Nobody's Child

by Kate Adie

Book Overview

What's your name? Where were you born? What is your date of birth? Simple questions that we are asked throughout our lifebut what if you didn t know the answers? Kate Adie uncovers the extraordinary, moving, and inspiring stories of just such childrenwithout mother or father, any knowledge of who they might be, or even a name to call their own. With a curiosity inspired by her own circumstances as an adopted child, Kate shows how the most remarkable...

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0340838019
• ISBN13: 9780340838013
• Release Date: October 2006
• Publisher: Hodder & Stoughton
• Length: 336 Pages
• Weight: 0.55 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.9" x 5.3" x 7.8"

Customer Reviews

What's your Mama's name, child?

First, a note to the reviewer who thought this was Kate's biography - it isn't - she wrote that before she wrote this and it's called The kindness of strangers. What is your name? What were your parent's names? When and where were you born? We get asked these questions throughout our lives. For most of us, including myself, these are easy questions to answer. For adopted children whose birth parents are known to the authorities (such as Kate Adie), they are a little trickier to answer, but there is another group of people who are unlikely ever to be able to answer these questions accurately. These people are called foundlings and they are the subject of this book. I'd never come across the word foundling prior to reading this book, but it's easy to work out what it means. Just as a duckling is a baby duck, so a foundling is a baby found - after being abandoned by his or her parents. Even if we haven't seen any for ourselves, we've all heard on the news or read in the newspapers about babies abandoned on doorsteps or in telephone kiosks, taxis, rubbish skips, bushes and any number of other places. Occasionally, the baby's natural mother is identified but more often they aren't. Of course, this is not a new phenomenon, as everybody who even vaguely remembers the Old Testament knows about Moses. Yes, Moses was a foundling. The problem of abandoned babies in Western Europe and North America is nothing like it once was because of contraception, abortion and a reduction in poverty, but it still exists. Elsewhere in the world, the number of foundlings may actually be increasing. Much of this book is devoted to looking back in time, particularly to the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, In those days, special institutions (called foundling hospitals but they certainly didn't merit the hospital tag) were set up to look after foundlings. The institutions were run in almost military fashion but the mortality rate was appalling. Any foundling who entered such an institution was lucky to come out alive. Boys who came in and survived the ordeal often ended up with a job in the army or navy, which was no surprise given the way they were raised. Girls were trained to be - guess what - domestic servants. Entry to these institutions was often via a turning wheel that guaranteed anonymity for whoever deposited the baby. It seems from the description and picture that the turning wheel was a bit like a revolving door with the wheel as its base, except that it was at window height and was about the size of a window. So the mother could just arrive at the turning wheel, place the baby on the wheel and leave. Somebody inside would see (or hear) that a new baby had arrived and turn the wheel. At least in Europe, turning wheels have been consigned to history but their modern successors (baby hatches kept at a constant, warm temperature) can be found in Germany. Fortunately, they aren't used very often, but enough to justify their existence. Hey, it's better than dum

A fine book

In an era obsessed by family history, how do people without any cope? Kate Adie was adopted as a baby and has written a new book about foundlings, children who are abandoned to the state by their mothers, often with next to nothing to connect them to their roots. Kate talks about Nobody's Child and how the lack of information about where the foundlings have come from affects them as they grow up. Nobody's Child by Kate Adie a fine work indeed.

Nobody's Child

I found 'Nobody's Child' to be a well-written, easy-to-read and well-researched book on the history of foundlings in various countries, with many references to living foundlings and their experiences. Literate and well-put together, with a smooth transition of historical facts and illuminating personal experiences.

Compelling, intellegent - an eye-opener

Nobody's Child takes the reader beyond the stories of searching for connection to blood, which is quite often for the adopted child a deep yearning. Kate Adie brings to light the experience of the hundreds of thousands of people who will never be able to begin that search because they were foundlings, left behind basically without a clue to whom their mother was, or why they were left. She shares her own personal experience along with the experiences of many other people who too were foundlings. Adie gives the reader a look into a range of cultures, societies and times, and how the babies left behind, on door steps or garbage bins, are treated, honored or abused. Are the babies left in institutional rooms to die from neglect or are efforts made to find them homes? Nobody's Child is compelling, a real eye-opener.