ABSTRACT
The courts were first empowered to make adoption orders in 1926 as a result of the Adoption of Children Act of that year, which in turn was based upon the recommendations of the Tomlin Committee (Report of the Child Adoption Committee (1925) (Cmnd 2401)). Prior to 1926 there had been a completely unregulated market in young children, with commission being earned by professional agents for facilitating informal adoption arrangements between natural parents and potential ‘adopters’. By 1921, public disquiet had been such that the government set up the Hopkinson Committee on Adoption. The result was the Report of the Committee on Child Adoption, which clearly favoured legislation to create the necessary framework for adoption to be legalised. The Committee defined adoption as:
‘… a legal method of creating between a child and one who is not a natural parent of the child an artificial family relationship analogous to that of parent and child.’
