Episode 6 Family Finders

Families can be driven apart for all manner of reasons.

I had no information at all about where my mum went.

And when you do lose touch with your loved ones...

You don't know who you are, where've you come from.

..finding them can take a lifetime.

I might have a brother that's still living here.

Especially when they could be anywhere. At home or abroad.

And that's where the family finders come in.

From international organisations...

Hi, it's The Salvation Army Family Tracing Service.

..to genealogy detective agencies...

For someone to say that it's changed their life,

it makes coming to work, you know, really, really special.

..and dedicated one-man bands.

It's a matter of how much effort you really want to put into it.

How badly you want to solve the problem.

They hunt through history to bring families back together again.

Finding new family is wonderful.

In this series, we follow the work of the family finders...

Suddenly, you get one spark of breakthrough and there they are.

..learning the tricks they use

to track missing relatives through time...

I didn't think I'd ever find my sisters but I have.

..and meeting the people whose lives they change along the way.

I've been waiting to meet John my whole life.

Since we've met, I feel part of a family again.

You've just completed my life for me.

Many family secrets are shrouded in the mists of time.

Tracing a family separated across decades or even centuries

can seem a daunting task.

But in fact, technological advances in fields such as computing

and applied genetics have led to the development of brand-new

weapons in the amateur family finders arsenal.

These new techniques can help pierce the gloom

and piece families back together.

Today, we meet David, whose search for his birth family was

floundering until he sought out the very latest online resources.

It took me a while to realise...

..that that's the people...

..that's the people I was looking for.

-There he is. My new brother.

-Right, guys?

And we follow the story of Sally, who used cutting edge DNA

techniques to decipher her family's 80-year-old enigma.

It told you the countries of origin that you came from.

But it also matched you online to other people who had the same DNA.

And he said to me, "I've never had a match this close before."

55-year-old David Stewart grew up in Scotland,

along with two older sisters and his brother, Michael.

When he was still a young boy, and for reasons David never knew,

his older brother, Michael, was placed in care.

I was really young at the time when he went.

I was only three, something like that.

I just... In fact, I don't even remember him going.

I don't remember. One day he was there and the next day he was gone.

I was so young.

I didn't know where he went or why he went.

No idea.

But that wasn't the only family mystery

surrounding David's childhood.

He later discovered that his mother

and older sisters weren't, in fact, his family by birth.

His dad was his real birth father and had brought David

and his brother to live with him and his new family.

I think maybe about ten, 11, something like that,

I started to question, you know, in myself,

I started to question that something just wasn't right.

I was never told anything about my birth mother.

Or whatever happened to her.

I had no knowledge whatsoever.

A very strange upbringing

when you're living with one lady who you call Mum

and two girls who you call your sisters but in the back

of your head, you know there's something different there.

There's something...

Then each year that went on, I just got more intrigued by it.

But my dad still never told me anything.

You know, it was always just something inside me

that was telling me there was different things going on.

The unsettling revelations of his childhood kindled

a yearning in David to find out more about his birth family

that grew stronger with age.

But his dad never spoke about David's birth mother or brother.

So, after he left home, David wrote to his paternal grandmother,

who he had met on a few occasions growing up.

I wrote her just a little letter explaining who I was

and, you know, "Do you remember me?

"I came and visited you a few years previously."

I was just trying to start the ball rolling and get some info.

And she just wrote back and said she doesn't write letters.

That was it.

She doesn't write letters and, "Don't write to me again."

So that was the end of that.

Life carried on for David.

His father died in 1985.

David married and started a family of his own.

But the urge to find out what happened to his older brother,

Michael, and the desire to find out about his own birth relatives

kept on growing.

I think... Everybody I know's got blood relatives.

And I didn't have any.

I just... It's always been a thing, I have to have some blood relatives.

So David decided to start by looking for the only blood relative

he knew he had left.

His older brother, Michael.

He had last seen him as a young boy

over 40 years earlier.

We went through the museum at Preston.

Somebody mentioned this microfiche thing.

And I thought, "I'll give that a bash."

We pretty much had the very basic details.

But we were able to get enough to give to the Salvation Army.

David's case was taken on

by the Salvation Army's Family Tracing Unit.

Within just a few months, they had found a possible match.

The next stage was to get in touch.

They wrote a little letter.

Would he be willing to get in touch with me?

They basically gave him my name and address, my phone number,

and they left it up to him.

After the years of yearning to find his own family,

all David could do now was wait and see

if his brother would get in touch.

He rang me on Christmas Day.

About ten years ago.

And I went and visited him. I went to see him...

..pretty soon afterwards.

And he lived way up at the very top of Scotland. So...

That was amazing.

But it didn't turn out...

..how I wanted it to.

Because I wanted to have a relationship with him.

Even if it was long distance.

But he had his life and he'd lived all that. He must have been...

..you know, well, at 45, 47, something like that.

So he'd lived his life without me in it.

So it's difficult, but...

..by that time, I had my wife and my children then,

so I had other things to focus on.

Although the brothers reunited briefly, they have since lost touch.

But finding his brother now spurred David on to try

and find any other family he had out there.

However, all he had to go on was a few vaguely remembered tales about

his father, a previous marriage, and possibly other children.

I just had little things in the back of my head.

I've always said to my wife and I've always said to my friends,

"Oh, I've got three or four brothers out there." My dad was a rum.

He was married two or three times. So, you know, he did have children.

But I don't know where I got that from.

I just... I just knew.

I just knew there was somebody out there

but I didn't have the full information.

I decided to have another bash.

I tried the same avenues that I'd tried previously.

I rang the Salvation Army.

But they just said, "You don't have enough information yet."

So they told me to go on a genealogy website.

Which I did.

It was then that David turned to the internet for help.

In the decades since David had first developed a desire to

discover the truth about his family, there had been an explosion

of genealogical websites available online that could offer help.

They were now his only hope.

Getting this random phone call out the blue and

the person at the other end saying, "I'm your brother."

It's amazing. It's just amazing.

People can turn family finder for all sorts of reasons.

In the case of Sally James, it was a desire to give her mother

the closure she craved about her unknown origins.

I grew up in a suburb just outside of London.

It was myself, my mother, my brother.

But because my mother was an orphan, she didn't know her parents,

we didn't really have any other family.

Her mother, Phyllis, was born in Ireland in 1937,

but was placed into care as a baby.

All Mother knew about her childhood was that she was

born in the Bethney Home, because that was on her birth certificate.

And she grew up in Kirwan House orphanage.

The Bethney Home was a mother and baby home in Dublin.

Homes like these would often house women having babies out of wedlock

during the later stages of pregnancy and birth.

After being born at the Bethney Home, at the age of two, Phyllis

was sent to an orphanage, where she spent the rest of her childhood.

It was quite a tough time for her.

The children, they were never given enough food,

so they used to steal the apples from the orchard.

Then if they got caught, they would get a beating.

And she often did.

At the age of 16, Phyllis left the orphanage,

moved to England to train as a nurse,

and eventually started her own family.

But she never stopped wondering about her birth mother.

Unfortunately, Phyllis had hardly any information.

Apart from what was on her birth certificate.

The only thing that she knew was that her mother was called

Margaret Little,

which was her maiden name.

There was no father's name on the birth certificate.

And in those days, you didn't ask questions.

Everything was kept hidden.

Sally took up the challenge to find out the truth

about her mother's family.

But time was running out.

It was extremely important for me

to try and find out for my mother,

particularly the last few years.

Because as her health deteriorated,

I knew that probably there wasn't time on our side.

And she'd wanted to know all her life who her mother was.

She longed to know who her mother was.

The first port of call for Sally was online.

I looked at genealogy websites.

And I was searching for a birth,

death or marriage certificate for her mother, who was Margaret Little.

But I couldn't find anything.

Trying a different approach, over the next few years,

Sally got in touch with several charities

who help children who grew up in care

to trace their families.

And finally, she got a result.

One thing the charity were able to give me was a copy

of my mother's orphan certificate, when she was in Kirwan House.

On the back of the orphan certificate, there was a very

sad note written. It says, "This is a very needy child.

"The mother now is married but living in very poor circumstances

"and it would be the most undesirable place for this child."

So it explains why she gave my mother up.

Although it's not the full story, obviously.

The certificate also showed that by the time Phyllis was placed in the

orphanage, her mother, Margaret, had married a man named James Clancy.

But despite all this new information,

it didn't lead to the breakthrough Sally so desperately wanted.

Even though I knew from one of the charities that she'd married

a James Clancy, I still couldn't find -

and nobody else could find - a wedding certificate.

Which seemed most odd,

because you'd think that was the one thing you could find.

But, in fact, it was impossible.

Undeterred, Sally kept looking.

But while a few years later her mother's health deteriorated,

the search became all the more critical.

She was diagnosed in the summer with lung cancer.

It suddenly hit me that, you know, time was not on her side.

In fact, it wasn't on my side either,

because I now had a desperate search to try and find who her mother was.

Even though I had bits of information all over the place,

I just didn't have the things I needed the most,

which were her mother's date of birth and the place she was born.

And I said to her one day, "Mum," I said.

"I will keep looking as long as I live.

"Even after you're gone, I will still be searching.

"Until the day I die."

And I knew that meant something to her.

That meant a lot to her.

Another two years went by, Phyllis' health was deteriorating

and she was now living in a nursing home.

It was then that Sally decided to take a gamble on some new

cutting-edge family-finding technology -

DNA testing.

It told you the countries of origin that you came from.

But it also matched you online to other people who had the same DNA.

And I thought, "If only we could find a connection,

"it might lead somewhere."

So I thought, "Now's the time to get the kit, get the test done,

"and see what happens." So she did the test for me. I sent it off.

Advances in the science of genetics have opened up a whole new branch

of genealogical research that didn't exist up until a few years ago.

DNA is a great way to kick-start your family history.

Because it gives you something to build on.

You provide a DNA sample - a swab or spit.

You send it off and they process it in the lab.

What they do is, they pull out hundreds of thousands of markers.

What they're able to do is determine your ethnicity.

So have a bit of an understanding of where your ancestors might

have come from in the past.

And of course, the other thing that it does,

it will say, "Ah, OK. You've got these markers.

"This other person has got these markers.

"Therefore we're pretty confident you're second cousins."

You know, if you have no idea who that person is, suddenly

a branch of your tree that you thought might have been dead

suddenly comes to life.

Sally decided to take a DNA test

in the hope of speeding up her search for her mother's family.

After a quest that had lasted years,

little did she know just how quickly she would get an answer.

And that it would lead to a totally unexpected discovery.

All these years, all these searches, and there she was.

And there I'd found the family.

Welcome.

In Scotland, David Stewart had also turned to

technology for help in his search.

David had always yearned for blood siblings of his own.

He was chasing down a family rumour that his father had had other

children before him.

People were telling me that I've got three brothers

and a sister out there.

David took his search online,

where he found a wealth of genealogical resources.

He even made contact with online amateur family finders

willing to take up the search.

The community on that website took it on themselves to help.

So within hours of putting my very basic details on,

a message popped up from a lady that I didn't know.

She was able to...

tell me that I had three half-brothers and a sister.

Within hours of joining the site, she was able to give me

an address of one of my brothers.

As soon as I got that address, I decided I'd ring him

there and then if I could find a phone number for him.

But there wasn't any phone number. I couldn't find a number.

So I wrote him a letter pretty much straightaway.

The genealogist online had found David's half-brother called Steven.

It seemed the rumours had been true.

His father had had other children before David was born.

He'd finally found the family he'd spent years looking for.

But when it came to making contact, David was gripped by nerves.

When I posted the letter, I felt...

I don't know, just apprehension.

I was really apprehensive if he got the letter and just thought,

"Ugh, I'll maybe bin it."

Maybe not be interested. So that would be another one that...

So I was scared, but...

..I was also excited.

50 miles away, that letter landed in Steven Stewart's hand.

There was one letter on the table for me.

Got the letter and opened it.

Then there was this, "Dear sir."

Which I thought was quite quaint. "My name is Dave Stewart.

"My father's name was Roy Douglas Stewart.

"I think you may be my long-lost half-brother.

"I have no other blood family and I'd be very interested

"if you'd let me know." So I gave him a ring.

I think it was Christmas Eve, actually.

We were just doing our thing, getting ready for Christmas.

And my phone rang.

I answered it this day and the man on the other end just...

HE SNIFFLES

..said he was my brother.

And he confirmed the letter that he received.

And...

He just said, "Hello, Dave. I think I'm your brother."

After looking for so many years and then just...

getting this random phone call out the blue.

And the person at the other end...

..saying, "I'm your brother."

It's, well...

It's amazing. It's just amazing.

Steven is one of four children

all from David's father's first marriage.

I was born in 1948 in Ipswich.

The eldest of four children.

I can't really remember exactly when he left.

He was there, he was there, he wasn't there.

I was aware only via the effect you'd have at school.

Cos I wasn't a particularly nice little kid.

I was always fighting, getting into trouble and scraps,

and it always used to really irritate me in the background

when they'd say I'd been in this trouble

because I'd come from divorced parents.

And that used to really irritate me at that particular stage.

Occasionally, one of my aunties used to say to me, "Your dad's in town.

"He's down at The Cricket."

That's the local pub where my grandmother used to live.

And I would go down there and I might get a Vimto

and a bag of crisps or something, you know?

Always was on the lookout for something

when you live in that situation.

And I would sometimes see him.

But then that sort of stuff stopped altogether.

But before he lost contact with his father, there's one

particular meeting that's always stuck in Steven's mind.

I can remember coming out of school one day.

I remember this big car came out and I walked past.

And my dad came out of the car.

And he introduced me to these two little boys, Michael and David.

I can't remember which was which or which was the biggest one.

They got out.

You know, what do you say as a young child to two other kids? You know?

So I never said much.

I was just hoping he might give me ten bob or something, you know?

And then disappeared and I never saw them or heard of them again.

Occasionally my father would turn up in Ipswich and take me out.

Drive to Felixstowe, buy me an ice cream, give me ten bob or five bob.

Then disappear. And that was it, really.

That was all I had of him for years.

On my 16th birthday, I joined the army and left home.

With a toothbrush and a flannel wrapped up in my bag,

and a spare pair of underpants. That's all I took with me.

I thought it was great.

Three square meals a day, a cooked breakfast every day, dinner,

lunch, everything was great.

I loved the army. I thought it was great.

Once Steven left the army, he married, had two daughters,

and moved to Scotland.

I hadn't thought of my father or gotten involved with him,

with anything about him, for ages.

But I then got a call off my sister saying she's got my dad's address

and he was in Scotland.

We drove down one day. Ruth, myself and my eldest daughter, Claire.

I sat outside there for two or three hours

and I couldn't get myself to go in.

Because I didn't really know what I was going to get into.

I didn't really know if...

He wasn't bothered with me,

I didn't really want...didn't know if he was going to be good, bad...

You know? So Ruth was really onto me.

"Go up. Just go up and speak to him. Just go knock on the door.

"Just speak to him." I just couldn't bring myself to do it.

I was just sort of sceptical about it.

I thought, "Well, all these years he's not bothered.

"Why should I bother?" And that's how I felt about it at the time.

We'd had our first child, Claire had been born.

And I was absolutely besotted with the girls when they were born.

They were fantastic.

Best things in my life, the two daughters, you know?

So I thought, "Well, why couldn't he care like I care for my kids?"

So I wasn't that interested in... I lost interest in seeing him, really.

We just drove back home, back home to Glasgow.

And didn't do anything about it.

But that wasn't the end of the story.

A number of years later, Steven's urge to find his family returned.

And just as David was looking for him,

Steven was trying to find his half-brothers.

I'd always known in the background that they were there,

Michael and David were there.

But I didn't know anything about them.

I didn't know what they'd done.

When I put their names to the search machine, nothing came up for them.

Cos I never had any other details about them. I didn't know...

I roughly worked out what age they would be, what year.

But I couldn't get that stage further.

So I just thought... Nothing there for me, I didn't think.

So I just sort of gave up hope at that particular point.

And just sort of got on with my life.

That was until the day, just a few months ago,

when David's letter landed in Steven's hands.

He's got a virtual carbon copy of my family.

He's got his wife and two daughters

and I've got a wife and two daughters.

I'm looking forward to meeting him.

After several weeks speaking on the phone,

and several years unknowingly living just 50 miles apart,

today the two brothers have arranged to meet up for the first time

since their dad introduced them as young boys.

You can't explain this feeling.

There's not many people go through this, I don't think.

It's worse than a first date.

You know, when you're dead nervous and you're meeting someone

and you want to make a good impression.

You know, I'm not trying to impress him or anything,

I'm just trying to... You know, I'm just going to meet my brother

and it's like meeting a girlfriend for the first time.

It's a really strange feeling.

I'm looking forward to it, really.

A little bit apprehensive, but absolutely fine.

Looking forward to meeting him.

I've had a couple of conversations with him on the telephone

and I'm really looking forward to meeting him and his wife.

I feel really nervous and I don't know why I should feel so nervous.

I'm really emotional.

I'm really pleased that he's contacted us.

I think it's really nice.

I just think the whole thing that he's bothered is really nice.

I'm too nervous. I don't want to eat or drink.

HE CHUCKLES

After decades of searching for family,

David is about to come face-to-face with his brand-new brother

for the very first time.

There he is.

-My brother, at last.

-My new brother.

How are you, mate? You all right?

-Yep.

-It's really nice to see you, mate. It really is.

-Nice to meet you.

-You all right?

-Yeah, I'm good.

-Hiya, Ruth. Are you all right?

-Nice to meet you. Yes, I'm fine.

Thank you.

-Hey up, Tracy. Nice to see you.

-Nice to meet you.

-My new sister-in-law.

-Yeah.

Oh.

Sit down, mate.

Good to see you, mate. I'm really pleased to see you in the flesh.

Yeah. I am. I can't tell you. This is... This is phenomenal for me.

It really is. I've been trying this for years and years.

We were talking about it yesterday.

-How stupid that we're so close.

-I know, yeah.

It's not taken us 30-odd miles to come here.

-It's amazing, isn't it?

-I know. It really, really is.

And you would never have found me. You didn't have, what, I mean...

-I didn't...

-How would you start?

I found my dad lots of times. No problem.

On various lists, I found him. Where he lived at particular times.

But there was no...

I couldn't get any further to find if he had any children.

-I knew he had two children.

-Right.

-A minimum of two.

-I assumed he might have had a couple more.

-Mm. Probably did.

So I never thought that much about that.

Every time, I just seemed to get stuck.

The two brothers had very different childhoods.

And both have brought some memorabilia to share.

I've brought a few pictures. We've got only one of our father.

Wow. Look at that. Wow.

-Gosh, yeah.

-Jenny always says, "Oh, isn't he handsome?

-"Isn't he handsome?"

-STEVEN LAUGHS

Yeah.

I don't see a resemblance there, do you?

-For you.

-No.

-I do for me.

-I'm more my mother's side.

I used to sneak into my dad's bedroom and I used to bring

this out and look at these little old photos of him.

We had a load. We had a load of army photographs.

-That's what these are.

-But my mother burned them all.

Oh, God. That's the earliest one, I think.

THEY TALK OVER EACH OTHER

He looks really young in that.

14, 15, something like that, I'd have thought.

But that's all I've got of my dad.

-That and that ring.

-Really?

He was the same initials. RDS.

-Ah, yes. Yeah.

-Roy David Stewart. Roy Douglas Stewart.

-Yeah, yeah.

So that's all I've got. That and that.

Well, I've got nothing.

I've got nothing at all because he just suddenly disappeared.

You know. He was there, then he was gone.

It's taken David years to find a brother to call his own.

But as the two reunited siblings compare notes,

they realised there were several near misses.

Not least Steven's visit to his dad in Scotland,

where he couldn't bring himself to knock on the door.

I can't believe... Why didn't you come to the door?

-I couldn't. I couldn't.

-I could have met you, then.

I know but it would have been completely different then.

Cos at that particular stage in your life, I don't know.

-What are you, ten years younger than me? 11 years younger than me?

-Yeah.

-I think...

-THEY LAUGH

..bloody kids.

-Even then I knew.

-Did you really?

I must have found this when I was really, really small.

This here is three letters from the courts saying,

"You've got to pay maintenance."

-Wow.

-Yeah. To be honest, I'd forgotten all about them.

-Up until a couple of weeks ago when we were talking.

-Yeah.

And all your names and dates of birth and everything are on there.

-Really?

-So if I'd have found that 20 or 30 years ago...

-But I must have not, you know, it just didn't...

-Can I have a look?

-Yeah, yeah.

-I know that was a big thing in our house,

not getting any money from our father. I remember that.

Well, if you look at them, that's exactly what they say.

Again, I should have looked at it. I don't know why...

All your dates of birth and all your names are on one of these.

I looked at the pictures but probably didn't take these in.

When you try as hard as I've done over the years to find blood

relatives or to find people I could call my own, you get expectations.

And I've been rejected a few times over the years.

So I didn't know what to expect, really.

But now that I've met him and now that I've shaken his hand,

I'm very happy. I'm really happy with how it went.

He's very easygoing.

'You know, it's...'

It couldn't have been better, really.

They're really nice. Really nice. He's a nice guy.

Easy guy to talk to.

And I'm really looking forward to meeting the family

and doing other stuff with him.

-That's been amazing.

-Yes.

-It's been amazing.

-Lovely to meet you.

-Nice to see you.

-Hope to see you again.

-Hopefully see you soon.

-Yeah.

-All right, brother.

-OK.

-Nice to meet you, mate.

-And you. Take care.

-Fantastic.

We'll work something out and see you again.

-Yeah.

-All right?

-Soon. Soon.

'The future's looking good now, really. Not that it wasn't.'

I've got a great family, my own children and all my Scottish family.

But it's just...

This completes it now, doesn't it?

In Sussex, Sally James had been searching for her grandmother,

Margaret Little, on behalf of her mum, Phyllis.

After hitting a dead end with traditional tracing techniques,

Sally had decided to use the latest DNA technology.

She added her results to an online database.

It wasn't long before she got a match.

Within three weeks, I had the results back.

Which were amazing.

And the next thing I knew, I had three e-mails ping in my e-mail box.

Two from the same person.

A guy called Matthew.

On the other side of the Irish Sea,

Matthew Stewart had also been researching his family history.

He has also added his DNA to the online database.

I was aware of DNA testing for a few years before it was available

here in the UK.

I thought it would be quite interesting to try it, to see.

I didn't think it would lead to any big breakthroughs at all.

I never imagined that it would lead to breakthroughs.

The e-mail came through saying,

"You have a new match on your DNA matches list."

Because it was so close, it was a suggested second-cousin match.

And I know most of my second-cousins.

I decided I'd better e-mail quite quickly.

So I sent an e-mail off through that website.

Through the DNA test, Sally and Matthew knew they were related.

Now they just had to work out how.

Sally logged on to look at Matthew's family tree

to see if she could find any trace of her grandmother, Margaret Little.

So I quickly looked at his family tree.

One of the people, they were called Mary May Little.

And she had married a Joe Armstrong.

So I looked at the children that they had.

And lo and behold, there was a Margaret on there.

So I clicked on her profile.

And, my God, I couldn't believe it.

There she was.

Margaret Armstrong had married a James Clancy.

And it was then that the penny dropped,

because I realised that she'd lied about her name all this time.

Sally now knew why she hadn't been able to find

her grandmother, Margaret.

The name she had given on the birth certificate of the daughter

she gave up was Margaret Little.

Her real name was Margaret Armstrong.

It's likely she used her mother's maiden name because of the

stigma of having a baby born out of wedlock at that time.

I sent Matthew back an e-mail.

I said to him, "I'm in a state of shock.

"You'll never guess what's happened.

"I've just looked at the photograph of Margaret Armstrong

"and discovered it's my grandmother."

They were soon on the phone to each other

and quickly ascertained that they shared great-grandparents.

But Matthew had some even bigger news.

He said, "Right, OK. So, are you sitting down?

"I've got some other things to tell you."

And I was actually shaking. My mouth was dry, I was shaking.

By this stage, she was very shocked as well, because, as I know now,

she had tried for years to discover who her mother's family was.

And no matter what avenue she went down,

she constantly hit brick walls. One after the other.

So he said...

.."Your mother has got three brothers still alive.

"And an aunt in Australia, of 92."

I said, "What?!" He said, "Yeah.

"And this isn't the first time that Peggy has done this

"because your mother's got a brother called Jim

"and he was also born out of wedlock the year after her.

"And we only found him last year."

So I was absolutely amazed.

Gobsmacked.

All these years, all these searches, and there she was.

And there I'd found the family.

I just wanted to shout from the rooftops.

You know, I was... The first thing I wanted to do was tell Mother.

"Mother, I've found your family."

When I told Mother, she couldn't believe it. She was astounded.

She said, "I've got brothers? I've got brothers?"

I said, "Yeah. You've got three brothers and an aunt in Australia.

"And they're all still alive."

She couldn't believe it. She just couldn't believe it.

You know, it was amazing.

The next member of her new-found family to make contact was

Phyllis' brother and Sally's uncle, Jim.

And he said to me, "I understand I have a sister called Phyllis.

"Can I speak to Phyllis?"

And I said, "Well, Jim, she's actually in a nursing home."

"Oh, I've got a sister. I've got a sister.

"When can I speak to her? When can I speak to her?"

He was so excited. He was beside himself.

Sally discovered that her new uncle, Jim, was born in Dublin

to Margaret in 1938.

A year younger than Phyllis, he too was given away as a baby.

There was no such thing as fostering in Ireland at that time.

So my father and mother put me with this family

when I was three months old.

I couldn't ask for more love

than you get from your real mother and father.

Nobody every knew about Jim.

She'd had two illegitimate births

and kept them secret from her entire family.

It wasn't until over 70 years later,

when Matthew was researching the family tree and found him,

that Jim was reunited with his birth family.

That's how the ball started rolling.

I discovered I had all these relations. I had two brothers.

I didn't find out about Phyllis, my sister in Sussex,

for a few months after that.

So I was thrilled.

Absolutely thrilling.

Shortly afterwards, Jim flew to England to meet his sister, Phyllis.

By this time, Mother, her mobility had more or less gone

and she was in a wheelchair.

And the cancer was getting progressively worse.

It was a touching moment. And we had a lovely lunch together.

We spoke about everything, really.

Her life, Sally's life, my life.

She was over the moon

when I told her about the family that looked after me.

Cos it was the only one.

It was phenomenal. I can't tell you. Phenomenal. You know?

To think that she had brothers still alive who could meet her,

and she was still alive. You know, wow.

I was trying to hold back the tears, I was, seriously.

Even talking about it now upsets me, you know?

What a lovely woman. It feels special to know them all.

Cos they're all brilliant.

I'm over the moon, of course.

That's how I feel about it.

Yeah.

The only thing I regret is that we didn't do it earlier.

Sally had fulfilled her mission.

Just four months later, her mother died.

But before she did, Phyllis got to hear all about her birth family,

and even met Jim, her newly discovered brother.

But that's not the end of Sally's journey.

Today she's heading to Dublin

as her research had thrown up another exciting lead.

But first, she's meeting her mum's brother Jim and her cousin Matthew.

I can't wait. I love them to bits already.

I mean, all those years apart and we could've been a family.

We could've shared so much together.

Um...

And now...

..time's moved on, but to actually find that we want to

be more of a family together is a fantastic thing for me.

Because I never grew up having much of a family.

-Hi.

-Great to you.

-And you. Yeah, great.

-Jim, how are you doing?

-You're looking good.

-Yeah, thank you.

-Long time no see.

It's lovely to see you again.

It's been eight months since their first reunion

and there's still lots of family history to catch up on.

You had no inkling that your mother had any siblings at all?

-You had nothing to go on?

-Nothing.

No. And all her life, she longed to know who her mother was.

And she would have loved having a big Irish family.

She was so full of life herself.

-And it broke my heart, Jim.

-I'm sure it did.

I saw her suffer so much growing up. And that's why now, I felt so...

-Emotional about it.

-..determined to find out who her mother was.

Tell us the DNA, we have some strange relations, haven't we?

There's 1% Melanesian, which is Papua New Guinea and Fiji.

THEY LAUGH

How did they get there?

-I don't know.

-That's amazing.

We've still to find those cousins, dig them out.

-I couldn't imagine you in a grass skirt.

-Do you not think so?

THEY LAUGH

Now it's time for Sally to reveal her new information.

And the reason for her trip today.

Through her research into her mother's childhood, Sally has found

someone who grew up with Phyllis in the orphanage 70 years ago.

Looking forward to finding out more about Phyllis' childhood.

Yeah, Eileen, who we're going to meet now,

-should be able to fill in the gaps.

-Yeah.

She will, because they were a long time together in the orphanage.

-I guess they must have grown up together.

-Yeah.

Eileen remembers Sally's mother well,

but lost touch with her once they left the orphanage.

-Hello.

-Hello.

-Hi.

-Sally.

Welcome. How are you?

It's the first time Sally has ever met someone

from her mum's childhood.

You're the link with her past.

You're the only link I have now with the past.

You have now to look to the future. And at least you had a good mum.

That's all that matters.

Isn't that true?

-Yeah.

-Hello.

Lovely to meet you. I'm Matthew.

Would you like a cup of tea? Come on.

Yeah, I'd love a cup of tea.

I'll have to clean my face up now.

-I'm delighted to see you. I really am.

-Me too.

I can't believe that I've met you.

I'm thrilled.

I'm astounded that I could've met someone who

was in the orphanage with my mother.

-Yeah.

-And you were friends, weren't you?

We were very friendly.

From age three, up to about 12.

So you must have got transferred about the same time from the

Bethney Home to Kirwan House.

-Yeah, I was transferred in January.

-Yeah.

-So was she.

-1940.

-So was she.

-So was she. The 16th of January.

-Yeah. 16th.

-1940?

-Yeah.

-No!

-Yes.

-The same date?!

-Same date. My God! Yes.

Eileen has a special surprise to show Sally.

The story of one of the happier times at the orphanage.

Every year we put on this display.

-It's a nice photo.

-Is it?

-It's lovely.

-That's Mother.

-Yeah.

I hardly recognise her.

There's me.

Can you remember what Mother was like growing up together?

You know, when you were in the orphanage together,

what personality did she have?

She had a lovely personality. And was very well-liked.

Her bed was beside mine.

And I always remember she got a doll with one eye and one leg.

She was thrilled with it. She said she'd look after it, she'd nurse it.

I'm going to show you now a video of Mum and me as a baby.

-Yeah.

-This was taken about 1963.

That's Mum. And that's me as a baby. In the red. Look at her.

-She was beautiful.

-She's gorgeous.

-That's just as I know her.

-Yeah?

-Yeah.

-She would've been about 27 there.

-Yeah.

-She was a lovely child anyway, so.

-Do you recognise her face?

I do indeed. Yeah.

Did you find out that you had relations?

-No.

-Did you ever?

-I have been searching for 50 years.

-Good Lord.

-And every door in Dublin, Ireland,

-has been closed.

-Good Lord.

I've tried everybody to help. Nobody can help me.

And my daughters, they've gone to the ends of the earth

to try and help.

But I don't think it's going to be, somehow or other.

But anyway...

May I say that you can consider us part of your family?

-Thanks very much, Jim.

-That's sweet, isn't it?

That's lovely. You'll have me crying.

I am already.

Today was the most enlightening and moving experience.

Particularly meeting Sally again.

And then Eileen, who was in the home with my sister.

It's wonderful to meet you.

To think that you were in the orphanage and you were a friend of

my mother, I mean, I never thought I'd find anybody that she knew.

-Mm-hm.

-That means an awful lot.

-I'm delighted you've come.

I appreciate it. I really do.

It's fantastic.

I'm thrilled that they've come

and somehow, it has given me a great boost.

Today's been really emotional.

I can't actually believe I've met somebody from my mother's past

who knew her over 70 years ago.

That went to school with her.

That grew up with her.

Slept in the next bed to her in the orphanage.

And knew what she was like as a child.

I mean, it's phenomenal, really.