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Western Australia - Publications Details

Newspaper Article

Title
Foiling the Blackmailer
In
The West Australian
Imprint
The West Australian, 19 January 1950, p. 10
Url
http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article47824169
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'.

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