Hi Lisa

You wrote:

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Minnie told them that all she knew about Eleanor Crowe was that she was about 16 years old and after the birth planned to go back to the Isle of Man where she was from to live it down!

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Is "16 years old" a typo ? If not, then she'd have been born circa 1889, not 1881.

She could have been a domestic servant in the Isle of Man and only gone across to the mainland in the later stages of her pregnancy. Do you suppose that the money given to her adoptive parents would have come from her own family, or from the family of the baby's father (possibly the person who had been employing her ?)

Jean C