Browse content similar to Tony & Martyn/Lorraine, Belinda & Donna. Check below for episodes and series from the same categories and more!
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Families can be driven apart for all manner of reasons. | 0:00:01 | 0:00:04 | |
I had no information at all about where my mum went. | 0:00:04 | 0:00:07 | |
And when you do lose touch with your loved ones... | 0:00:07 | 0:00:09 | |
You don't know who you are, where have you come from. | 0:00:09 | 0:00:12 | |
..finding them can take a lifetime. | 0:00:12 | 0:00:14 | |
I might have a brother that's | 0:00:14 | 0:00:16 | |
still living here. | 0:00:16 | 0:00:18 | |
Especially when they could be anywhere, | 0:00:19 | 0:00:21 | |
at home or abroad. | 0:00:21 | 0:00:22 | |
And that's where the Family Finders come in. | 0:00:22 | 0:00:26 | |
From international organisations... | 0:00:26 | 0:00:28 | |
Hi, it's the Salvation Army Family Tracing Service. | 0:00:28 | 0:00:31 | |
..to genealogy detective agencies... | 0:00:31 | 0:00:34 | |
For someone to say that it's changed their life, it makes coming to work, | 0:00:34 | 0:00:38 | |
you know, really, really special. | 0:00:38 | 0:00:40 | |
..and dedicated one-man bands... | 0:00:40 | 0:00:42 | |
It's a matter of how much effort you really want to put into it, | 0:00:42 | 0:00:46 | |
how badly you want to solve the problem. | 0:00:46 | 0:00:48 | |
..they hunt through history to bring families back together again. | 0:00:48 | 0:00:52 | |
Finding new family is wonderful. | 0:00:52 | 0:00:55 | |
In this series, we follow the work of the Family Finders. | 0:00:55 | 0:00:59 | |
Suddenly, you get one spark of breakthrough and there they are. | 0:00:59 | 0:01:04 | |
Learning the tricks they use | 0:01:04 | 0:01:06 | |
to track missing relatives through time. | 0:01:06 | 0:01:08 | |
I didn't think I'd ever find my sisters, but I have. | 0:01:08 | 0:01:13 | |
And meeting the people whose lives they change along the way. | 0:01:13 | 0:01:17 | |
I've been waiting to meet John my whole life. | 0:01:17 | 0:01:20 | |
Since we've met, I feel part of a family again. | 0:01:20 | 0:01:23 | |
You just completed my life for me. | 0:01:23 | 0:01:25 | |
Many families get torn apart and it can take years of detective work to | 0:01:31 | 0:01:34 | |
find out why. | 0:01:34 | 0:01:36 | |
Often financial difficulties can lead to relatives being | 0:01:36 | 0:01:39 | |
separated. Sometimes ill health gets in the way, | 0:01:39 | 0:01:42 | |
and occasionally it's the | 0:01:42 | 0:01:44 | |
sheer volume of offspring that can lead to desperate measures. | 0:01:44 | 0:01:47 | |
Today, we follow two such cases. | 0:01:48 | 0:01:51 | |
Tony Robinson who found out late in life that he had siblings he never | 0:01:51 | 0:01:55 | |
knew existed. | 0:01:55 | 0:01:57 | |
And then she dropped a bombshell on me. | 0:01:57 | 0:01:59 | |
She said, "What about Ian?" | 0:01:59 | 0:02:01 | |
and I might have used the words I said but along the lines of, | 0:02:01 | 0:02:05 | |
"Who's Ian?" She said, "Well, the other one that we had adopted." | 0:02:05 | 0:02:08 | |
I said, "What other one?" | 0:02:08 | 0:02:09 | |
And Lorraine Hall who grew up | 0:02:09 | 0:02:11 | |
believing she was a legitimate only child | 0:02:11 | 0:02:13 | |
until the funeral of a family friend revealed the shocking truth. | 0:02:13 | 0:02:17 | |
And I remember saying, "No, no." | 0:02:17 | 0:02:20 | |
And she said, "Get in the car. | 0:02:20 | 0:02:22 | |
She was your mother." | 0:02:22 | 0:02:23 | |
Tony Robinson was born in 1953 and was brought up in Carshalton, Surrey | 0:02:29 | 0:02:34 | |
by his parents, Shirley and Raymond Robinson. | 0:02:34 | 0:02:38 | |
Growing up, there's meself, me sister Linda, me sister Carol, | 0:02:38 | 0:02:42 | |
me sister Diane, me brother Michael and then me sister Marion. | 0:02:42 | 0:02:45 | |
That was the family. | 0:02:45 | 0:02:46 | |
A great upbringing, just lower class, not a lot of money. | 0:02:48 | 0:02:51 | |
There were six of us living in a three-bedroom house. | 0:02:51 | 0:02:54 | |
When he was 12, | 0:02:55 | 0:02:56 | |
a childhood illness resulted in Tony being sent away to what was known as | 0:02:56 | 0:03:01 | |
an open air school in the countryside to recuperate. | 0:03:01 | 0:03:04 | |
I was asthmatic so I was sent away to this health school | 0:03:04 | 0:03:08 | |
down in Guildford. | 0:03:08 | 0:03:09 | |
And I was there for a couple of years. | 0:03:09 | 0:03:11 | |
'65 to '67 and I was boarding there. | 0:03:11 | 0:03:16 | |
It was during the two years that Tony was boarding | 0:03:16 | 0:03:19 | |
at the open air school | 0:03:19 | 0:03:20 | |
that his parents had to make a heartbreaking decision. | 0:03:20 | 0:03:24 | |
I can remember once being about 10 or 11, that sort of age, | 0:03:24 | 0:03:29 | |
in the back garden. I can remember me mum and dad coming out to say, | 0:03:29 | 0:03:32 | |
"We've had a boy named Stephen. | 0:03:32 | 0:03:34 | |
"We've had to have him adopted." | 0:03:34 | 0:03:35 | |
But at that age, I didn't know what adopted meant. | 0:03:35 | 0:03:38 | |
I had no idea. And it was never discussed afterwards, ever. | 0:03:38 | 0:03:42 | |
Following the death of his parents decades later, | 0:03:43 | 0:03:46 | |
a chance discovery set off an incredible chain of events. | 0:03:46 | 0:03:50 | |
When me mum died it was down to me. | 0:03:50 | 0:03:53 | |
So, I came down, spent a few days down here sorting out paperwork. | 0:03:53 | 0:03:57 | |
And I came across this Christmas card and a photo | 0:03:57 | 0:04:01 | |
and a letter from West Sussex Adoption Agency, so I thought, | 0:04:01 | 0:04:06 | |
"Well, what's all this about?" When I saw the name Stephen, | 0:04:06 | 0:04:10 | |
I put two and two together. | 0:04:10 | 0:04:11 | |
I suddenly remembered who Stephen was. | 0:04:11 | 0:04:14 | |
Just a flashback of being told about 10 or 11 that they had a boy named | 0:04:14 | 0:04:19 | |
Stephen adopted. So that really set me thinking, oh, what's this all about? | 0:04:19 | 0:04:22 | |
Tony was intrigued by the mysterious address | 0:04:25 | 0:04:28 | |
on the back of one of the envelopes. | 0:04:28 | 0:04:30 | |
So what I did was, | 0:04:31 | 0:04:32 | |
we wrote a letter saying who we were, what we're doing, | 0:04:32 | 0:04:36 | |
why we're trying to do what we're doing | 0:04:36 | 0:04:38 | |
and we sent it to that address and | 0:04:38 | 0:04:40 | |
after about a month, we never got a reply back. | 0:04:40 | 0:04:43 | |
And we thought, "Well, what can we do now?" | 0:04:43 | 0:04:45 | |
The next step was to trawl through phone directories in an attempt to | 0:04:45 | 0:04:49 | |
match a name to an address to find a contact number. | 0:04:49 | 0:04:52 | |
We did find a phone number, rang it up and it wasn't... | 0:04:52 | 0:04:56 | |
It was the right phone number but the wrong person. | 0:04:56 | 0:04:59 | |
They didn't live there any more but they did have a number. | 0:05:00 | 0:05:04 | |
I gave her my number and, blow me, I got a phone call back. | 0:05:04 | 0:05:06 | |
We spoke to Jenny, which was Stephen's ex-wife at that time, | 0:05:06 | 0:05:11 | |
and she just went mental in the nicest possible way | 0:05:11 | 0:05:15 | |
that you could think of. | 0:05:15 | 0:05:17 | |
She was screaming and jumping up and down. | 0:05:17 | 0:05:20 | |
She said, "Do you realise how long he's been looking for you?" | 0:05:20 | 0:05:22 | |
She said, "I'm going to have to ring him." | 0:05:22 | 0:05:25 | |
Within the hour, Tony found himself on the phone | 0:05:25 | 0:05:27 | |
to the brother he'd never known. | 0:05:27 | 0:05:30 | |
And he said, "Hi, Tony. This is your brother, Stephen." | 0:05:30 | 0:05:32 | |
And I just gave the phone to me wife. | 0:05:34 | 0:05:35 | |
I just couldn't take it in for a few minutes. | 0:05:36 | 0:05:38 | |
You know, she was chatting to him as if he'd known her all his life. | 0:05:38 | 0:05:41 | |
You know, then I had to come back and compose meself and then we just | 0:05:41 | 0:05:44 | |
spoke for hours and hours about all sorts of things. | 0:05:44 | 0:05:48 | |
Following that emotional phone call, the brothers met up, | 0:05:49 | 0:05:54 | |
and Tony and Stephen are now in regular contact, | 0:05:54 | 0:05:56 | |
but the story didn't end there. | 0:05:56 | 0:05:58 | |
And then I was speaking to me younger sister, Marion, | 0:05:58 | 0:06:01 | |
and she was obviously elated and ecstatic | 0:06:01 | 0:06:04 | |
and then she dropped a bombshell on me. | 0:06:04 | 0:06:06 | |
She said, "Fantastic news." | 0:06:06 | 0:06:08 | |
She said, "What about Ian?" | 0:06:08 | 0:06:10 | |
And I might have used the words I said but along the lines of, | 0:06:10 | 0:06:14 | |
"Who's Ian?" She said, "Well, the other one that we had adopted." | 0:06:14 | 0:06:17 | |
I said, "What other one?" And she said, "You must've known?" | 0:06:17 | 0:06:20 | |
I said, "No, I know nothing about Ian at all." | 0:06:20 | 0:06:23 | |
I just didn't know. I knew nothing. | 0:06:23 | 0:06:26 | |
Having just found one missing brother, | 0:06:26 | 0:06:29 | |
Tony was about to start searching all over again. | 0:06:29 | 0:06:32 | |
Lorraine Hall was born in 1964 | 0:06:40 | 0:06:43 | |
and raised in Birmingham as the only child of Pat and Ray Edwards. | 0:06:43 | 0:06:49 | |
I was brought up believing that Pat and Ray were my natural parents. | 0:06:49 | 0:06:57 | |
I had no reason to doubt that. | 0:06:57 | 0:06:59 | |
Growing up, Lorraine spent lots of time with a family friend, Sylvia, | 0:06:59 | 0:07:04 | |
who lived nearby with her 11 children. | 0:07:04 | 0:07:07 | |
Sylvia was known to me as Pat's friend. | 0:07:07 | 0:07:11 | |
We used to go and have visits | 0:07:11 | 0:07:13 | |
and I used to go and play with Sylvia's children. | 0:07:13 | 0:07:17 | |
But when Lorraine was 15, | 0:07:18 | 0:07:20 | |
Sylvia died and a huge family secret was dramatically unveiled at the | 0:07:20 | 0:07:25 | |
funeral, attended by Lorraine and her parents. | 0:07:25 | 0:07:27 | |
I remember being asked, when the children | 0:07:30 | 0:07:33 | |
were getting into the main family car, to join them. | 0:07:33 | 0:07:36 | |
And Pat came to me and she pointed and she directed me to get into the | 0:07:37 | 0:07:42 | |
family front car and I said, "No. | 0:07:42 | 0:07:44 | |
"No, I can't." | 0:07:44 | 0:07:46 | |
And Pat was quite forceful. | 0:07:46 | 0:07:48 | |
I remember her putting her hands on my shoulders and saying to me, | 0:07:48 | 0:07:53 | |
"Come on, now, get in the car." | 0:07:53 | 0:07:54 | |
And I remember standing up to Pat which I didn't do very often, | 0:07:54 | 0:07:59 | |
but I remember saying, "No. | 0:07:59 | 0:08:01 | |
"No." And she said, "Get in the car. | 0:08:01 | 0:08:03 | |
"She was your mother." | 0:08:03 | 0:08:05 | |
After 15 years of believing she was the only child of Pat and Ray, | 0:08:07 | 0:08:12 | |
Lorraine was stunned by the shock revelation | 0:08:12 | 0:08:14 | |
that Sylvia was, in fact, her biological mother. | 0:08:14 | 0:08:17 | |
I just remember holding my head down in shame. | 0:08:17 | 0:08:20 | |
Not, not being able to breathe. | 0:08:22 | 0:08:26 | |
Not being able to remember anything. | 0:08:26 | 0:08:29 | |
In a heartbeat, | 0:08:30 | 0:08:31 | |
Lorraine discovered not only that her mother | 0:08:31 | 0:08:34 | |
wasn't who she thought she was, | 0:08:34 | 0:08:35 | |
but that the childhood friends she'd grown up playing with were | 0:08:35 | 0:08:38 | |
actually her brothers and sisters. | 0:08:38 | 0:08:41 | |
Knowing that | 0:08:41 | 0:08:44 | |
I am one of 12 children, and been brought up an only child... | 0:08:44 | 0:08:48 | |
I, I... | 0:08:51 | 0:08:53 | |
Words, sometimes... | 0:08:55 | 0:08:57 | |
The truth behind why Lorraine was the only child | 0:09:01 | 0:09:04 | |
not to be raised by her birth mother remained a mystery | 0:09:04 | 0:09:07 | |
and as quickly as Lorraine had discovered | 0:09:07 | 0:09:10 | |
she had siblings, she lost them again. | 0:09:10 | 0:09:13 | |
Until her death at the age of 46, | 0:09:13 | 0:09:15 | |
11 of Sylvia's 12 children had been in her care | 0:09:15 | 0:09:19 | |
but following the funeral, the children were split up. | 0:09:19 | 0:09:23 | |
The eldest left home, some went into care, | 0:09:23 | 0:09:26 | |
and the youngest moved away from the area with their father. | 0:09:26 | 0:09:30 | |
The biggest thing for me at the time, | 0:09:30 | 0:09:33 | |
and it's something I struggled all my life with, | 0:09:33 | 0:09:37 | |
was the untruths. | 0:09:37 | 0:09:39 | |
Maybe Pat or Ray or both of them | 0:09:39 | 0:09:42 | |
could have sat me down and told me the truth, | 0:09:42 | 0:09:45 | |
that Sylvia was my birth mother. | 0:09:45 | 0:09:48 | |
Lorraine went on to leave home, get married | 0:09:48 | 0:09:51 | |
and raise a family of her own. | 0:09:51 | 0:09:53 | |
But questions about the whereabouts of her brothers and sisters and what | 0:09:53 | 0:09:56 | |
had become of them plagued her. | 0:09:56 | 0:09:59 | |
Didn't know what country they was in, | 0:09:59 | 0:10:01 | |
didn't know what city they was in. | 0:10:01 | 0:10:03 | |
Hoping, longing one day to be able to walk down the street to see them. | 0:10:03 | 0:10:09 | |
Lorraine began trawling genealogy websites for any trace | 0:10:12 | 0:10:15 | |
of Sylvia's 11 children. | 0:10:15 | 0:10:18 | |
That many times it came up blank. | 0:10:18 | 0:10:20 | |
I was searching and I still could not get nowhere | 0:10:20 | 0:10:23 | |
and then this one day out of the blue... | 0:10:23 | 0:10:25 | |
I had a match that popped up and it was a proper match | 0:10:27 | 0:10:31 | |
and it matched the age, it matched the information | 0:10:31 | 0:10:34 | |
I'd already discovered. | 0:10:34 | 0:10:36 | |
It matched local location in Birmingham | 0:10:36 | 0:10:40 | |
and I thought, maybe this could be it. | 0:10:40 | 0:10:44 | |
But when Lorraine tried to access the details of the family tree, | 0:10:44 | 0:10:48 | |
she found it was a locked, private profile and to be granted access, | 0:10:48 | 0:10:52 | |
she would have to write to the administrator and introduce herself. | 0:10:52 | 0:10:57 | |
The administrator passed Lorraine's e-mail on | 0:10:57 | 0:11:00 | |
and a week later came a reply. | 0:11:00 | 0:11:03 | |
When I saw the name popped up that I had an e-mail, | 0:11:03 | 0:11:07 | |
every emotion you could ever imagine. | 0:11:07 | 0:11:09 | |
I was happy, I couldn't believe it. | 0:11:10 | 0:11:14 | |
I was scared. For the worries and woes and rejection. | 0:11:14 | 0:11:18 | |
Maybe they don't want to know. | 0:11:19 | 0:11:21 | |
Maybe they don't want to be part of your life. | 0:11:21 | 0:11:23 | |
All Lorraine could do now was to sit back and wait to find out if these | 0:11:23 | 0:11:28 | |
really were the siblings she was so desperate to find. | 0:11:28 | 0:11:31 | |
-Do you recognise that? -Yeah. | 0:11:31 | 0:11:33 | |
-I don't. -It's Mum's purse. | 0:11:33 | 0:11:35 | |
Mum's purse. | 0:11:35 | 0:11:36 | |
In Surrey, Tony Robinson had successfully tracked down | 0:11:40 | 0:11:43 | |
his brother, Stephen, who had been adopted as a baby | 0:11:43 | 0:11:46 | |
but his sense of achievement was short-lived | 0:11:46 | 0:11:49 | |
when his sister dropped a bombshell. | 0:11:49 | 0:11:52 | |
While Tony had been away at boarding school, | 0:11:52 | 0:11:54 | |
there had been another baby boy also adopted out of the family. | 0:11:54 | 0:11:58 | |
My sisters assumed that I knew that Ian had been born. | 0:11:58 | 0:12:03 | |
I was away. I was away from home. I knew nothing about it. | 0:12:03 | 0:12:06 | |
They just assumed I knew and it was just never...like Stephen, | 0:12:06 | 0:12:08 | |
it was never discussed. But I knew nothing. | 0:12:08 | 0:12:11 | |
With the small amount of information his sisters had given him, | 0:12:12 | 0:12:16 | |
Tony began looking for his second brother. | 0:12:16 | 0:12:19 | |
His first port of call was the Family Records Centre. | 0:12:19 | 0:12:22 | |
So I went through the records and found Ian Robinson | 0:12:22 | 0:12:26 | |
on the 5th or the 6th of December 1967. | 0:12:26 | 0:12:29 | |
So I found his birth certificate. | 0:12:29 | 0:12:33 | |
Having uncovered his brother's full name and a date of birth, | 0:12:33 | 0:12:36 | |
Tony's next step was to visit his local adoption agency | 0:12:36 | 0:12:40 | |
to try and find a current contact detail for Ian. | 0:12:40 | 0:12:42 | |
They said they would do what they could | 0:12:43 | 0:12:45 | |
and they came back after a meeting | 0:12:45 | 0:12:47 | |
and they said, "We've done some digging for you, | 0:12:47 | 0:12:50 | |
"we've discovered he's changed his name. | 0:12:50 | 0:12:53 | |
"But we're not allowed to tell you what his name is." | 0:12:53 | 0:12:55 | |
So, I wasn't happy. | 0:12:55 | 0:12:57 | |
And I said, "Well, how the hell am I going to find him?" | 0:12:59 | 0:13:02 | |
He said, "It's down to him." | 0:13:02 | 0:13:04 | |
"If he wants to find you, he'll find you." | 0:13:04 | 0:13:06 | |
It looked like Tony's search had hit a brick wall. | 0:13:06 | 0:13:10 | |
I was going through every emotion possible - elation, frustration. | 0:13:11 | 0:13:15 | |
But little did Tony know | 0:13:15 | 0:13:17 | |
he wasn't the only one who was looking for a lost brother. | 0:13:17 | 0:13:20 | |
I was sitting on me laptop just using social media. | 0:13:20 | 0:13:23 | |
and I saw this message appear. | 0:13:23 | 0:13:25 | |
Um... And I read it, and I thought, "What's this all about?" | 0:13:25 | 0:13:30 | |
It was a name that I never knew. Wasn't friends with anybody. | 0:13:30 | 0:13:33 | |
And his name suddenly appeared. | 0:13:33 | 0:13:35 | |
And it was saying along the lines of, "Hi, my name is Martin. | 0:13:35 | 0:13:39 | |
"I've been told from an early age I've been adopted, | 0:13:41 | 0:13:44 | |
"and my family name was Robinson. | 0:13:44 | 0:13:45 | |
"My parents was this name and that name. | 0:13:45 | 0:13:47 | |
"I've got my siblings with all the names." | 0:13:47 | 0:13:49 | |
He said, "I'm just trying to find out if you're my older brother." | 0:13:49 | 0:13:52 | |
It turned out that Ian had changed his name to Martin | 0:13:54 | 0:13:57 | |
some years earlier. | 0:13:57 | 0:13:58 | |
Tony had found his second missing brother | 0:14:00 | 0:14:02 | |
or rather, his little brother had found him. | 0:14:02 | 0:14:05 | |
A flurry of e-mails followed. | 0:14:05 | 0:14:07 | |
It was emotional even though we were on the end of a phone, it was still, | 0:14:08 | 0:14:13 | |
like, "I'm talking to me brother", | 0:14:13 | 0:14:15 | |
you know, this is someone I know absolutely nothing about | 0:14:15 | 0:14:20 | |
but it was my brother. | 0:14:20 | 0:14:22 | |
During the course of that week, I spoke to him | 0:14:22 | 0:14:25 | |
every day for hours and hours, | 0:14:25 | 0:14:27 | |
just talking about everything and nothing. | 0:14:27 | 0:14:29 | |
Just to hear his voice. | 0:14:29 | 0:14:31 | |
Martin had been adopted when he was seven months old. | 0:14:32 | 0:14:35 | |
I always knew I was adopted from a very early age. | 0:14:35 | 0:14:38 | |
I always knew that my name was Ian Robinson | 0:14:38 | 0:14:41 | |
and I was the youngest of eight. | 0:14:41 | 0:14:44 | |
Only really when me mum passed away that... | 0:14:44 | 0:14:47 | |
..there was a... | 0:14:49 | 0:14:50 | |
a stirring, shall we say. | 0:14:50 | 0:14:52 | |
I think, because, out of respect, | 0:14:52 | 0:14:55 | |
when my parents were still alive, they were my parents. | 0:14:55 | 0:14:59 | |
But when his mum died she left him some paperwork | 0:15:00 | 0:15:03 | |
and it contained some intriguing information. | 0:15:03 | 0:15:06 | |
It's basically a history of my family | 0:15:07 | 0:15:11 | |
that was given to my mum and dad when I was adopted. | 0:15:11 | 0:15:14 | |
It tells me the years that me brothers and sisters were born in. | 0:15:14 | 0:15:19 | |
It also hints as to why I was adopted | 0:15:19 | 0:15:22 | |
and it also explains in it as well that | 0:15:22 | 0:15:26 | |
the next one above me, Stephen, was also adopted. | 0:15:26 | 0:15:29 | |
It says in here, | 0:15:29 | 0:15:30 | |
my mother feels the strain of coping with such a large family | 0:15:30 | 0:15:34 | |
on limited income. | 0:15:34 | 0:15:35 | |
So straightaway you can tell that it was financial. | 0:15:35 | 0:15:38 | |
It explains that what happened with Stephen | 0:15:38 | 0:15:41 | |
also happened with me for the same reasons. | 0:15:41 | 0:15:44 | |
Martin decided to apply to the authorities | 0:15:44 | 0:15:46 | |
for details of his birth family. | 0:15:46 | 0:15:50 | |
Done it online and made the application. | 0:15:50 | 0:15:52 | |
And put a request in for the adoption papers and family records. | 0:15:53 | 0:15:59 | |
All in all, I think it took about eight months. | 0:15:59 | 0:16:02 | |
Today, Martin, Ian and another of his new-found siblings, | 0:16:05 | 0:16:09 | |
Diane, are meeting up. | 0:16:09 | 0:16:10 | |
Their other adopted brother Stephen would have loved to have joined them | 0:16:11 | 0:16:15 | |
but his daughter is about to have a baby any day. | 0:16:15 | 0:16:18 | |
-Are you nervous? -Yeah. -Are you? | 0:16:20 | 0:16:22 | |
-Hiya, bro. -Hiya. -Come on in. -How are you? | 0:16:26 | 0:16:30 | |
-Long time no see. -I know, it's good, isn't it, to see you again? | 0:16:31 | 0:16:35 | |
-How you doing, young man? Nice to see you. -All right. | 0:16:38 | 0:16:40 | |
Nice to see you again. | 0:16:40 | 0:16:41 | |
With over 40 years of family life to catch up on, | 0:16:42 | 0:16:46 | |
the siblings are keen to fill each other in | 0:16:46 | 0:16:48 | |
on the time they were apart. | 0:16:48 | 0:16:50 | |
And they're starting by swapping some treasured family snaps. | 0:16:50 | 0:16:54 | |
Now that is the earliest one that I've actually got of myself. | 0:16:54 | 0:16:58 | |
-Now... -Pick you out. | 0:16:58 | 0:16:59 | |
..pick me out and that. Yeah, there's a football team at school. | 0:16:59 | 0:17:03 | |
-It's that one. -Yeah. -You're the goalkeeper. | 0:17:03 | 0:17:05 | |
-The goalkeeper. -Obviously runs in the family, then. | 0:17:05 | 0:17:07 | |
I was a goalkeeper. Smallest player there, but I was a goalkeeper. | 0:17:07 | 0:17:10 | |
Same here. I'm virtually the smallest one there. | 0:17:10 | 0:17:14 | |
-That there. -Oh, that's old. -It is. -They're really old. | 0:17:14 | 0:17:16 | |
That is us all on holiday at Butlins. | 0:17:16 | 0:17:19 | |
But that's Nan and grandad, | 0:17:19 | 0:17:20 | |
and I don't even remember them being on holiday with us. | 0:17:20 | 0:17:23 | |
-That's Dad's mum and dad. -All right. | 0:17:23 | 0:17:24 | |
And, obviously, Dad must have taken the picture. | 0:17:24 | 0:17:27 | |
We all had long hair and before we went away Dad made us all wear short | 0:17:27 | 0:17:31 | |
-back and sides. -You know, the old pudding-basin. -Yeah, I remember. | 0:17:31 | 0:17:35 | |
I cried my eyes out. I really did. | 0:17:35 | 0:17:38 | |
Now that I'm actually seeing some of the pictures, | 0:17:38 | 0:17:40 | |
I can actually get the feel of what it was like as a Robinson family. | 0:17:40 | 0:17:44 | |
And I do actually regret not being part of it, | 0:17:44 | 0:17:48 | |
but, obviously, that wasn't my choice at the time. | 0:17:48 | 0:17:53 | |
And obviously, not being involved, there's so much, like, | 0:17:53 | 0:17:57 | |
history that you've got, | 0:17:57 | 0:17:59 | |
but it's nice, it's really nice, to see the pictures. | 0:17:59 | 0:18:03 | |
-I'm glad you're with us now. -Oh, yeah, definitely. | 0:18:03 | 0:18:07 | |
And they're all looking forward to yet another new addition | 0:18:07 | 0:18:10 | |
to the family. | 0:18:10 | 0:18:12 | |
-I haven't heard from Stephen. He's not a grandad yet. -No? | 0:18:12 | 0:18:14 | |
I'm still waiting. I said, it don't matter if it's one | 0:18:14 | 0:18:17 | |
in the afternoon, or three in the morning, | 0:18:17 | 0:18:18 | |
-you need to let me know straightaway. -Is he excited? | 0:18:18 | 0:18:21 | |
Extremely. Yeah, he's like a cat on a hot tin roof at the moment. | 0:18:21 | 0:18:24 | |
-Yeah. -He's really excited. | 0:18:24 | 0:18:26 | |
This was actually something that I never expected was going to happen | 0:18:26 | 0:18:29 | |
because I had my own family and so this was the last thing on my mind. | 0:18:29 | 0:18:35 | |
But now it's happened, | 0:18:35 | 0:18:37 | |
it's nice because they're so welcoming | 0:18:37 | 0:18:39 | |
and I feel as though that I've been | 0:18:39 | 0:18:41 | |
part of the family for a lot longer than I actually have. | 0:18:41 | 0:18:45 | |
Now Martin has come back into our lives, we will never let him go. | 0:18:45 | 0:18:49 | |
He's part of our family. | 0:18:49 | 0:18:50 | |
Always will be. | 0:18:51 | 0:18:52 | |
It had to become my mission in life to somehow get us all together as a | 0:18:54 | 0:18:59 | |
family. That was it. | 0:18:59 | 0:19:01 | |
It just has to be. You know, and now it's happened, it's, well, | 0:19:01 | 0:19:06 | |
we're just starting out again now and | 0:19:06 | 0:19:09 | |
we just can't wait to keep it going. | 0:19:09 | 0:19:11 | |
In Birmingham, Lorraine Hall was trying to track down siblings | 0:19:19 | 0:19:23 | |
years after the shock discovery, at 15, | 0:19:23 | 0:19:25 | |
that the woman she thought was a family friend | 0:19:25 | 0:19:28 | |
was actually her biological mother. | 0:19:28 | 0:19:31 | |
When a family finding website threw up a match, | 0:19:31 | 0:19:34 | |
Lorraine contacted the genealogist involved. | 0:19:34 | 0:19:38 | |
It turned out that he had been researching the family | 0:19:38 | 0:19:40 | |
for his friend who lived 300 miles away in Scotland. | 0:19:40 | 0:19:44 | |
Her name was Donna, and she was one of Sylvia's daughters. | 0:19:44 | 0:19:48 | |
Lorraine had found one of the 11 siblings she'd been searching for. | 0:19:48 | 0:19:52 | |
Very happy to send her an e-mail. | 0:19:52 | 0:19:56 | |
And she took a couple of days to reply back. | 0:19:56 | 0:19:59 | |
I think she was so, sort of, shocked. | 0:19:59 | 0:20:02 | |
Donna was the youngest of Sylvia's children. | 0:20:02 | 0:20:06 | |
I was born in 1975 in Birmingham, the last of well, at the time, | 0:20:06 | 0:20:11 | |
there were only 11 children that my mum had. | 0:20:11 | 0:20:14 | |
Knew about or knew of my half brothers and sisters | 0:20:14 | 0:20:18 | |
cos two or three of them, sort of, lived with us, on and off, | 0:20:18 | 0:20:21 | |
in the first sort of few years. | 0:20:21 | 0:20:23 | |
After Sylvia died, Donna's father took her, | 0:20:25 | 0:20:28 | |
her sister and her brother to live in Great Yarmouth | 0:20:28 | 0:20:31 | |
and they lost touch with the rest of the family. | 0:20:31 | 0:20:35 | |
I don't know what happened. We just lost touch and I think, you know, | 0:20:35 | 0:20:39 | |
the Christmas cards eventually stopped, | 0:20:39 | 0:20:41 | |
and that's sadly what happened. | 0:20:41 | 0:20:43 | |
The communication line faded away. | 0:20:43 | 0:20:45 | |
Then, years later, | 0:20:47 | 0:20:48 | |
a health scare prompted Donna to pick up the search. | 0:20:48 | 0:20:52 | |
I'd had breast cancer at 26 and | 0:20:52 | 0:20:57 | |
we went to the family history clinic and, of course, | 0:20:57 | 0:21:00 | |
they were interested to know, well, let's have a look at your, | 0:21:00 | 0:21:03 | |
you know, maternal side and see if it's genetic from that. | 0:21:03 | 0:21:06 | |
I then had to try and remember their details that would be nice to find | 0:21:07 | 0:21:12 | |
and even to warn them. | 0:21:12 | 0:21:14 | |
Certainly if the cancer was genetic from Mum's side. | 0:21:14 | 0:21:19 | |
Donna's diagnosis now gave extra impetus | 0:21:19 | 0:21:22 | |
to her search to trace her relatives. | 0:21:22 | 0:21:24 | |
I can remember trawling through the Friends Reunited school | 0:21:24 | 0:21:29 | |
list trying to sort of have a rough guess. OK, well, | 0:21:29 | 0:21:31 | |
they would have gone to school. | 0:21:31 | 0:21:33 | |
I know roughly where we lived so they would have gone to school | 0:21:33 | 0:21:36 | |
around there. They, you know... | 0:21:36 | 0:21:38 | |
but going through and then no names were obviously coming up. | 0:21:38 | 0:21:41 | |
Struggling, Donna turned to a friend, | 0:21:42 | 0:21:44 | |
an amateur genealogist for help and he began to build | 0:21:44 | 0:21:48 | |
an online family tree for her. | 0:21:48 | 0:21:50 | |
My friend had put on one of the forums | 0:21:51 | 0:21:54 | |
looking for information about my mum and her husband. | 0:21:54 | 0:21:58 | |
Lorraine had seen that. | 0:21:58 | 0:22:01 | |
I think her heart must have skipped a beat and she went, | 0:22:01 | 0:22:03 | |
"That's my mum." | 0:22:03 | 0:22:05 | |
Lorraine and Donna were soon exchanging a flood of e-mails. | 0:22:06 | 0:22:11 | |
"Sorry it's taken a few days to reply, | 0:22:11 | 0:22:14 | |
"to be honest, I did not know where to start. | 0:22:14 | 0:22:18 | |
"I suppose I've been in shock. | 0:22:18 | 0:22:19 | |
"Having this contact has always been my secret ambition. | 0:22:19 | 0:22:23 | |
"And a dream. | 0:22:23 | 0:22:24 | |
"And I longed deep down but I thought it would never happen. | 0:22:24 | 0:22:27 | |
"I'm so looking forward to hearing back from you. Thank you." | 0:22:29 | 0:22:33 | |
The sisters arrange to meet. | 0:22:36 | 0:22:39 | |
I got there. I was on the steps early. | 0:22:39 | 0:22:42 | |
I'm always late, but for that I was early. | 0:22:42 | 0:22:45 | |
And then all of a sudden, I saw this little person... | 0:22:45 | 0:22:49 | |
..and straight away, looking into her eyes, I could see it was Donna. | 0:22:49 | 0:22:54 | |
It was like meeting a very old friend for the fir... | 0:22:54 | 0:22:56 | |
you know, again after a number of years | 0:22:56 | 0:22:59 | |
when you haven't got to see them. | 0:22:59 | 0:23:00 | |
I just remember walking round with this silly grin on my face watching | 0:23:00 | 0:23:05 | |
every movement, watching her walking around. | 0:23:05 | 0:23:09 | |
But the story didn't end there. | 0:23:09 | 0:23:11 | |
Donna's research was homing in on another of the siblings. | 0:23:11 | 0:23:15 | |
An older sister called Belinda. | 0:23:15 | 0:23:17 | |
I think I might have found Belinda through finding her ex-husband's | 0:23:18 | 0:23:23 | |
account first. | 0:23:23 | 0:23:24 | |
It's a bit convoluted way round it but there, again, | 0:23:24 | 0:23:28 | |
then looking and going, | 0:23:28 | 0:23:31 | |
"Is that them?" And then, | 0:23:31 | 0:23:34 | |
you go back and have a look at the family photos | 0:23:34 | 0:23:38 | |
and think, "Yeah, it is." | 0:23:38 | 0:23:39 | |
Donna sent a message and waited for a reply. | 0:23:39 | 0:23:42 | |
I sent a message back straightaway, "Yes, it's me." | 0:23:42 | 0:23:46 | |
It's Belinda. | 0:23:46 | 0:23:48 | |
Yeah, it's me. | 0:23:48 | 0:23:49 | |
So, I thought, "God, Donna's found me." | 0:23:49 | 0:23:52 | |
How bizarre is that? | 0:23:52 | 0:23:54 | |
Donna passed Belinda's details onto Lorraine and once in touch, | 0:23:56 | 0:24:00 | |
they quickly made an astonishing discovery. | 0:24:00 | 0:24:03 | |
I couldn't believe it. | 0:24:05 | 0:24:08 | |
Belinda and me had been living less than a mile apart since I had moved | 0:24:08 | 0:24:13 | |
back to Birmingham three years previously. | 0:24:13 | 0:24:16 | |
Maybe we had walked past each other on the street. | 0:24:16 | 0:24:19 | |
Maybe we had been in the same supermarket queue. | 0:24:19 | 0:24:22 | |
She said, "Shall we meet? Can we meet? Can we meet?" | 0:24:23 | 0:24:26 | |
I said, "Yeah, yeah, fine. No problem." | 0:24:26 | 0:24:28 | |
I saw her standing there and I thought... | 0:24:28 | 0:24:31 | |
The emotions, it was, like, whoa. | 0:24:32 | 0:24:35 | |
Wow, that's my sister. | 0:24:35 | 0:24:36 | |
So I broke into a run and we had a massive hug and we were crying and, | 0:24:36 | 0:24:42 | |
like, "Oh, my God." | 0:24:42 | 0:24:44 | |
I just fell into her arms. | 0:24:44 | 0:24:46 | |
I think we stood there for about five, ten minutes, just hugging. | 0:24:46 | 0:24:50 | |
It had been so long. | 0:24:51 | 0:24:52 | |
It had been over 40-odd years since I'd seen Belinda. | 0:24:52 | 0:24:55 | |
And there's so many coincidences | 0:24:56 | 0:25:00 | |
with Lorraine. | 0:25:00 | 0:25:01 | |
She only lives down the road from me. | 0:25:01 | 0:25:04 | |
We'd been so close and yet so far. | 0:25:04 | 0:25:08 | |
Today is a special day. | 0:25:13 | 0:25:15 | |
Separated for decades, Donna is on her way | 0:25:15 | 0:25:18 | |
to meet the older sisters she's missed out on for so many years. | 0:25:18 | 0:25:21 | |
This morning, we're actually heading to Belinda's house, | 0:25:21 | 0:25:24 | |
which is the first time I've | 0:25:24 | 0:25:25 | |
been there, actually, so to meet her and Lorraine. | 0:25:25 | 0:25:29 | |
So quite excited about that, actually. | 0:25:29 | 0:25:32 | |
-Hello. -Hello. | 0:25:43 | 0:25:45 | |
-Hiya. -Hiya. | 0:25:47 | 0:25:48 | |
And Donna's brought something with sentimental value to show to her sisters. | 0:25:54 | 0:25:58 | |
I've got one other thing that I've brought down that I thought would be | 0:25:58 | 0:26:02 | |
interesting to show you. | 0:26:02 | 0:26:03 | |
What's that? | 0:26:03 | 0:26:05 | |
Do you recognise that? | 0:26:07 | 0:26:08 | |
-Yeah. -I don't. | 0:26:08 | 0:26:09 | |
It was Mum's purse. | 0:26:09 | 0:26:10 | |
Mum's purse. | 0:26:10 | 0:26:12 | |
I've had it for years. | 0:26:12 | 0:26:14 | |
Along with the purse, Donna's brought along | 0:26:15 | 0:26:17 | |
their mother's favourite pieces of jewellery which she inherited. | 0:26:17 | 0:26:20 | |
Wow. I haven't seen that in absolutely years. | 0:26:21 | 0:26:26 | |
How long has it been since you've seen these, then? | 0:26:27 | 0:26:29 | |
Obviously must be 35 years or more. | 0:26:29 | 0:26:32 | |
More than that. More than that. | 0:26:32 | 0:26:34 | |
Do you want any of them? | 0:26:34 | 0:26:36 | |
-Could I have that? -Of course you can. | 0:26:36 | 0:26:39 | |
-You're more than welcome to it. -Thank you. | 0:26:39 | 0:26:41 | |
You'll actually have something of Mum's. | 0:26:41 | 0:26:44 | |
Thank you for that. I will treasure that. | 0:26:45 | 0:26:47 | |
I will. It's the only thing I've got of my mum's. | 0:26:48 | 0:26:52 | |
-Have you not got anything? -No. | 0:26:52 | 0:26:54 | |
Nothing. That is really nice, to have something of my mum. | 0:26:54 | 0:26:58 | |
The sisters have planned a trip to the local crematorium where their | 0:27:00 | 0:27:03 | |
mother's funeral was held all those years ago. | 0:27:03 | 0:27:06 | |
Here, Sylvia's name has been entered into the book of remembrance. | 0:27:06 | 0:27:10 | |
-Are you OK? -Yeah, yeah, it's just sad, isn't it? | 0:27:13 | 0:27:16 | |
It is sad. | 0:27:17 | 0:27:18 | |
The three of us here today has meant so much. | 0:27:20 | 0:27:25 | |
I think today's closure. | 0:27:25 | 0:27:27 | |
-What I needed. -Closure and reopening the next chapter. | 0:27:27 | 0:27:31 | |
All three sisters are now in regular contact and for the first time, | 0:27:34 | 0:27:39 | |
Today has been such an emotional journey. | 0:27:42 | 0:27:47 | |
It's been something | 0:27:47 | 0:27:49 | |
I've waited a very long time for and to share it today with my sisters... | 0:27:49 | 0:27:55 | |
..I think it will change me. | 0:27:58 | 0:28:01 |