Published 23 August 2026 6:00am BST

 

Jill Martin discovered that her adoptive parents paid 12 shillings to the court to adopt her – Andrew Crowley

We enjoyed a comfortable upbringing in Deal, Kent; there was enough money for holidays in the UK, and we’d take trips to the seaside, where Mum and Dad would play with us. I was a very sporty child, and my dad would take me to watch the football with him every week. When I was a teenager, he led a campaign that was instrumental in overturning the FA ban on women’s football, and he was a founding member and the first secretary of the Women’s Football Association.

I always felt they wanted the best for me, but I couldn’t help wondering about my biological parents. I’d stand looking in the mirror for hours, staring at my nose and wondering where its distinctive shape came from. My adoption certificate was kept in my room; I could look at it whenever I chose to, but it didn’t have any details of my real parents. I’d wonder why they didn’t want me.

When I was 21, my mum was killed in a car accident and my world came crashing down. Dad was devastated. The loss of Mum also prompted him, about two years later, to ask me whether I wanted to meet my birth parents. I got the impression he knew exactly who they were and where to find them.

After her adopted parents died, Martin thought she’d never learn the identities of her birth parents – Andrew Crowley

I was desperate to meet my birth mother, but I didn’t want Dad to feel as if I were rejecting him, so I waited. Two weeks later, in 1975, Dad unexpectedly suffered a heart attack and died. I was devastated to lose him, and I thought the chance of ever finding my real parents had gone for good, too.

Around the same time, I got married and life became busy. I took myself to London, trained in cookery and opened a catering business, and my husband, Geoff, and I started a family, eventually having three wonderful children. I remained curious about my biological parents, but, with children of my own, I felt my longing to belong to a “real” family fade.

Years later, in 2011, I happened to watch a documentary about forced adoption, which I knew little about. I was horrified to learn how women had their babies forcibly taken from them for no other reason than having fallen pregnant out of wedlock.

I was suddenly overwhelmed by a sinking feeling. The practice had begun in 1949 and lasted until 1976 in England and Wales, and I knew, instinctively, that I had been one of those babies. Hands trembling, I went to the drawer and found my adoption certificate. I’d seen it so many times over the years that I’d never really thought about what was written on it. Now, for the first time my eyes were drawn to the words written across the bottom: “Adoption of Jill by Mr & Mrs Hobbs. Received the sum of Twelve shillings.”

Martin’s adoption cost 12 shillings in court fees, or about £17 today

Seeing those court fees, worth about £17 today, suddenly made me feel less as though I’d been adopted and more as if I’d been purchased.

I thought back to pictures I’d seen of myself as a baby, all blue eyes and blonde ringlets. People had said I looked like Shirley Temple. Is that why they’d chosen me? I suddenly felt as if everything I’d ever known was a lie. Who was I?

The next day, I went to Deal Registry Office in Kent, where the certificate had been issued, and explained that I thought I had been part of the forced adoption scandal. The registrars kindly offered to help me, and two weeks later they turned up on my doorstep with a bundle of paperwork. “This is not pretty reading,” one of them warned.

They confirmed what I already suspected: I’d been removed from my unmarried mother because she was considered unfit to bring up a child. Having had my own children, I couldn’t even bring myself to imagine what it must have been like to have a baby taken away.

I wanted to track down my biological parents, but records revealed that my biological mother, Mary Jones, had died two years earlier, in 2009. My biological father, Luke Dickens, however, was still alive. I wondered when he last saw my mother, or whether he’d even known that I’d been taken for adoption.

I spent the next 12 months trying, unsuccessfully, to track down Luke until, eventually, I found a marriage certificate. It showed he had married my mum six months after I was born. I managed to find a phone number for him and prepared myself for disappointment; there was a high chance he could hang up on me, I told myself, or that I had the wrong number.

When an elderly gentleman answered, I politely explained that I thought I might be his daughter. He was silent for what must have been a second, but felt like a lifetime. Then he replied, with a shaking voice: “I’ve been waiting for this moment for more than 60 years. I want you to know you are always welcome in my home.”

I was so overcome with emotion, I couldn’t stay on the phone for long, but Geoff and I arranged to visit Luke at his home, 200 miles away in Redditch, Worcestershire, that weekend. As soon as he opened the door, I instinctively put my arms around him and hugged him. I hadn’t planned to do so, but as we embraced on his doorstep I somehow felt as though I had finally come home. This 85-year-old stranger felt like my father.

Martin meeting her birth father, Luke, for the first time

I learnt that, far from being a teenage mum, my mother had been 27 when she had me and had been married once before. Her divorce was finalised, although she was still awaiting the copy of her decree nisi to be issued when she met Luke, and fell pregnant. Her large family told her there was no room for her and a baby to move back into the family home, and she was forced to move into a workhouse in Burton-on-Trent, Staffordshire.

My father couldn’t bring himself to recount the moment I was taken from my mother; he sobbed as he told me how she had refused to sign the paperwork to have me adopted. I was given, illegally, to my adoptive parents, after a nurse determined she was an unfit mother.

Four months later there was a court hearing to determine my parentage. My father told me that even though the two sets of parents were not supposed to meet they had seen each other in a corridor in the courtroom – both mothers were hysterical, each screaming that their baby was being taken away. I felt for both of them. My mother had had her baby taken away, but my adoptive parents had bonded with me and truly felt that I was their child. The court found in favour of my adoptive parents, and I was put into their custody after they handed over the 12 shilling payment.

Martin was able to get to know Luke for five and a half years before his death in 2017

My father sobbed as he told me how he’d felt responsible. I couldn’t believe that such a cruel system ever existed. I felt torn between my adoptive parents and my birth parents, as though sympathising with either was a slight against the other.

My birth mother never really got over the pain of losing me, Luke said. As soon as her divorce was granted, she and Luke married and went on to have another daughter, Janet, who, sadly, died of cancer when she was just 31. I was devastated that I’d missed the chance to meet her, and my mother. She had lost two daughters, and I would have loved to have consoled her and told her it wasn’t her fault. The irony that I’d been taken because my parents weren’t married, only for them to then stay married for nearly six decades, was devastating.

I had five and a half wonderful years with my dad before he died aged 91 in 2017, and I still have lovely relationships with biological aunts, cousins and their children.

Martin’s birth parents, centre, ultimately wed and were married for nearly 60 years

Still, I can’t help feeling robbed of the life I should have lived. I wish my adoptive parents were still here, because I have so many questions. I went through stages of feeling sickened by what they did, but in time I have come to accept that they were also victims of a horrific system. I can’t fault the life they gave me, but I’ll always feel as though I missed out on the one I was supposed to have.

After my biological father died, I joined a campaign group that was calling for an apology from the Government for the forced adoption scandal. I was furious that my mother and father had gone to their graves filled with shame. I wanted to hear someone publicly declare that what happened should never have happened and that the victims were not to blame.

Earlier this summer, the Government finally issued that apology. We waited far too long for it, as so many people who needed to hear it are no longer with us. For me, though, it’s important to keep telling their stories, and to make sure that what happened to those mothers and babies is never forgotten.

As told to Heather Main