Adoption in UK was informal, unregulated before 20c [audio 7min @12:05]

"Making History" listener Christopher Reason contacted the programme after working on his family history. His grandfather Tom Reason (1872–1926) was the subject of a family story which said that, shortly after his birth, his father died, whereupon his mother remarried and emigrated and left little Tom in the care of the De Boyne family. Christopher soon discovered from Tom's birth certificate that this was a fabrication. Tom was illegitimate and was put down in the 1881 census as living in Lewisham with the De Boynes as a 'scholar and visitor'. Christopher Reason wanted to know why Tom wasn't formally adopted. "Making History" consulted the social historian Dr Elizabeth Hurren of Oxford Brooke’s University, who explained that Britain didn't formally regulate adoption until 1926.