CASTAWAYS OF MAYFAIR.

Auckland Star, Volume LX, Issue 230, 28 September 1929, Page 3 (Supplement)

CASTAWAYS OF MAYFAIR.

TRADE IN UNWANTED BABES. TRAGEDIES OF SOCIETY MOTHERS.—POIGNANT STORY OF NEW ZEALANDER. Lady Caillard, wife of Sir Vincent Caillard, famous \n Colonial Service, politics and trade, in an article specially written for "The Sunday News," tells the story of 28 "unwanted" Society babes to whom she acted as fairy godmother. The article is full of humour and pathos, it has tense situations such as one might expect to find in Grand Guignol drama. But in this case the stories, strange though they may seem, are true. There is the story of the man who returned from New Zealand to fall in love with the beautiful girl he did not recognise as his child. There is the story of the four years old mite that was taken to a doctor's consulting-room. There it was seen by the woman who gave birth to it, and who did not recognise her infant.

What a splendid idea it would be, I thought, if I could find homes for what were called "children of sin!" I decided to form myself into a private adoption society. Since the day when I made that decision I have found homes for 28 babies. My first baby was the daughter of .1 girl living in Mayfair, whose parents were wealthy. The little 17-year-old mother had met a man at a dance and fallen in • love with him—desperately, recklessly in Jove, as girls did in those days. The man, unfortunately, was married most unhappily, but with no chance of freeing himself. The inevitable occurred. The girl's parents discovered her attachment and the girl was sent to a in the South of France to separate her from her lover. But further complications followed. The man traced her to the convent and tried to take her away. When the nuns discovered what had happened (so they told me afterwards) they felt themselves partially responsible, and the baby was born in the convent. Shortly before its arrival the Mother Superior asked me whether I would be prepared to take a child immediately after its birth. I said that I would. Everything had to be arranged with the most breathless secrecy. Luckily I had an excellent nurse to aid and abet me, and together we turned the top floor into a nursery. One morning I received a telegram from the convent. It said simply "Come," and I went. As I entered the convent a smartly dressed man who was coming out looked hard at me as he passed. ' I was told this was the baby's father. The Hopeless Longing. The poor little mother was never allowed to see her baby girl. I took it just as it came into the world, without even a stitch of clothing. The father left some money for its maintenance, but this I left at the convent. I kept this first "unwanted" for several months, till she was adopted by a young couple, who had everything money could give them, but no child. She is now grown up and married, with two lovely babies of her own. To this day she does not know she is an adopted child. Nor do any of my other babies. Only the adopting parents know the secrets of .their births. I am afraid ; this first baby's poor little mother is not quite so happy. The year after her child was born she came out and was presented at Court. The J next year she married, but she never had another child. How deeply she has longed for the ;baby she never saw is a secret she keeps; locked in her heart. Back From New Zealand. One of the most extraordinary, and in some ways tragic, cases I had to deal with concerned a young girl, the. daughter of a Don, whom a young man I knew had betrayed. V . The girl'g parents, had they discovered what had . happened, would have taken it extremely badly, so the young man asked me whether I could do anything to help them out of their dilemma. After thinking it over and corresponding with the girl's parents, I arranged that she should come to me as a companion. When she arrived the girl was in low spirits, but her parents suspected nothing. Everything went well until about two months before her baby was due. • Then her sister fell ill, and the parents asked that the girl should come home. I had to refuse. The sister became worse, and the applications more urgent. Still I ' refused. I told them that their daughter was in the South of France. Eventually the sister, became so ill that she was not expected to live. The worse she grew, the more hard-hearted I had to'become. At last she died, and I even- had to Tefuse permission for her sister to attend the funeral. All this I had to break to the poor girl as gently as I could. ,• , Naturally she was dreadfully upset, but in course of time- her baby was born and she returned home without arousing any suspicions at all. The child was adopted. , ■..,, That, I believed, was the end of the istory as far as I was concerned. But I was wrong. About 17 years later the young man in the case came back from New Zealand, where he had held an engineering post. ' As soon as he landed, he came to see me and tell me his news. He had fallen in love with a young and beautiful girl, and as soon as I saw her I realised the incredible thing had happened. "You can't marry her," I told him as soon as we were alone. "Can't marry her; why, what do you mean ?" "She is your daughter.' Royal Romance. My next Unwanted came to me in a very romantic way. A 'few months after my first had been adopted I fell ill and went away for a cure to a foreign town, where I met one of the most beautiful girls I have ever seen, tall, with hair the colour of a sovereign and lovely violet eyes. She was as lovable as she was beautiful. We became great friends, and all the long summer days when I had to keep to my bed she stayed with me and made life more bearable. , She was deeply in love with one of the sons of the Royal Family of that country, but as her mother was one of the ladies-in-waiting, it was not easy for the two young people to see each other alone. I was so sorry for them that I allowed them to meet as often as they liked m the beautiful suite of rooms I occupied in the hotel. They were Tadiantly happy, living blissfully in the present, and I know they had not a care for the future, though they must have realised, if they had allowed themselves to reflect, that their love could only end in tragedy. For it was impossible . for the son of a king to marry a commoner. , The next year: I returned to the place. What a sad change! No more smiles, no , more laughter. The inevitable had hap- . pened, and in terror of being discovered and bringing disgrace on her fanfily, the , girl could think of nothing better than . suicide. . ■ , , Nothing I could say would make her , change her mind. She insisted the only way out of the difficulty was to take her ■ own life. , ' Then in desperation I thought of a plan. , I went to her mother, and she agreed with ■ me that the girl was looking terribly ill. I suggested that she needed a change, and ■ asked whether I might take her back to , England with me. .', She agreed, and I brought the girl back , to London. In due course her baby was j born—another little • girl—and the young i mother returned to her family with' no one the wiser but myself and the baby's father. • Poor child, how she wept at parting with j her baby! She seemed to have left all the t ioy of life behind in England when she set < ■sail. For a long time she wanted me to j j «end her news of the child eyerjr dag, <

Her baby girl was only with me a few weeks when she whs adopted by a rich manufacturer in England, who settled £80,000 on her the day she came to him. She has since inherited nearly £500,000. In this case, as in many others, no one but myself knew the details of the adoption. Not even the poor little mother. She had to agree to her baby being adopted by people whose names she -was never to know. I am afraid she never overcame her sorrow at parting with her baby, for when the child's father had to marry she died of a broken heart. Tragic Little Dorothy. In practically every case I have arranged for my babies to be adopted by gentlefolk. There' was one, however, whose adoptive parents were a coachman and his wife. My doctor asked me whether I would be prepared to take a baby at a moment a notice. The parents were both married people in society, and the child's existence, if discovered, would cause grave complications. I agreed. By arrangement I drove lo Waterloo Station iu my carriage. The mother, who was to meet me, was to recognise my carriage by my black horses. At the appointed hour a woman appeared. She was heavily veiled. Without a word she handed me her baby girl through the carriage window, together with a little box containing the child's clothes, and an envelope containing £50, together with a request that the child should be called Dorothy. Soon after this a friend of mine told me that her coachman and his wife were longing for a child. Why not let them have little Dorothy? The child, she said, would be under her eye all the time. I was not very enthusiastic about the proposal, but in the end I consented. Tragedy followed. The child was weakly and developed internal trouble. No one could have nursed her with greater care than the adoptive mother, but, alas, m spite of everything they could do the child died. Once when they took her to the doctor who had brought her to me in the first place, they met a lady in the waiting room who looked wistfully at the child. "How old is she?" she inquired. "Four months." "Ah, that is the age my little girl would have been by now," she sighed. She little knew that she was looking at her own baby. Several of my babies have come into large fortunes. • One of them is to inherit one of the oldest titles in the land. He little realises that he is not the true heir. Sometimes even I have not known the names of the real parents, and there have been occasions when I have only been able to guess at those of the adoptive ones. The adoptions have all been concluded on a proper legal basis. Each couple that has taken one of my babies has been given documents disclosing the names of the real parents, and handing over the child into their keeping. As soon as a baby has left my hands I have done my best to obliterate its name from my mind.