Keeping The Secret Of Her Baby For Fifty Years

Chiswick writer's memoir, 'The Baby Box' recalls sixties teenage pregnancy

Set in the 1960s, The Baby Box is a unique memoir, revealing the Chiswick-based author's honest experience of being a pregnant teenager. Her mother, horrified of the shame her daughter brought to the family, banished the young Jane to a mother-and-baby home, where adoption was the normal conclusion.

Scenes of a dramatic nature with a compelling first person account set in the 1960s, The Baby Box by Jane Hayward, makes a unique memoir, countering the misery tradition of its genre by revealing her honest experience of being a pregnant teenager. Her mother, horrified of the shame her daughter brought to the family, banished the young Jane to a mother-and-baby home, where most babies were given up for adoption.

"I was quite happy about going to the home because it was so horrible at home. I wasn't apprehensive. Everyone was so nice, there were some sad stories obviously but it was a C of E home and we had to go to church on Sundays"

Jane was 16 in 1964 when she became pregnant, and her parents were furious. They had moved to Streatham, from a small village to London, and Jane had quickly found herself expecting a baby with a boyfriend who was two years older than her. "I expect if we had stayed in the village which was very strict, it would not have happened. My parents quickly got rid of him, but he did come to visit me in the home, and after the birth."

She was expelled from school and made to feel like "scum". Her father told her no decent man would marry her. "That was how society was then" she says, without bitterness.

While Jane does not remember how the subject of the Mother & Baby Home was first discussed she does recall being pleased at getting out of the tension at home. There was little to do but sit in her bedroom knitting as she was not allowed out. Her two brothers, one older, one younger, were at school all day and were not around to hear the lectures which her mother regularly gave her. "She was a tough woman but then she had a tough life in the war.

When Jane was six months pregnant she was taken to the Home in Wimbledon which was situated in a beautiful Georgian house, which has since been turned into private flats. She recalls that it was April, a lovely spring day. She soon befriended the other pregnant girls, and recalls they were all very different, some with very sad stories.One girl was 15 and had been made pregnant by a married man, another in her thirties who was going to keep her baby and work as a housekeeper. When the girls were taken for their ante natal check up,s they had to pretend to be married.

Jane was taken to the Nelson Hospital when she went into labour in June. It was a breech birth and she knew right away that something was very wrong. "There was no cry and the nurses were silent. Then they called a doctor. The baby died fifteen minutes later, his lungs were full of water".

She said she was taken back to the ward and then her father collected her and brought her to the family home. It was not discussed. She felt it had been like a bad dream. If her baby had lived would she have tried to keep him?

"I don't know. It would have meant having to live with my boyfriend and his mother and probably get married, at 17. I don't know what life I would have had." The family moved to Purley and put the past behind them.

Image of a Mother & Baby home in the UK

Jane applied for a job in the Ministry of Housing and was soon promoted. It was there she met her husband Peter. They had two children,a son and a daughter, both grown up. She is now a grand mother. The couple moved to Chiswick thirteen years ago to be near her daughter.

Looking back now she realises that it was a lonely experience for a young woman. "I remember a nurse saying to me when I was going to have the baby, " I bet you wish you kept you legs together nine months ago'. Women in the shops wouldn't serve us, we had to buy cheap wedding rings."

The social ostracisation was in contrast to the kindness shown in the Mother & Baby Home, and the camaraderie between the women. " We looked out for each other, and afterwards I actually babysat for one of the girls who kept her baby. but when the social workers came to get the baby from the mother, we all kept away, it was a difficult time."

This is the origin of the title of the memoir, The Baby Box. "The packing of the baby box was a joint venture, you had a cardboard box, with all your baby things in it and that went to the adoption centre.

Although it describes some distressing, disturbing events, the upbeat narrative is one to which readers, who experienced the period, can relate. It will also fascinate younger women who grew up in a more liberal atmosphere. The legacy of those two years is still so strong, it is only after half a century that Jane is ready to speak out for herself, for other unwed mothers and for the adults who were, as babies, given away in adoption, and who still wonder if their birth mothers loved them.

“It has taken me over 50 years to talk openly about this time in my life as the shame was so firmly ground into me,” Jane says. “I couldn’t tell my story while my parents were alive.”

Those who enjoy memoirs reminiscent of an era, as well as readers who are looking for a true story with depth, will be engrossed in this tale of a repressive society, buried shame and ultimate forgiveness.

Jane Hayward writes long and short fiction. Her first novel, a romance, was published by Robert Hale. Jane developed her writing through the Arvon Foundation courses and then took an MA in Creative Writing at the University of Chichester.

Her dark tale The Way to a Man’s Heart won the Lightship prize, published in their Anthology 1 by Alma Press. Her stories have been short-listed by Comma Press and The Liar’s League and published by independent publishers.

As well as her struggle to find any loving support, Jane’s book describes the outlook of the 1960s towards teenage sex, the unbearable tension, even violence, between her and her mother, countered by the happy atmosphere of the home, with entertaining tales of the other girls living there.

"I originally wrote it as a novel as I thought I could distance myself from events but my mother was still alive. So I did MA in creative writing, shelved it, then an agent replied and said this struggle not to be a memoir. My mother was dead by then so I rewrote it as a memoir. It's still in a dramatic narrative but all of it is my story.

"I felt I had lived with a secret for long enough, I told my husband on our third date, but his parents never knew and wouldn't have liked it. I had to keep a secret for fifty years. Even my best friend from school didn't know.

"I wanted to write it and get rid of it, and doing so has made a huge difference to me. Yes, I feel lighter now, I'm enjoying this process and so is my husband, he's been pretty marvellous the whole time.

"I feel I am telling the story of a lot of other girls, who we never hear about. who knows how many others are out there and have kept similar secrets."

Anne Flaherty

An excerpt from an early draft of this memoir was short-listed for the Fish Short Memoir Prize. The book is due to be released on 28 February price £9.99.

February 13, 2019