My natural mother, Veronica Smith, who has died aged 83, was an “unmarried mum” when she was compelled to hand me over for adoption in the mid-1960s. We did not see each other again for 40 years, but once reunited were able to establish a happy and supportive relationship, despite some initial ups and downs.
When her pregnancy was discovered, Veronica’s sister and mother arranged for her to be sent to a Catholic Crusade of Rescue hostel in south London. She only had one week with her new-born, then was sent away and told to forget about the whole thing. I was formally adopted at six weeks old.
Those were vastly different times: the options presented to single mothers were very limited, and for couples who couldn’t have children adoption was the only recourse.
In 2010 Veronica co-founded and helped to run the Movement for Adoption Apology (MAA), a campaign that seeks an apology from the UK government to all those who were coerced or forced into giving up their children for adoption in the 50, 60s and 70s – an apology that has not yet been given. She remained with the MAA until stepping down a few weeks before her death.
Veronica was born in Walton-on-Thames, Surrey, to Ena (nee Hueffer), a model, and Alfred Agius, an army officer who became the UK’s trade commissioner for Malta, based in London.
She went to Ingomar and Mayfield school in Walton-on-Thames, then to the Ursuline Convent school in Wimbledon before training as a nurse from 1959 onwards. At the age of 23, in 1964, she began working as a nurse at Butlin’s holiday camp in Brighton, where she became pregnant.
Once she had lost me to adoption, Veronica worked for many years as a nursing officer, second to the matron, at the Royal Free hospital in London, before relocating to Sussex, where she was a school nurse at Lancing college, near Worthing, during the 90s.
I have never had any issue with being adopted and had very loving adoptive parents who gave me a wonderful life in Canada, France and the UK. My reunion with Veronica was catalysed by the birth of my daughter in 2002, and after having had a false start in 1988, we got back together properly in 2004, spending some cathartic days with each other at her home in Seaford, East Sussex.
In 1993 Veronica met Roger Smith, a project manager, and retired from nursing two years later. They married in 2008.
She is survived by Roger, by me, three stepchildren from Roger’s previous marriage, Catherine, Victoria and Andrew, and seven grandchildren.