Phil never understood why his mother abandoned him. Only now has he unearthed the doomed love and bigotry behind her decision

Phil Frampton’s birth, at a home for unmarried mothers in Cornwall almost 60 years ago, was attended by secrecy, shame and humiliation. It is hard to imagine, now, the sheer scope and scale of the disgrace his mother Mavis — an accomplished musician and teacher — endured for her ‘sin’ of giving birth to an illegitimate son. 

But Mavis had done more than infringe the moral codes of the era; she had also transgressed a racial one, for Phil’s father was black and she was white. In the invidious social climate of the early Fifties Phil was doubly stigmatised: his mixed ethnicity, records show, was considered a ‘defect’ or ‘malady’.

He was taken away from his mother when just a baby, but his skin colour meant he was deemed unadoptable, so he spent his childhood shunted between often brutal care homes and brief foster placements, believing his mother had casually abandoned him.           More Read