Surrogacy and the Misbegotten Family

In 1965, at the tail end of the baby boom, the maternity block at Crown Street Women’s Hospital was as busy as ever. It was twenty years since the war and the first of the Baby Boomers were now coming into labour. The echo of the baby boom had come, but neither the echo nor the hospital were to last. Within a few years the hospital was closed, the buildings were demolished, and out of mind went the memory of the place where so many families had been made.

What happened to the labour ward admissions register? It must be stored away somewhere in some government archive. Perhaps it could be retrieved, to be put on display in a new museum dedicated to the disappearing “traditional family”. The register was a massive tome and it needed its own solid timber reading stand. Located just inside the swinging doors of the delivery suite, it lay there, open and inviting, for the stream of new arrivals. They often came charging through the double doors at around three in the…