Episode 9 Family Finders

Families can be driven apart for all manner of reasons.

My mum went away and didn't come back.

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

I never saw Kathleen again.

..finding them can take a lifetime.

Wonder where he is, I wonder what he's doing.

You don't really know where to begin.

Especially when they could be anywhere, at home or abroad.

And that's where the family finders come in.

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

From international organisations...

There's never been a day when we have never had new enquiries.

..to genealogy detective agencies...

When is it you last had contact with him?

..and dedicated one-man bands.

I like to do the searches that other people can't get

cos it makes me feel good.

They hunt through history

to bring families back together again.

"You are my biological dad."

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

This case came from our Australian colleagues.

Learning the tricks they use to track missing relatives through time.

I'm 68 years of age, she's 75 years of age and we're just starting off.

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

I said, "Well, this is your younger sister."

It's a miracle.

I was struck speechless and I couldn't stop crying.

It's a proud moment for Dad.

That was the start of finding my family.

Across Britain, brothers, sisters, mothers

and fathers can lose touch with each other.

For all sorts of reasons, from death to divorce to geography,

people drift apart.

But sometimes fate can draw a family together.

It's often the case that two people can approach us

looking for each other, unbeknown to each other, as well.

And that can make our job much easier because we have the details

of that person on our systems

so it's often a race to find each other.

Geraldine Turner was born in Halifax in 1950 and spent much

of her childhood in rural Yorkshire with her parents and grandparents.

There was no running hot water.

No heating, only gas mantles, no electric.

Grandad used to have an accumulator for his radio.

And woe and betide anybody who tried to listen to any pop music

on his radio. It was there for the football results and for his racing.

And that was it.

But when she was around seven years old, her father walked out.

Her mum, Violet, got on with life

and met Bill, who became Geraldine's new stepdad.

It wasn't long before she had two new baby brothers, Mark and John,

and a little sister, Joanne.

They lived in a small house in Coley in Yorkshire.

Geraldine was 11 years older

and like a surrogate mum to her younger siblings.

There were six of us in a one-up one-down.

But we were happy.

I used to feed them, bathe them, change them,

take them out, do things with them, babysit for Mum and my stepdad

when they wanted to go out.

So, yeah, it was very happy and that's...

They were content with me. We just loved each other.

Looking through all these photos, at the happy times that we

actually had when we were all together, there's some really,

really, really nice ones.

And one of my favourites, I think, is the one with my mum and me

and Mark at his christening. That just shows how happy times were.

We used to go down the woods and they would play in the beck.

Tiddler fishing, there, I think.

I think that's what was going on in that one.

And, then, we'd go on holiday to Bridlington.

And I've got one of Mark here with me and his dad.

Mind you, I used to have to hold him when they went on the donkeys

and I used to have to go on the rides with him and things like that.

But, yeah, it was happy times. That's Mum and my stepdad.

We didn't have a lot of money but we got by.

I think Mum did the best she could with what she had.

Eventually, Geraldine was able to leave the family home and,

in her early 20s, she got married and went to live in Scotland.

But soon after Geraldine left, her stepdad, Bill, died,

swiftly followed by her mum, Violet.

For the oldest child, Mark, there was

suddenly the pressure of responsibility.

Mark, 16-year-old, and he's lost both his mum and his dad.

His sister being 14 and John, the youngest, being 12.

And their lifeline's just been wiped out completely.

But for them...

..Mum and Dad had gone. That was it.

So, then, they're relying on relatives to look after them.

With her half-siblings orphaned, Geraldine felt she should take

them in. But with a new family of her own,

things weren't that simple.

I did want to take them on, very much so,

but I was 27 and, in a lot of ways, I was quite naive.

You always get, as you get older, you think, "Yes,

"I would have done it different."

And I wished I could have done it different.

But the problem is that now I think to myself,

"I can't have regrets, because that will tear me apart."

Geraldine did manage to stay in contact with her eldest brother, Mark.

He joined the Army and she used to write to him

until a terrible piece of bad luck brought contact to an abrupt halt.

One day, when I went to work, I had my purse pinched.

And in my purse was Mark's address. So, that was it.

I'd lost all contact with him

because I hadn't written it down anywhere else.

So, that was Mark just out of my life at that stage.

So, I did wonder over the years what could have happened.

Geraldine ended up losing touch with Mark and, for 30 years,

she had no idea where he was or what he was up to.

So, Mark, in the meantime, hadn't thought to get in touch with me

where I was.

Perhaps he was waiting for me to write to him, or something.

Then I moved, so then I think that's how we lost contact completely.

Little did she know the reasons her little brother was so elusive

were both stressful and traumatic.

Searching for lost relatives who've been missing for years

can seem like an impossible task for an individual to take on.

But there are plenty of people-finding organisations

out there who can offer help.

Good afternoon, FinderMonkey.

Every time we get to reunite somebody who's lost touch for such

a long period of time, obviously, it's great for us

and it's great to be able to do this kind of work for people.

Brother and sister cases are quite rare compared to parents

trying to find their children, or vice versa.

Especially where there's been no real reason that they've lost

touch other than they've gone their own separate way after growing up.

Anne Ingles has been searching for her brother John for 50 years.

She was born in Scotland and is one of seven children.

I was born in 1939 in a place called Bellshill, Lanarkshire.

Anne's early years in Lanarkshire were idyllic.

Times were good and she got on particularly well

with her brother John.

My brother John is two years younger. It was nice having a younger brother.

But when Anne was five, her parents separated.

They had their personal problems.

So they separated and that was it. We were sort of poor anyway.

My father went away to work, my mother just went out

and left the children.

And some neighbour reported my mother.

That's how we ended up in the home.

Anne and her brother John were sent to live in an unforgiving orphanage.

I used to see him occasionally at school.

I think he was a very shy person, believe it or not.

SHE CHUCKLES

He was. Like me, I was shy.

Segregated by gender,

Anne was with her sisters and hardly ever saw John.

My sisters were in the same sides, my brothers were in a separate side.

But, at 18, Anne, along with what remained of her siblings,

moved back home with her father.

Great relief, to tell you the truth.

We got on together.

Yes, we still had our arguments, like most families.

Anne didn't see her little brother John again

until she got tuberculosis in her 20s.

In 1962, I was in Hairmyres Hospital in East Kilbride because I had TB.

And then John came through with my father to visit.

I mean, seriously, it was good.

You don't get many visitors at a TB hospital, do you?

But, by now, John had completely changed.

Some of the nurses thought he was a film star. A young Rock Hudson.

She said, "Who's the film star?" I said, "It's not a film star,

"it's my brother." The last thing I knew, John was in the Merchant Navy.

And he was a steward on board the Pretoria Castle.

I used to think about him a lot, Christmas, his birthday,

you know, all the time.

Nobody... Never contacted his family after that.

Unable to know how else to look for John, decades passed.

Then, just a few months ago, Anne got a computer.

It was then she realised she could search for John online.

When I got the computer, I went on to the website.

I put my brother's name in. And the last place I ever contacted him.

Anne found a company that searches for lost relatives.

Then I put all my details.

His date of birth and the last place he was, like the Merchant Navy.

Well, they told me they can go on very little information,

even smallest details, they can find people.

The minimum kind of information in a case like this you need is

an approximate age for somebody, ideally a full name,

but if you know the full date of birth and a place of birth

that information's really, really helpful to know, as well.

The information that Anne knew about John was his age,

when he was born, and where he was born, which was really important

because one of the things we like to do whenever

we're trying to find somebody is confirm a birth record for them.

Once we'd done that and confirmed all those details,

we managed to find a match.

Confirmed the address as a current address and then

we knew that we'd found the exact person that Anne was looking for.

When I put the information in, I didn't know how long it was

going to take to find, you know, to do the research.

Then he phoned me, I think it was the next day, he said,

"We've found your brother." And I said, "Are you sure?!"

And he said, "Yes." And then he gave me his home address.

I sent a letter to him.

After an exotic life travelling the world and living away from home,

John was now tracked down in Aldershot in Hampshire.

I found this letter with strange handwriting

which I didn't recognise.

The letter was addressed to me, you know,

so, very curiously, I opened the letter.

So, I started to read the letter.

"Dear John, it has been a long time since we lost touch

"over the years and just about three days ago

"I managed to find you.

"I have never been so delighted in my life.

"Please don't get upset, I have never forgotten you.

"I always wondered where you were.

"It would be so good to hear from you after all this time.

"Lots of love from your sister, Anne."

And it wasn't long before they were chatting on the phone.

I didn't recognise the accent cos it was...

..like a South African accent.

I didn't recognise it.

I said, "Who are you?" He said, "I'm your brother."

I said, "Are you sure?"

SHE CHUCKLES

No, but...

He said, "Yes."

Bit of a shock, actually, receiving the letter out of the blue,

after 53 years.

I just couldn't figure out how they got in touch with me.

But I was really, really pleased. I said, "Oh, good.

"Now I've got a family here."

But reconnecting with his sister brought back difficult memories

around being put into care in the late 1940s.

When I was put in the orphanage, rejection, you know,

I saw it as rejection from my mum and my dad.

I never held it against them, you know what I mean,

but that's how I felt.

Just like his sister Anne,

John remembers being kept apart

while they were at the same orphanage.

It was very difficult knowing that my sister particularly was so close

and you hardly ever saw them.

The only time, possibly, you could see them

was when you went off to church on a Sunday, it was the only time.

At 21, he left Britain for a life of adventure

in the merchant navy.

John now lives on his own, so Anne's letter was a welcome surprise.

When I received that letter,

I thought, "At last! Now, I've got a family."

They can love me, which would be good.

It's when she says in the letter

that they'd tried for so long to find me,

it shows a love, you know?

I was very pleased with that.

The last time I saw Anne was 1962.

Anne and John have now arranged to meet up

for the first time in 53 years.

Very nervous and I'm not quite sure, when I do meet her,

if I'm going to cry or not.

When Geraldine Turner was a teenager,

she lived in West Yorkshire

and helped bring up her younger half-brothers and sister,

Joanne, Mark and John.

There were six of us in a one-up-one-down.

I mean, I used to feed them, bathe them, change them,

take them out, do things with them,

but we were happy.

After they were all orphaned as children,

Geraldine lost touch,

but in her 60s, she's found a way to find them again.

I heard about the Salvation Army Family Tracing Service

through somebody who'd also used them.

I thought, "Yes, I must do it, I must contact them."

They must have the childhood photos back.

I've got their childhood memories

and I want them to have them back.

The Salvation Army have more than 100 years of experience

reuniting families.

Good afternoon, Family Tracing, how can I help?

The Family Tracing Service

uses public and less easily accessible data

to find people and calls upon partner agencies when it needs help.

Geraldine asked us to look for Mark,

which was the eldest of the three siblings,

so she gave us the information to get that enquiry started.

It didn't take them long to find a Mark Wilkinson,

who could have been Geraldine's half-brother

and they sent him a letter of introduction.

Mark responded to the letter.

He phoned the office and he was identified with his name

and date of birth.

He was quite shocked that we'd been looking for him,

cos he explained to us that he'd also been looking for Geraldine

at the same time.

It was an amazingly rare coincidence.

As if drawn together,

Mark and Geraldine had applied to the Salvation Army

at more or less the same time

and their details were just waiting to be paired up.

That can obviously make our job a lot easier,

because we would have their details on our system,

so unbeknown to them,

we already have the information of the person that they're looking for.

After more than 20 years of no contact with Mark,

it was a moment Geraldine had waited a long time for.

It was really very, very emotional. I cried.

I cried, I think, tears of...

happiness, because they'd found him.

Very emotional to think they'd done it

and I couldn't wait to ring him up and speak to him.

As it turns out, Mark now had a family of his own

and was living on the south coast in Bournemouth.

It was massive relief to think, "Oh, my God, my sister's found me."

This is the start of my family again.

Mark shared his childhood with Geraldine in West Yorkshire.

I was born in 1961 in a place called Brighouse,

which is West Yorkshire.

I lived in a little village called Shelf.

Me, my younger brother, younger sister

and my older stepsister.

Mark's half-sister Geraldine was 11 years older than him.

I've always called her my big sister, but she's my half-sister.

Basically, she brought me up.

Sometimes, she didn't think she had a life,

because she was always with us.

But family life changed dramatically when Mark was 14

and his dad, Bill, died in his early 50s.

We were all upset

and having to know you've got to go the rest of your life without a dad

was quite hard at the time, but obviously,

it's something you've got to get over, really,

cos life's got to go on,

so we just went back to school.

Mum... Mum met somebody else.

They were planning on getting married, then my mum died.

With both parents gone within a few years of each other,

Mark faced an uncertain future at the age of 16.

A huge, huge shock.

When your dad dies, that's your dad,

but when your mum dies, it's different.

It hit me quite hard.

Mark turned to the only solid relationship he had left,

his sister Geraldine,

but he didn't end up staying long.

We were in town one day and we just literally walked past

the army careers and I says, "I want to do that."

She went, "What?" I said, "I want to do that, I want to join the army.

"I want a change of life."

HE BARKS ORDERS

Left! Right! Left! Right! Left!

At the age of 16, Mark wasn't used to such a regimented life.

That was a reality check, you know.

Welcome to the world of the British Army.

Basic training in the army is 18 weeks of hell.

Mark passed with flying colours

and was soon travelling the world.

But Mark witnessed some traumatic events

he's not comfortable talking about.

It left him a broken man, disillusioned with military life.

Basically, that was it. I just went off.

Just went off on one.

I wasn't set for it any more. I wasn't in the right frame of mind.

I just went AWOL.

Mark was absent without leave for almost a year.

Eventually, I got caught.

Got taken back to Catterick.

Um...

..got discharged.

Mark moved to London, where he met Debbie,

and started a family of his own.

But as Mark hit 50, he felt ready to reconnect with his long-lost sister.

I don't know why, but I just thought to myself,

"I want to find my family."

The Salvation Army came up with friends and family tracing.

I thought, "Oh, that sounds pretty...

"Let me give them a ring."

Mark's enquiry to the Salvation Army's Family Tracing Service

coincided with Geraldine's,

as if they knew they were looking for each other.

The first letter, I was shocked,

to think, "My God, she's found me after all these years."

When I got the letter, I actually cried.

I think it was just the rush of emotion, "We've actually found him."

Nothing in this world will split us up.

We will never, ever be apart that long again.

Mark has met up with Geraldine a few times since they found each other,

but today, Geraldine's in Bournemouth with her partner Mike

after a big gap since last seeing her brother.

I've been looking forward to seeing him again,

cos we haven't seen him for, oh, just over two years.

It'll be really, really nice to have a get-together.

-Hi!

-Aww!

-Oh, lovely to see you.

-God, it's great to see you, Sis.

The family bond is as close now as it was 30 years ago.

You'll have me crying in a minute, you know.

-Well...

-You realise that?

-..that's families!

I'm bigger than you as well, look.

Only cos you're on a step. Get down, that's it.

-Oh, it's great to see you.

-You chump!

For Mark, it's a chance to show his big sister

how he's turned his life around.

Anne Ingles and her brother John are on their way to meet each other

after more than 50 years apart.

Anne's made the 500-mile journey from Fort William in Scotland

to John's home town of Aldershot.

You never know until you actually meet

what's going to happen and what's not.

I'm looking forward to it.

It's a long time. It's a long time since I've seen him.

I do think I'll recognise her as soon as I see her.

I will recognise her.

I hope!

It's hard to believe the years have just gone, you know.

They're about to lay eyes on each other

for the first time in over 50 years.

-Hello.

-How are you?

-Fine!

Nice to see you, stranger.

-Are you OK?

-Yeah, I'm fine.

-A little something.

-Thank you.

And Anne's got a very Scottish gift

for a man who's been away from his homeland for so long.

Here's a little present for you.

-Thank you.

-I hope you like...

-It's marmalade.

-Excellent, thanks, Anne.

After being apart for 53 years, to finally be reunited means a lot.

-1962 was the last time we saw each other.

-That's right.

We were all together.

It's different, talking on the phone to face to face.

You don't realise how the years have just gone by, isn't it?

Still that handsome, am I?

I'm not making any comment.

Now Anne and John are back together,

meeting up with the extended family is the next priority.

I mean, I'm glad to see him after such a long time

and to have to talk to him, rather than on the phone.

His hug was stronger than mine.

I think he was more glad to see me.

Oh, I'm really pleased to get my brother back, definitely.

It's nice to get my brother back at last.

Been away too long.

Geraldine Turner spent much of her childhood in the '60s

looking after her half-brothers Mark and John

and sister Joanne near Halifax.

But after Geraldine moved away, she lost touch with them all,

until three years ago, when she found Mark.

Sadly, Mark's sister Joanne died a few years ago

and he doesn't see his brother John as much as he'd like.

-Hey!

-Hi!

-Aww!

-Oh! It's lovely to see you.

God, it's great to see you, Sis.

But Mark and Geraldine are inseparable.

Mark and his wife Debbie have been together for 30 years

and today, they want to show Geraldine and Mike

the delights of Bournemouth with granddaughter Elisa.

How about having a go on the carousel?

Yeah, as long as it's not fast.

Whoa-oa-oa!

Just to see how much they actually look alike and their mannerisms

and little things that they do and I'll go, "Mark does that.

"Mark does this. Oh, Mark does that too!"

Can you remember when you were a child, when I used to take you

on the rides at Bridlington? I had to go, whether I wanted to or not.

It's like one of them photos, when I'm in the pushchair.

That were when he was cute.

Oh, yeah, thank you very much!

I found a sister. It's like 30 years have just melted away.

It's family occasions like this that mean so much to Mark,

after circumstances kept them apart for so long.

I was really pleased when I found you and you told me about Deb,

your wife, and how long you'd been married.

That's part of life. I just had to turn my life around and...

..focus on things and just get myself back on track,

-which I have done.

-You did.

-You've got a job, a good job.

-Yeah, I've got a good job.

-Lovely, loving family.

-Yeah, I wouldn't be here without my family.

And you've got me back in your life.

And there's you back in my life.

Oh, what have I done wrong(!)

I don't know!

It's like closure.

It's something that's been brought together

and that bond won't be broken again.

It's been absolutely fantastic seeing Mark again

and I can't wait for the next time we meet up.

-What have we done wrong? What have we...?

-Hey!

Go and give us a cuddle.