Marion McMillan was just 17 years old, unmarried and pregnant when her family sent her more than 150 miles from her home in south-west Scotland to a maternity facility operated by the Salvation Army in Newcastle-upon-Tyne during 1966. She spent nine months bonding with her newborn son, a boy with striking dark hair, before staff removed him from her care permanently.
Her desperate appeals to keep her child went unheeded.
"I said 'please help me keep my baby, don't let them take my baby, please' and he was gone,"she recounted in a documentary examining this dark chapter of British history.
Marion's experience was far from unique. Between 1949 and 1976, approximately 250,000 women across the UK were coerced into surrendering their newborns for adoption. These mothers—predominantly working-class and unmarried—found themselves powerless against state authorities, social workers and religious organisations that controlled a system designed to supply infants to adoptive families, typically from more affluent backgrounds.
In July, outgoing Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer delivered a formal state apology to these mothers, acknowledging that
"the shame is not yours... the shame is ours."According to reporting on the apology, Starmer described the practice as
"a stain on our history,"and the government confirmed that affected mothers and adoptees would receive support including access to adoption records and mental health assistance.
How did Marion's story begin?
Growing up in Stranraer during the 1960s, Marion fell in love with an older man who had emigrated from Pakistan.
"I was in love at the time and it was so lovely, I never gave it a second thought,"she said. When she became pregnant at 17, her boyfriend recognised the social barriers they faced.
"Nobody will want you to go with a black man, Marion,"he told her, eventually suggesting they emigrate to Hawaii where mixed-race marriages might be accepted.
"I never saw him ever again after that,"Marion recalled.
"Didn't know what was ahead of me. The conveyor belt of 'unwed mother' took control, and that was when I lost control."
What conditions did Marion face at the maternity home?
Marion gave birth at Hopedene, a facility for unmarried mothers where conditions were austere and treatment brutal. From the moment she arrived, the message was unmistakable.
"Everything, from the minute you cross their threshold, is that you're unworthy to be a mother and we're taking your baby from you,"she explained.
"It's going for adoption. So you better get used to that, girl, because you've no money, you've no place to live, you've not got anybody to support you."
During labour, the matron struck her across the face for attempting to leave the bed.
"And I don't know what was worse, the shock of her doing that [or] being in heavy labour,"Marion said. She was not permitted to hold her newborn son until the following day, and the anxiety was overwhelming.
"I was absolutely terrified. Absolutely terrified that they're taking my baby. They cannae take my baby away from me."
Marion's experience of racial discrimination compounded her vulnerability.
"I was a Scotch girl with a half-caste, that's what the Salvation Army recognised me to be,"she said.
"And of course you were told that half-caste is very rarely successful in adoption."Yet despite this, adoptive parents were found.
When was Marion separated from her son?
At nine months old, Marion's son was selected by his adoptive parents. The final separation was agonising.
"[The matron] took him, and she was weeping with me, and she must have had another member of staff that took him then, and she was still holding me."Marion's pleas to retain custody were ignored entirely.
Unwelcome in her hometown of Stranraer, Marion ended up in a women's hostel in Glasgow.
"Suddenly I'm banished from where I was born and brought up and I'm entirely on my own again,"she told a national broadcaster. The separation lasted decades. Marion was not reunited with her son until 2004—38 years after their forced separation.
Despite the reunion, the trauma persisted.
"It's been painful for him, painful for me, painful for his [adoptive] parents, painful for everybody. But if you take away the pain it's been a gift from God because all the years I missed him."
What happened to Ann Keen?
Ann Keen's story reveals how the system denied basic medical care to unmarried mothers. At 17, working in a toilet roll factory in Ewloe, Flintshire, she was asked out by a salesman.
"That's when it happened. In today's terms it was without consent. You didn't say that in the 60s,"she reflected. Like Marion, she was sent away to give birth at an NHS hospital in Swansea, where she faced deliberate cruelty during labour.
"I was told I wouldn't have anything for pain because I would remember it, and I wouldn't be a bad girl again,"Ann explained. The staff viewed her as immoral and undeserving of compassion.
"They saw me as a woman that didn't have any morality and therefore I wasn't worthy of any help. And I don't believe, had I been married that that would have happened."
Ann was told she could spend ten days with her baby, but on the eighth day she discovered he had vanished from the nursery. A midwife delivered the news with deliberate cruelty:
"He's waiting for his new mummy. You'll never see him again."The midwife then took Ann to a Victorian bathroom, placed her in the bath and forcibly expressed her breast milk.
"I'm getting rid of this milk, you won't be needing it,"the midwife said.
"And that's when I knew I'd lost everything,"Ann said.
Ann was reunited with her son, Mark Lloyd-Fox, in later life. When Starmer issued his apology, Ann was among a small group of mothers invited to Downing Street.
"The apology to me means I'm no longer presumed guilty of something I didn't do, because I didn't give him away. He was taken,"she said.
"It will prove to the world that it wasn't our fault. We weren't to blame. The state was to blame, the churches were to blame, and we will be free."
What was Joan Chambers' experience?
Joan Chambers' case involves an additional layer of trauma: she became pregnant as a result of rape. At 14 years old and a schoolgirl in Sunderland, a teacher began asking her to walk with him in the countryside.
"I wasn't alarmed by it, because, you know, he was a teacher and teachers are supposed to be trustworthy. I trusted him, I really did."One day, he raped her.
"All I remember is the pain,"she said.
"I didn't understand what was happening."
Five weeks before giving birth, Joan was required to give evidence against her attacker in court. Years later, she discovered court archives revealing that the judge had instructed the jury to disbelieve her testimony.
"He's got a good career ahead of him, so don't let her being pregnant sway you,"the judge had said, according to the records.
"That hurt. It really hurt when I read that years later. For a judge to say that."
Joan spent the final weeks of her pregnancy at a mother and baby home but said she had
"blanked out"the birth itself.
"It must have been so painful. I wasn't given painkillers or anything like that,"she added.
"The next thing I remember is like my legs were up in stirrups, a green cover over my legs, waiting for the doctor to come and stitch me. I had been torn to shreds, absolutely torn to shreds."
Her baby was taken when he was three weeks old, a week before Christmas.
"They took him from me and then they told me to go back in the nursery and take the bedding out of his cot and get it ready for the next baby,"she said. Joan was 66 years old when they were finally reunited.
"It was amazing, but it was so sad,"she reflected.
"He'd never looked for me because he had a happy adoption."
What institutional roles did churches and the state play?
The forced adoption system operated through collaboration between state bodies, religious organisations and social services. In 2023, Nicola Sturgeon, Scotland's first minister at the time, formally apologised for the state's role, describing the practice as
"always cruel, unjust and profoundly wrong."She highlighted Marion McMillan as
"one of the most ardent campaigners"for recognition and justice.
The Salvation Army, which operated many of these homes, issued an updated apology on Friday. Its territorial leaders, commissioners Paul and Jenine Main, stated:
"We are profoundly sorry and deeply ashamed that vulnerable young women did not get the help they needed in their mother and baby homes. We know we must be held accountable for those we let down and reflect on our role in a society that worked against pregnant unmarried women."
The Church of England also apologised in June 2026 for its role in forced adoptions, preceding the government's formal state apology. According to reporting on the government apology, an estimated 185,000 babies were taken from unmarried mothers in England and Wales alone during the 1950s, 1960s and 1970s. The broader UK figure reached approximately 250,000 across the period from 1949 to 1976.
What support is being offered to survivors?
Following Starmer's apology, the government announced that affected mothers and adoptees will receive support including access to adoption records and mental health help. Starmer acknowledged that the state failed to protect mothers, children and families, and that the harm caused lasted a lifetime.
Marion McMillan, however, believes more action is needed. She is campaigning for expanded support services for all those affected by forced adoption—mothers, children and adoptive parents alike. She has also called for the establishment of a centre of excellence for adoption in Scotland, where anyone involved in adoption could receive comprehensive training and support.
The apologies represent a turning point for survivors who spent decades carrying shame that was never theirs to bear.
"The apologies prove we weren't to blame,"Ann Keen said, capturing the sentiment of many who fought for decades to have their experiences acknowledged and their names cleared.
