“I missed out on so much, a life without my son or his family”- one woman’s experience of a Glasgow mother and baby home

The first time Elspeth Ross knew she was going away was when she returned home from her work sewing shirts in Glasgow city centre to find a case in the hall.

“I had never seen the case before. I never even knew there was a case in the house,” Elspeth, now 76, said to the Scotland on Sunday.

Elspeth also did not know she was pregnant, her condition worked out by a family friend and, she believes, possibly a back street abortionist who examined her. Elspeth’s mother and sisters never talked about sex. She had grown up with a boy in the neighbourhood, Ian, and got pregnant aged 15 without knowing what had happened.

In Scotland in 1962, pregnancy outwith marriage was seldom talked about, and often covered up. Later, it emerged, there had been some chat that Ian’s parents did not want the couple to wed as they needed their son’s wages. Certainly, nobody talked to Elspeth as their baby grew within her.

“We got to the house, it looked quite frightening, it was all dark looking.”

She was instead ushered away that night with a suitcase she had never seen before, to a place she had never been before.

She said: “I remember keeping my coat on and leaving the house. We went in a taxi. It seemed miles and miles away.

"We got to the house, it looked quite frightening, it was all dark looking.”

Elspeth had arrived at Cleveden House, a Mother and Baby Home run by the Salvation Army in the upmarket Kelvindale area. Women and girls went there when they started to show, sometimes for three months before their child was born. The charity ran 10 such homes in Scotland from the 1920s and 1970s.

The Mother and Baby Homes provided health care, accommodation and food for pregnant women but they also perpetuated past stigmas surrounding unmarried mothers, who became immersed in secrecy and shame and hidden away from view.

Records show 115 women stayed at Cleveden House in 1961, a census year. Of children born, most of whom were delivered at the institution’s Homeland hospital around the corner in Great Western Road, 59 per cent were adopted. Similar homes were run by the Church of Scotland and various charities.

While Elspeth did not know she pregnant, she also did not know that Cleveden House was also arranging her baby to be adopted.

Elspeth is part of the campaign group Movement for an Adoption Apology Scotland, which is pressing the Scottish Government to support those impacted by a system where unmarried mothers felt forced into giving up their babies for adoption.

Adoption record reforms and mental health support are also being sought.

Elspeth slept in a “horrible and dull” dormitory room at the home. Chores loomed large and every morning for three months, she was down on her knees washing the home’s grand cantilevered staircase. Others worked in the laundry.

Embroidery and knitting took up the afternoons with church held in the communal dining area on Sunday, after which they were sent to their rooms to lie down.

Her widowed mother visited every night after work and her sister took her to the Botanic Gardens on a Saturday, the only time they were allowed to leave, apart from examinations at Homeland. A little bit of joy was found in a radio one of the girls had hidden away.

“You weren’t allowed to listen to music but we would sit out on the fire escape with this radio. I don’t like hearing that music now, things like Cliff Richard and Marty Wilde,” she said.

Early on May 5 1962, she called out in deep pain with the home’s “lieutenant” walking her around the corner to Homeland in silence.

“She never told me where I was going. I didn’t know why I was in pain. She went away without saying anything,” Elspeth recalled.

She was taken Rottenrow Maternity Hospital, her records showing she had been sedated. She woke up in a room with a big clock saying 12.25pm. Everything changed.

“A nurse came in and said ‘Elspeth, you have a wee boy’. All of a sudden, everything collapsed into place and I realised what had been wrong with me, why I was at the home, why I had been in that pain,” she said.

Elspeth returned to Cleveden House with David, where she slept in the nursery and bottle fed him for six weeks.

She said: “He was such a beautiful, beautiful boy. I was happy. I thought I was going to be there forever. There was never any discussion about him going anywhere.

“Then one day, I’m told to go to see matron. She told to go to my room, pack my bag and go home.”

“I feel angry about what happened. I missed out on so much, a life without my son or his family. My children not having their brother”

Elspeth did not see David for another 34 years. While she wed Ian and had two more children, their first child was never spoken about and the marriage broke down after 17 years.

She later traced her son, who was renamed Eric by his adoptive parents who moved him to Australia aged six, through Barnardo’s. She was reunited with him on Cilla Black’s Surprise Surprise in 1997.

Elspeth said: “I wrote to tell him I never realised they were taking him. He wrote back, telling me he didn’t know what I put into him during those six weeks, but it had never left him. He asked if he could call me mum. That was brilliant. He came to my house and it was as if he had been there every day of his life.

“I feel angry about what happened. I missed out on so much, a life without my son or his family. My children not having their brother,” she said.

“An apology would make a difference. You were made to feel you were this horrible person. I need to hear that is not true. It was the way I was treated that wasn’t right.”

The Scottish Government is seeking women and children affected by historic adoption practices to share their experiences. A survey is open until April 20.

A version of this article first appeared on our sister site, The Scotsman