An IASH Work-in-Progress seminar, delivered by Dr Kate Gibson (Centre for Research Collections Fellow 2022; University of Manchester)
Finding fostered and adopted children in the archives
The fostering and adoption of children only became a legal concept in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. However, for centuries before this, parents had relied on foster and adoptive parents to care for their children, using informal arrangements that rarely came to the notice of the state. This talk examines the experiences and motivations behind fostering and adoption in eighteenth and early nineteenth-century Scotland, using archives from the University of Edinburgh Special Collections and the National Records of Scotland. The talk examines the challenges and rewards of finding evidence of the overlooked labour of caring, and of the experiences of particularly vulnerable children in the past.
Please click the link below to join the webinar:
https://ed-ac-uk.zoom.us/j/81322391722
Passcode: Vr8f3ew2