Episode 3 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 Catherine again.

-..finding them can take a lifetime.

I 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've 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 use searches that other people can't get,

-because 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.

Every year, thousands of people throughout the UK attempt to

trace long-lost relatives.

This daunting quest is one the Salvation Army has provided

help with for over 130 years through its Family Tracing Service.

Good afternoon. Family Tracing. How can I help?

On average, we accept around about

2,000 enquiries a year from family members

and, obviously, with every enquiry we take on,

we want a positive result.

Recently, the Family Tracing Unit received an intriguing

enquiry from a woman in Huddersfield who hadn't seen her little

brother for over 30 years.

We received an application from Mary, who explained

that she was looking for her younger half-brother, Leonard,

and she believed that he was still living in London,

where she last had contact with him.

Mary Kitchin lives in Huddersfield with her husband

and four children, but her story begins in 1960.

I was born in Huddersfield, West Yorkshire.

At the age of three months, myself and my mum moved to London.

London in the early '60s was a city on the brink of change.

Britain as a nation had put the Second World War

well and truly behind it,

and the swinging '60s were just around the corner.

The capital was at the epicentre of this social change and after finding

a job as a pub barmaid, Mary's mother was right at the heart of it.

In 1963, no longer in a relationship with Mary's birth father,

her mother met Jamaican-born Sidney Banton

and fell pregnant with Mary's baby brother, Lenny.

I don't remember Mum being pregnant but, obviously, when she had him,

I was taken to the hospital to see him,

so, obviously, I knew about him.

After growing up with just her mother,

Mary now had a brother, but it turned out Sidney was married

and it wasn't long before his family came over from Jamaica to join him.

At first, Mary and baby Lenny lived together with their own mother,

but just a few months after his birth,

she fell ill and both children moved in with Sidney and his family.

I remember staying in the house with them

and all his other brothers, and he's got one sister,

being part of the family

and then, obviously, Mum must have moved on then and so we lost,

so, basically, I've been brought up as an only child, really.

Ultimately, Lenny's birth father, Sidney, wanted to bring him up,

so Mary and her mother moved back to West Yorkshire.

All she had left to remind her of her brother was one precious photo.

I had a photograph of myself and him that I've carried with me

wherever we've moved to.

He's never been out of my thoughts. I've always thought about him.

But Mary had a life to get on with.

She made Huddersfield her home, and at 19, gave birth to a daughter.

Still, the knowledge that Lenny was out there gnawed away at her,

and having a baby of her own was the spur she needed to

go back and try and find him.

1979, I went back down to London to sort of retrace my steps

of where I'd lived and everything.

At that time, I'd got my eldest daughter,

and me and her went down, and I did retrace steps.

I did go to the house where he was living, I did see him,

but I don't think that he knew I was his sister at that stage.

Whether the teenage Lenny had no idea who she was,

or simply did not want to know, either way,

it was a severe blow for Mary, who returned to Huddersfield

not knowing if she would ever see her brother again.

You get on with life, don't you?

I settled in Huddersfield, met my husband,

had children and still here.

I did want to contact him, but I don't know...

Circumstances and having my own kids

and settling myself, sort of kept putting it off and putting it off.

30 years passed, then Mary heard that her estranged father had died.

It was the spur to action that she needed.

Lots of friends that I know had gone through bereavements

and things and I just thought, "You know what?

"I ought to do something before I get too old to do something,"

so I discussed it with my family.

My husband was very wary, but I think that's

because he was looking out for me, but my daughter pushed me.

She's like, "You've got to do it, Mum. You've got to do it."

My mum has always spoke about a brother.

She's always mentioned him and I know that she's wanted to get in contact

with him for quite a long time. I've said to her as well,

"You need to do it, because if you don't, you're never going to know."

I was frightened of rejection and I kept saying,

"No, I'm not going to do it," and then she said,

"Well, if you don't do it, you're never going to know."

Determined to strike while the iron was hot,

Mary's daughter Elena contacted the Salvation Army.

-Can you remember when I got the form?

-I can, yes.

-I were going to kill you!

-Yeah. THEY LAUGH

-And I wouldn't fill it in straight away, would I?

-No.

-It took ages, didn't it?

-I took ages to think about it.

Very apprehensive, very nervous, very frightened.

A few days later, you said, "You know what?

"We need to fill this form out," so we did.

All I knew was his name, obviously my mum's name.

I knew his dad's name.

But the most important piece of information

required was a date of birth.

I know from being small, I always knew his birthday was on 1st June.

Every first of June, I've thought, "I wonder where he is.

"I wonder what he's doing."

Mary knew the date, but she had no idea what year Lenny was born in,

so she decided to play detective.

From a photograph that I've got, we've sort of estimated that he was

two, maybe three years younger, so we sort of put three years down.

Mary handed the information to the experts,

complete with three possible dates of birth.

In all cases, it's really important to have as much

information as possible about the person that we're looking for.

I didn't think for a minute actually that the Salvation Army would be

able to find him, because on my form

there was so little information, it was...

I even said to my daughter, "There's no chance of finding

"anybody with little snippets of what I've got."

Mary may have thought it was scant information to go on,

but for the family finders, it was the perfect starting point.

With that information, we would take that and apply to the

General Register Office for birth certificates and ask them

to send us copies to establish which date of birth was the correct one.

Once we had Leonard's birth information,

we were able to find him pretty quickly.

It turned out that Leonard wasn't living too far from where Mary

had last seen him and we were able to send him a letter straight away.

The Salvation Army letter informs a lost relative a family member

would like to get in touch.

The person can then decide how to respond.

I received this letter and, to be honest, I didn't know how I felt.

I didn't know if I was shocked, surprised, mortified, what,

and I didn't know how to react. Like...

You know, so I didn't immediately reply to the letter.

I didn't know what to do. As well, I was scared as well. I don't know.

I don't know how to explain it.

Lenny decided to proceed, but with caution.

He called the office

and said that he would love to hear from his sister

and that he'd like initially to have a letter from her via our office.

The letter forwarding service that we offer is something that is

taken up in quite a lot of cases and people sometimes are nervous

about being in touch with their relative after such a long time.

It's a good way to break the ice without disclosing anything

personal like address or contact details.

Mary had an agonising wait to discover the news.

I didn't hear anything then for about four weeks

and then I got a letter. I had the letter here for about two hours.

Nobody was at home.

Everybody was out working and I was looking at this letter,

"Shall I open it? Shan't I open it? Shall I open it?"

30 years after last setting eyes on her brother, the contents of this

letter would determine whether or not Mary would ever see Lenny again.

So, I opened it and I said, "They found him! They found him!"

So, I set to that night and wrote just a few short lines

and enclosed the photo.

Lenny may have asked for the letter,

but its arrival was no less overwhelming for that.

The emotions I had when I received the letter?

Everything - joy, sadness, shock, horror.

I have to pinch myself sometimes to say, "Is this really happening?"

It's crazy. It's good, but it's crazy.

But it was the photograph Mary had enclosed

which had the biggest impact.

When Mary sent me the letter, she put a photograph of me

that I didn't even know existed

and then, that's when I looked at it and thought, "Wow! Who's this?"

It's me and Mary when we was kids.

Well, straight away, I had to photocopy it, blow it up.

It's everywhere, it's on my laptop, it's on the wall, it's everywhere.

Leonard's story begins with his father in 1963.

When he first got here, he had to find lodgings

and that's where he met my birth mother.

-That person was Mary's mother.

-And obviously...

two and two equals Lenny.

Soon after that, Sidney's wife and children arrived from Jamaica.

When my dad had found his own place to live,

he sent for my mum to come over with my brothers and sister.

Lenny grew up with his dad's family in South London,

-unaware of his true origins.

-I just had a normal childhood.

You know, like, I didn't feel different, I didn't...

look at myself and think,

"I'm a duck. You lot are chickens," you know?

Then one year, his birth mother turned up on the doorstep.

This woman came and knocked on the door.

She stood, like, in the doorway and my mum was saying,

turned around to me and said, "Say hello to your mother,"

pointing to the woman in the doorway.

So, I looked at my mother saying, "Hello, Mum."

And my mum was saying, "No, say hello to your mother."

So, I said, "Hello," to my mum again and my mum said, "No,"

pointing at this woman in the doorway,

and me being young, I said, "I don't know who this woman is,"

and then as far as I can remember, I think

I ran off into the kitchen or into the garden and that was it,

and that is the only recollection I've got of ever seeing this woman.

I couldn't even describe her now,

because I think, on purpose, I blanked everything out with her.

Lenny struggles to remember exactly how

he learned the truth about where he'd come from.

I can't remember when it first came up or how it came up...

..but my mum explained about my birth mother.

But he found it hard to cope with the revelation.

I didn't want to know, because as far as I'm concerned,

I'm with my mother, I've still got my mother today.

So, I suppose, in a way, that's why I put it to the back of my mind

and just forgot all about it, and just got on with life.

Lenny has no memory of living with Mary as a tiny baby

and can only vaguely remember her visit to London in 1979.

She was at the house and, you know, I wasn't rude to her, but...

because I didn't know who she was, I just totally ignored her.

It's only at a later date, I found out that she was my sister.

But the past is now the past and tomorrow,

brother and sister will be reunited

for the first time in their adult lives.

It's been a lifetime since we've actually seen each other.

You know, we are two strangers.

Do I hug her? Do I kiss her? Do I shake her hand? I don't know.

Baffles me, but I think, emotions are just going to take over.

There's so much we've got to say to each other.

In fact, there's that much, I don't know where to start...

apart from saying sorry. That's the first thing, of course.

If you're thinking of trying to trace a relative, living or dead,

it's important to arm yourself with all the facts

before starting your search.

Spread the net as wide as you can, asking relatives for any photos,

memories, anecdotes or documents they may have.

Make a note of any names, locations

or dates of key events such as births or marriages,

and drawing up a timeline can also be a useful tool.

The more work you put in at the outset,

the better your chances of success.

But if the thought of doing the work yourself is daunting,

for anyone wishing to track down a loved one,

there's been a boom in independent family finders willing to hope.

One such authority is Derbyshire-based Charlie Watson.

It's commonplace for people to want me to undertake enquiries

to try and find something special in the family.

With years of experience in the family-finding business,

Charlie has dealt with all sorts of colourful cases.

People like to find they've been transported to Australia,

are crooks or murderers or who've run off with the family silver,

or who have some sort of naughtiness around them.

But Charlie doesn't just delve into his clients' past.

He also helps them track down living relatives who

they may not have seen in years, if at all.

Many of my clients are actually in their later years, who have

suddenly taken an interest in trying to find out about their families,

whether they are living or dead.

Recently, Charlie was contacted by a woman desperate to

track down her missing family and to finally unravel a long-standing

mystery surrounding exactly who she was and where she had come from.

81-year-old Linda Wright is a retired musician who now

lives in North Yorkshire.

Born in 1934, she grew up in Southport, Merseyside.

An only child, she was brought up by the couple

she assumed were her birth mother and father.

When I was young, I went to a private day school

and it was very old-fashioned and, occasionally,

we had air raids over the town, so we slept

every night in an Anderson shelter underneath the kitchen table.

To try to blot out the air raids above, Linda remembers hiding

under the blankets and losing herself in the stories of the era.

Because it was wartime, we weren't allowed lights on and blackout,

and I loved Peter Pan and Wendy.

Linda loved the novels so much that later in life,

she ended up adding Wendy to her name.

I was Linda Margaret to start with,

but I've added Wendy for some reason, because I liked it.

But Linda's love of literature and the arts did not end there.

Music was her biggest passion

and she would spend many evenings glued to the family wireless.

One night, we were listening to a lovely violinist, so I said,

"I want to learn one of those."

And on that Sunday and on Tuesday, I'd started.

In three years, I was playing quite good concertos.

I then got a scholarship to the Royal Manchester College of Music

and I went there for three years.

Linda passed her musical studies with distinction

and went on to become a professional violinist.

By this time, I had already met my husband-to-be, Cliff Wright.

Linda and Cliff got married in 1954.

Then, later that year, he got a posting to a new

position as band leader to the Border Regiment based in Berlin.

I was 20 and I'd never been abroad,

and eventually I realised I hadn't got a passport

and I hadn't got any...

..any piece of paper that said who I was, so I rang my dad up

and he came across with a... well, my marriage certificate,

but then I said, "Well, haven't I got a birth certificate?"

Linda's dad was initially unable to produce her birth certificate,

and the possible implications began to dawn on her.

I started to have a suspicion then and then he told me I was adopted.

The news that her mum and dad weren't her birth parents was

shock enough for Linda, but when she pushed to know more,

the details behind her adoption were hazy, to say the least.

He'd told me that he'd gone to Barnardo's and chosen me

for my lovely smile.

Hardly likely at one month old when you've got no teeth, is there?

It was only years later, on the night of her father's funeral,

that Linda's auntie, Iris, challenged this story.

"What did your father tell you?"

"Oh," I said. "He told me he'd been to Barnardo's and picked me up

"for my big smile." And she said, "Oh, not that story again."

She said, "I'll tell you the real story."

This news came as a huge shock, because now Linda had

two conflicting stories about how she came to be adopted.

In her Auntie Iris's version,

Linda's music-loving adoptive parents had long wanted

a child of their own and not just any old child.

They couldn't have any children and they were very musical

and loved opera and all sorts of things,

and just wanted a musician and they heard about this child in Yorkshire.

Their prayers were answered in the form of an unusual

news story in the local paper.

An opera singer was putting her daughter up for adoption.

"Young opera singer has unfortunate liaison,"

and, of course, I was the result.

So, they arranged to adopt me on the spot.

As the years passed, Linda never stopped wondering about her mother

and, more importantly, whether there might be anyone else out there.

I thought, "Wouldn't it be fantastic

"if I actually had some brothers and sisters?"

It was time to bring in expert help in the shape of genealogist

and family finder Charlie Watson.

She had some stories that she was told by her adoptive parents,

and it was clear when she was telling me some of these stories

that she had quite strong feelings about wanting to find,

potentially, her birth mother and her siblings.

What Linda had in her possession was an adoption order

and a birth certificate, which really isn't very much,

but not entirely unexpected,

because we're going back quite a few years now to the 1930s

and it's fairly commonplace to find very few documents that one can use.

But armed with what little he had, Charlie set to work.

The adoption order will give you the name of the court that made

the order, so it was necessary to write to the court to see whether

they had any records of adoption file relating to that particular adoption.

Charlie's investigations unearthed a name for Linda's birth mother -

Dorothy Turner.

Dorothy was no longer alive, but did she have any other children?

I started to look for Linda's birth mother's parents,

so that would be Linda's grandparents,

and what I finally managed to do was evidence of their marriage

by looking online.

By accessing scores of online records, Charlie managed

to get a clearer picture of Linda's history and family tree.

That whole process took probably two to three months

and eventually resulted in my sending out four letters to people.

These four letters were sent to potential close relatives of Linda.

We had one positive response,

and one positive response is pretty much all you need.

One will do.

Charlie's sleuthing had paid off. Linda did indeed have siblings,

and 270 miles away in the Brecon Beacons,

one of them, Bridget,

was about to receive a phone call that would change her life.

My remaining brother, Richard, called me up and said,

"A genealogist has been in touch with me

"saying that there's a lady that would like to contact us, who's...

"who's our sister."

Born 15 years after Linda, Bridget grew up with her birth parents

and two elder brothers. But while Linda spent her adult life

wondering whether she had any siblings,

Bridget and have brothers had been put in the picture much earlier.

When my mother died in 1999, my father got us all together

and said, "I've got some news,"

and told us that we had a sister,

which was a shock, because we'd always been a three,

and suddenly we were a four.

It was a bit of a bombshell, I have to say,

because you always think your parents are without reproach.

I'd had a really settled childhood,

they'd been together all their lives,

they hadn't divorced or anything like that,

and then we had a long discussion

as to whether we should try and find her or not.

And in the end, we decided not.

We probably took what was the easier way out, but we thought...

We just didn't know. I just thought

it would be better to leave things as they were, leave well alone.

-Well, it was a joint decision.

-Yeah, it was a joint decision.

Remarkably, just like the sister she'd never met,

Bridget has also spent her life steeped in music.

I had a passion for music right from the start.

I just have a musical brain, so when I was about four,

we had an old piano which belonged to my grandmother,

and my mother showed me the notes on the piano

and I just took it from there and taught myself,

and eventually ended up going to music college.

Bridget and her partner, Brendan, run an opera company,

an uncanny echo of the story Linda was told,

that her mother was a young opera singer.

I've spent all my life in opera. That's what I do and have done.

Bridget and her brothers had decided to let sleeping dogs lie

and not go looking for Linda, until she came looking for them.

Suddenly we got this call saying, "There's a lady wants to find you,"

so we couldn't really believe it. I went, "Oh, God!" at the time

And then, we just talked about it and I said,

"Of course, we've got to meet her."

Three months after his first meeting with Linda, Charlie contacted her

with the news she'd been desperately hoping to hear.

"Bingo! I've found your family." I was excited, yes, of course I was.

I really have got a family. Oh, gosh!

The sisters have already met once briefly.

Tomorrow, they'll be reunited again,

with two whole lifetimes to catch up on.

In London, Mary Kitchin

and her younger brother, Lenny, had been separated for over 30 years.

Today, they will be reunited after being brought together

by the family finders at the Salvation Army.

I can't wait to see him.

I'm nervous, but I'm not frightened...

He's not going to be a complete stranger to me.

We've found each other,

but I haven't spoken to him verbally as yet.

So, obviously, I know he's a Cockney, but I don't know

if he'll understand me. Us Northerners, you know.

The last time Mary made the journey to London to see Lenny,

he was a teenager who barely acknowledged her.

Today, she is hoping for a very different reception.

Very nervous but excited. A nice nervousness.

-She's shaking, aren't you? Shaking.

-Yeah, I am.

-You don't need to be nervous.

-I know.

You'll be all right.

Just weird...

being here and it's all going to happen.

Lenny's also on his way into Central London,

where they've agreed to meet.

And he's brought his partner Dana along for support.

-How are you feeling, babe?

-Scared, frightened...

-Do you feel sick?

-..apprehensive.

Yeah, very sick.

But that's nerves.

-You going to cry?

-I don't know.

I don't know. I don't think, because of the man thing, innit?

-I don't think I'll cry but...

-It's a good thing, isn't it?

Yeah. Of course, it's all good.

I've sent Mary a message saying, "How are you feeling?"

She's replied with, "OK. Can't wait." DANA LAUGHS

Now it's coming closer, I'm not as nervous as I was...

-Really?

-..funnily enough.

Yeah, I'm a bit more calmer.

-Are you feeling better?

-No.

-Is it getting worse?

-Yeah.

Because we've hit London now.

Lenny is the first to arrive.

And he faces an anxious wait.

I can't believe how stressed out I am.

Sick... Terri... Oh.

I bet she cries.

-You'll cry.

-I don't think... No, I'm a man. I won't cry. No.

No.

LENNY SOBS

Oh, stop.

Found you at last.

-Sorry.

-No need to be.

I can't... I can't...

I can't...

Oh... Dana.

With a tearful Lenny lost for words, Mary decides to bring in

her daughters, his nieces, to help break the ice.

Hello, are you all right?

Hello. How are you?

All right. Oh, they're proper northerners. There we are.

-You all right? Hiya.

-They've chilled me out now.

Without Elena in particular, none of this would ever have happened.

-It's down to you, isn't it? It's all down to you.

-It is.

I just pushed her because she needed to do it.

She wanted to do it for many, many years

and she's always talked about you. So...I was like, "Right..."

Yeah, everyone talks about me, don't they?

THEY LAUGH

Nothing bad, though, this is the thing.

I was just like, "Right, that's it.

"We're doing it, whether you like it or not."

She made me sit down and fill it all out.

The bits that we could fill out,

-because there was lots that were really sketchy.

-Yeah.

I wouldn't even know where to start.

All I know is Mary, Yorkshire, that's all I would have known.

I'm just glad that I found my little brother after all these years,

and I can actually say, I've got a little brother.

-Now you're not the youngest.

-Yeah, I'm not the youngest any more.

I just wish I'd done it a long time ago now.

New beginnings, this. New beginnings.

-New start. We've got a lot of catching up to do.

-Oh, yeah.

As soon as I saw her...

I was struck speechless

and I couldn't stop crying.

For him to have that reaction when he met me, I think

was pure relief and gladness that he did actually meet me,

so it was wonderful, it was a nice feeling.

My mum is going to be a lot happier now because she didn't have that

sense of not knowing. She knows now

and she knows that Lenny feels the same way she feels.

I feel like I've known him all my life.

He's really easy to get on with.

I'm just so pleased that it's all happened.

Everything. It's like she's been there all my life

and this is the start of Lenny and Mary's family.

I'm going to suggest that he comes up to Huddersfield

and we show him around and we're just going to be in touch loads.

In Yorkshire, 81-year-old Linda Wright had been given up

for adoption, but was told that her birth mother was an opera singer,

which makes sense, as Linda is very musical herself.

Keen to discover more and desperate to know

if she had any other family out there,

Linda asked genealogist Charlie Watson to help

and he managed to track down her sister, Bridget,

who remarkably is an opera singer.

The two sisters have only met on one previous occasion.

Today, Bridget is making the trip to Yorkshire to see Linda on home turf

for the very first time.

It's fantastic to have people that actually are of the same bloodline.

I'm off to see Linda for the second time in my life, so there's lots to

catch up on and feels as though there's loads to talk about still.

I've been alone all my life except for my husband and my two sons.

I never had any other family.

When Linda was born, which is in 1934, times were very different.

Women becoming pregnant outside wedlock was very, very much frowned on,

and they basically had three choices -

one was they could have an abortion, which would have been illegal

and carried a lot of consequences,

they could marry the father of the child, if they knew the father and

if that marriage was wanted, or they could place the baby for adoption.

It wasn't just her own reputation that a mother needed to

take into account when making this decision.

It was important that they maintained their standing in the local community.

We know Linda's birth mother came from a very small community

where she would have been known

and her parents would have been well-known,

and almost impossible to hide

what would have been seen as an illegitimate birth.

Adoption had only been made legal in Britain

eight years prior to Linda's birth.

The First World War left Britain in a position where thousands of babies

had become orphaned because their fathers had died during the war.

It put Britain in a position where they could no longer ignore

the vast numbers of children born to single mothers

and something had to be done.

In response, the Adoption Act of 1926 was passed.

The Adoption Act didn't really remove the stigma of unmarried

mothers and children being born out of wedlock, but it was starting

to provide an option for people who wanted to adopt a baby formally.

Even after it was formalised, some mothers still

opted for the relative discretion of private arrangements.

I've come across cases in the 1930s and early 1940s where people were

passed to other members of the family to look after.

Adoption reached its peak towards the end of the swinging '60s.

It was a time where there were double standards, if you like.

There was still this shame of having a baby out of wedlock,

but actually it was the swinging '60s, it was freedom, peace

and love and so, lots more babies were being born out of wedlock.

But by 1968, the figures started to decline.

Women had other options available to them.

One such was being the Abortion Act which was brought in,

which meant that there was actually a feasible alternative to

ending a pregnancy, and really, increased knowledge of

contraception meant that there were, maybe, less cases.

Since the last part of the 20th century,

adoptions have continued to fall due to increased

acceptance of single parenting and sex outside of marriage.

In Yorkshire, Linda is now about to meet up with her sister, Bridget.

Linda and Bridget have a lifetime to catch up on,

and a whole host of unanswered questions to consider.

Hello!

-Hello.

-Hello, Linda.

-You've been left out here for ages.

-We waited for ages!

-Hello, darling.

-Hello.

Come and sit down.

Bridget had brought along some photos of their mother,

so Linda can finally get a sense of what she was really like.

Have you seen that one?

-That was Mum.

-Really?

-Yeah.

-Oh.

I don't know, I suppose she's in her early 40s there.

-Hmm.

-That's a younger one.

-Probably when she's in her 20s.

-Oh, that's nice, isn't it?

Yeah, that's nice. See, she looks like you.

I feel as if I look like that sometimes. A sort of...

-You've got the same mouth, you see.

-Yes, it is, it's the mouth.

And the nose. We've both got that nose, yes.

And Bridget has one more intriguing revelation for Linda.

And you were going to be called Wendy.

Given that Linda has always been fascinated with

Wendy from Peter Pan, the news that her mother wanted to give her

-that name is a remarkable coincidence.

-You didn't know?

No, no idea.

-Well, this is the piece de resistance.

-Yes.

I think this is really lovely, yeah.

Your big grin!

At school, I was always told off for talking too much

and laughing too much.

-Oh, we're both the same, aren't we?

-Exactly.

And the similarities don't end there.

Both sisters are musicians, and according to one story Linda

was told as a child, it's because their mother was an opera singer.

I had from my aunt the story that my foster mother

and father, who were Vero and Irine, my father was a journalist.

He was a journalist and he got me into all sorts of things.

Fiddled it out.

This may well be the story that Linda was told by her aunt, but her

father had told her a very different version of events,

and this opera singer story is certainly news to Bridget,

-who grew up with their mum.

-It's a mystery.

I mean, obviously, Mum, somewhere in there, is a very, very strong

musical connection, isn't there?

Considering I've made my life in opera and music, so...

But what I remember of Mum is, bless her,

that she smoked up to 60 a day for a long,

long time in her life, coughed and I never heard her sing ever.

So, who was their mother really,

and what was the truth behind Linda's adoption?

Linda and Bridget have arranged to meet with Charlie,

the genealogist who has led this search, in the hope

he can get to the bottom of this mystery once and for all.

-You must be Bridget.

-That's right.

-Very nice to meet you.

Very nice to meet you.

What Charlie wants to deal with first is the Barnardo's story

that Linda had been told by her adoptive father.

The adoption seems to have been a private one,

because no agencies I've looked into have a record of it, or said they have a record of it,

so I'm not sure whether Dr Barnardo's was ever a case in point.

I don't think it happened.

And then it was your adoptive mother's sister who said,

actually, that's not true.

That your adoptive parents had been working on this newspaper in London,

seen this story about a young opera singer

-and had come north to arrange the adoption.

-Yes.

Now, unfortunately the paper no longer exists and there is no

archive of it. There's nothing in the British newspaper

archive for the News Chronicle, so we can't check the paper.

-That's amazing, isn't it?

-Yeah, simply doesn't exist.

Charlie has done some more digging around this story

and may have made a breakthrough.

We had a look to see if we could find a Dorothy Turner

who was either on the stage, or involved in opera, in the Hull area

and we couldn't find anything, except there is a reference to

-a Dorothy Turner who was on stage in 1934, in a theatre, in Hull.

-Right.

She kept it secret from me, then, in that case.

This was the theatre - unfortunately, no longer exists.

This rather fantastic building.

I don't know, Charlie. It's beyond me.

I mean, I never got an inkling at all.

Well, we also found a cutting from the local paper of that cast list.

-I'm interested in your view of the middle picture there.

-Oh, God.

Have you blew it up any bigger?

-Being a true genealogist, I brought my trusty magnifying glass.

-Oh, God.

-Do you think that middle...

-What, the one next door to Charlie Chaplin?

-..that actress could be your mother?

-God. The one with the long hair?

-Yes.

-I don't think so. Doesn't look like the right shape face to me.

Bridget's not sure, but Linda was adopted 15 years

before she was born, so it's possible

Bridget may not have full details of this period of her mother's life.

How do you feel about all this? Here you are sitting next to your sister.

I was just trying to find the secret, really, of what happened

-and I've wanted to find out where the music came from.

-That's right.

-Well, I'd like to know where the music came from!

-Yes, the two of us.

It seems that despite Charlie's detective work,

the circumstances around Linda's adoption

and their mother's musical past are destined to remain a mystery.

But these two sisters are still happy to be together.

Just feel very privileged actually to be your sister.

That's the best way I can put it. Quite honestly, it touched me.

-You daft bat!

-I beg your pardon? We'll have a fight later on.

However musical their mother really was,

these two sisters are definitely singing from the same hymn sheet.

You can't get away from it, there's a very sort of spooky

-connection that we are both very musical.

-Very strong.

And I think we're, fundamentally, a little bit,

-we're quite unlike in a lot of ways.

-Yes. A good sense of humour.

-We see the ridiculous very easily.

-Yes, I think that's a saving grace.

Absolutely, yes.

Linda and Bridget may have missed the chance to perform together

when they were young but today, they are bringing their musical

talents together for the very first time.

-I think it's a shame really that I didn't do this earlier.

-A hug!

Have a hug. A hug. I have to kneel down.

Good lass. You're lovely.