The Adoption of Children Act 1926 was the first legislation enabling the legal adoption of children in England and Wales, with equivalent legislation passed in Ireland in 1929 and in Scotland in 1930. While it had general benefit, especially to children, in three respects it was of particular significance for women. First, it allowed them to adopt their own illegitimate children, and thus to legitimise them – and often also to conceal the circumstances of their birth. Second, it allowed women to adopt children by themselves if they had no husband – the situation of increasing numbers of women after the carnage of the first world war. Third, in an age before assisted reproduction, it offered married couples a way of having a family if they were unable to have children naturally.
The full version of this landmark is written by Frances Burton and Rosemary Auchmuty