In
The West Australian
Publication Date
19 January 1950
Publisher
The West Australian
Page Numbers
10
URL
Description
'Foiling the Blackmailer' is an article from The West Australian newspaper. It talks about cases in Britain where people who had adopted a child had been paying 'hush money' to blackmailers who threatened 'to tell their adopted child who its real parents are'. The article shows that the response of the government was to seal records so that members of the public could not learn details of adoptions, bringing it into line with processes that had been in place in Western Australia since the 1920s. This was called 'closed adoption'.