I was reading a library book about adoption history and found a wild detail from 1950

It said that in some states back then, birth mothers were given fake names on hospital records, like 'Jane Doe' or 'Mary Smith', as a standard practice (which I guess was meant to hide things, but wow). I found this in a chapter about closed adoptions in a book called 'The Secret Files' from my local library in Boise. Has anyone else come across old records with these made-up names, and what did you think when you saw them?

2 comments

2 Comments

lily893d ago

Wait, was it actually fake names or just aliases? I ask because my aunt found her original birth certificate from 1952. It listed her birth mom as "Helen Brown," which sounds generic, but the social worker's notes later called it an "alias for confidentiality." So it wasn't random like Jane Doe, it was a made-up name they used on purpose to replace the real one. Honestly, it feels different than just a placeholder.

sagelane3d ago

Yeah, that's a key difference. A placeholder like "Baby Girl Smith" just fills a blank until the real name is known. But "Helen Brown" as a deliberate alias is an active act of hiding. It creates a whole fake person, a ghost in the paperwork. That feels more intentional, like they were building a wall instead of just leaving a space empty. It turns a missing piece into a whole different puzzle.