these roles from religious institutions during the 20th century. They were smaller and more dispersed leaving less centralised evidence.
So, no one thought to look outside of Ireland until recently.
Sarah Corker and her team uncovered a mass grave site at Hopedene on Tyneside, and it was revealed that 67 babies were laying there in unmarked graves. Families had not been informed, and some mothers would have had no idea that their babies died. On further investigation they found almost 200 unmarked infant graves around the UK to date. Alongside previous findings in Kendal, where 45 infants who died in St. Monica's were buried in unmarked graves in nearby Parkside Cemetery.
As I watched this programme unfold, I felt that familiar grief rise quickly to the surface. I was a little surprised by its depth as I like to think that I have done so much healing around my experience of being a relinquished person.
What I was coming to terms with was the reality of what happened to me, to all of us at a deeper core level.
As a child, I was never told the history of adoption, nor did I question it. I believed the adults in the room. I was told by society, and well-meaning neighbours that my mother could not take care of me, and that I could have been left in a children’s homes. I should be forever grateful for being ‘saved’. What a relief to find out so many other adoptees growing up were told the same story.
But here was the truth laid out in front of me as clear as day. No one could argue with the facts. I was born in the Forced Adoption Era. Our mothers only crime was that they were not married. It’s almost too much to take in, it seems so ridiculous now.
Our mothers were punished so badly that they were not given the same prenatal care that other married women received. Authorities did not care much for us bastard babies either, even though we could fulfill an infertile couples’ dream of having a child. Many institutions would have profited financially.
But if they had truly cared about us would so many little babies have died in Hopedene? Will we ever know?
The heartbreaking part is, no one knew these babies existed, no celebrations of their birth, and no mourning and acknowledgments of their deaths. To the outside world they didn’t exist, the Salvation Army made them go away. Until now.
I had never really thought about prenatal care while my mother was pregnant with me. I just assumed that she would have had the same rights as others. So, when I got my file and read that ‘Unfortunately after a perfectly normal delivery Patricia had severe post-partum hemorrhage, had two blood transfusions’ and was whisked off to the hospital. PPH was known as a significant risk to mothers during that period. The fact that she was in a mother and baby home, that did not have full time obstetricians increased her risk- along with the psychological stress. When I found out this information, I did not make the connection that her care could have been compromised. I did worry that this could happen to me when I had my babies.
I survived. We both did. We lived through a birth where a terrified seventeen year old who cried for help during labour was told ‘You made your bed you can lie in it’ and left her to labour alone. More punishment for us both.
No balloons, no celebration. Born as a secret.
For months now I have been thinking about these little babies. I feel such a sense of connection with them. I have been trying to figure it out, downplay it in my mind. But I cannot. For I am them and they are me. We, all of us adoptees, are the babies whose mothers we were ripped from because our birth was bad and shameful.
And while there is nothing I can do to change what happened to all of us, I can tell you about these babies, and I can make them known and remembered by writing about them. And maybe somewhere in the heavens these little babies will find some comfort from knowing that we honour their existence no matter how brief.
Next year is the 100th anniversary of ‘The legalization of the Forced Adoption Era.’ 100 years of grief and secrecy. It’s enough. it’s time to stop and acknowledge us all. It’s time to stop believing the myths of adoption.
Adoption is formed from loss, that is a fact.
I do not want those unknown babies that are laying in the earth, to be forgotten. I want their short lives to mean something or at least be recognised. I wonder how many more babies are buried in different grounds across the UK. Maybe in time we will find out.
100 years of unknown babies, mothers that have kept secrets, and been punished for becoming pregnant out of wedlock. Children that are now adults desperate to know their families.
100 years of silence, protecting our adoptive parents because they cannot cope with our needing to know. Years of unacknowledged grief and loss.
But our voices are loud these days. We the secret, shameful babies and mothers that are now speaking up. Those of us that were told to hide our grief and show our gratitude. We can no longer contain it.
That’s a very long time to wait.
We have been silenced for 100 years. No more.
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