Episode 1 Family Finders

Families can be driven apart for all manner of reasons.

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

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

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

..finding them can take a lifetime.

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

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

And that's where the Family Finders come in.

From international organisations...

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

..to genealogy detective agencies...

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

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

..and dedicated one-man bands.

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

how badly you want to solve the problem.

They hunt through history to bring families back together again.

Finding new family is wonderful.

In this series, we follow the work of the Family Finders...

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

..learning the tricks they use

to track missing relatives through time...

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

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

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

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

You've just completed my life for me.

Every year, thousands of people throughout the UK

embark on searches for long lost relatives.

Some use large, specialist family finding agencies.

Others decide to go it alone and look themselves.

Today, we meet the family who haven't seen their long lost

brother in nearly 50 years,

despite their efforts to track him down.

Everybody was phoning us. It was like a hotline to the White House.

I'm quite an emotional person and I think I cried for days after it.

And Alison, who started her own search

and discovered family she never knew she had.

There isn't a day goes by that I don't think about her.

Too often it's a tragic event that tears a family apart.

And it can take the expertise of a family finding company

to help piece things back together again,

as with the case of the Buckley brothers from Glasgow.

69-year-old Michael Buckley and his 70-year-old brother James

were born in Glasgow in the post-war period,

along with their two younger brothers, John and Patrick.

I can't remember too much about our early years in Glasgow.

All I remember is the day my mother died.

Their mother, Sarah, was just 32 when she died.

She left four young sons, all under the age of ten.

I went into the living room

and I saw my gran holding a mirror over my mother's face.

Shouting to my father, "There's no breath."

Their mother had suffered complications after

the birth of her youngest son, Patrick.

I've no memories whatsoever of my mother. I remember my father.

Eh...

Not very fondly, I might add, because of the life we had.

He could have done better.

Soon after their mother's death, their father made a decision

which would change his sons' lives forever.

My father sat us down and told me we were going to live in the country

and there was going to be cows and sheep.

Their father placed the boys in care.

But where they were actually sent was a stark contrast to the

idyllic scene he had described.

We were subsequently sent up to the Nazareth House orphanage

in Aberdeen,

where we spent the vast majority of our formative years.

Which wasn't a very pleasant experience.

-It was a soul destroying experience.

-Yeah.

You weren't actually allowed to feel like brothers.

It wasn't actually

until we left the home that we actually became brothers.

-Mm.

-You were just a number.

Christmas-time was a particularly hard time.

Cos we all sat there, and there was a big Christmas tree

and piles of presents for people who had families that

kind of cared for them.

And we were left there with practically nothing.

As the four boys each turned 15,

they were released from the confines of the orphanage.

But before long, tragedy struck again.

Our younger brother Patrick, he left last.

Then he actually died when he was 21.

Losing Patrick was a big blow.

As the eldest, James tried to help his remaining brothers

find their way in the world.

I got him an apprenticeship.

And my goal was to get us all back together.

James actually got me a job in Edinburgh as a commis chef.

And I worked at that for five years.

But after spending almost his entire childhood in an institution,

their younger brother John was struggling.

And unbeknown to them all, James' wedding in 1966 would be the

last time he and Michael would see their brother for almost 50 years.

I was 21 when I got married.

Michael was there as my best man.

And John. And that was the last time we saw him.

Their brother John, who was only 16 at the time, couldn't settle.

So he left Scotland completely,

losing all contact with James and Michael.

In the years that followed,

the brothers tried to put the past behind them

and get on with their lives.

But their younger brother was never far from their thoughts,

as Michael's wife, Ellen, remembers.

When I first met Michael, he told me about John.

What he'd never seen for nearly 50 years.

And I said, "Oh, that's sad,"

because I've got a big family, you see?

I wondered what life John had had and how he'd turned out.

So I said to Mike, "We need to find him.

"And we'd welcome him with open arms."

And over the years,

Ellen's tried pretty much everything to track him down.

A wee while later, I'd heard that he'd moved to London.

I got on and I found, oh, hundreds of addresses for John Buckley.

So I sat one night and I phoned...loads of them.

I just kept saying, "I'm looking to trace John Buckley.

"He's this age and he went to this."

And, "No, sorry. It's not us."

I even got people wanting to be my relatives in the end.

But I was at it all night.

Michael and James have also made endless unsuccessful

attempts to find their little brother.

It's very frustrating when you're trying to locate a lost relative.

So we sort of gave it up for a while.

It was only when Ellen started,

"Listen, we really must try to look for your brother again."

Cos Ellen's words to me, she says,

"Listen, you're no' getting any younger.

"You want to find your brother..."

Yeah, before it's too late.

"..before it's too late."

So, in one last-ditch attempt to trace him,

Michael's wife, Ellen, got in touch with a company that

specialises in tracking down lost relatives.

Senior researcher Jennifer Hill picked up the case.

"We've not had any contact since Nazareth House in Aberdeen."

Which was the children's home they were in.

"Our youngest brother, Patrick, died many years ago. As did our father.

"We're getting on now and we've not had an easy life.

"We have no other known relatives, so it would be fantastic

"if we could meet again before it's too late."

When you receive a case and you know it's gone on for, you know,

we're talking decades,

you really hope beyond hope that you can find the right person for them.

And finally put this to rest.

With the information she had, Jennifer got straight to work.

So when the case came into us,

what we knew was that John was approximately 65, 66 years old.

We didn't have an address for him

or a last-known address or anything like that.

But we did know his parents' full names and details.

But the location of John's birth presented a challenge.

With Scottish records, Scotland's people hold all the records -

births, deaths, marriages.

So we needed to bring in an external researcher

who was based in Scotland

to go in and find the full date of birth.

When searching for relatives who could be

anywhere in the British isles,

it's crucial to remember that records of births,

deaths and marriages in Scotland are held separately to

those in England and Wales,

as are the records of Northern Ireland and Ireland.

So if your search of one set of records doesn't turn up any results,

it could be well worth extending your hunt to the others,

or as the Buckley brothers have done,

employ a family finding company who can bring in specialist researchers.

Now that James and Michael had passed on their case to Jennifer,

all they could do was wait.

But would the experts fare any better in finding

their missing brother?

Waiting for the bus to come in, it was like standing on hot coals.

Probably a day we never thought we would see.

On the other side of the UK, 58-year-old Alison Searle

was about to embark on a search of her own.

Alison grew up in Worthing, West Sussex.

My childhood was brilliant. My family were wonderful.

Went to Scotland every year.

Went to Blackpool every year for the lights and summer holiday.

I couldn't have asked for better.

But when Alison met her future husband as a teenager,

it led to a shocking revelation.

I got engaged at 16.

We'd arranged to be married the following year.

Just before my 18th birthday.

And I needed my mum and dad to sign the consent form.

They took so long dithering over it

and I thought, "Maybe they don't want me to get married."

And one lunchtime, my dad arranged to meet me.

And he sat me down and told me I was adopted.

I didn't expect quite that bombshell.

And it was a bombshell.

But I just loved them so much...

it didn't make no difference, to be quite honest.

But it explained why I was so tall and they weren't.

The reason they had to tell me now that

I was adopted was the form said "parent/adoptive parent."

And they knew that they couldn't sign it as a parent.

So that must have been heart-wrenching for them.

Because I don't think they would have told me

that I was adopted otherwise.

And that's the only reason I got told.

If I'd been 18...

..I still would be none the wiser.

Alison then pushed the news of her parentage to the back of her mind.

I wasn't interested at the time.

I wasn't interested in finding out where I'd come from.

Because I knew where I was.

But when Alison started a family of her own,

her feelings about her own origins changed.

I first started to think about it

when I fell pregnant with my daughter.

And they asked me for medical background.

And I just turned round and said, "I don't have one."

Through the pregnancy, especially at the birth and first cuddle...

The first hug, that's when I thought of my birth mum.

And what she must have gone through to give me up.

As the years roll on, I just then wanted to know who I looked like.

Why I was so tall. Where did I come from?

Where was I born?

And what does my mum look like?

It was 2009 when Alison finally started to trace her birth mother.

I wanted to meet my mum.

And I wanted a hug.

She applied for a copy of her birth certificate,

which revealed that her original name had been Susan,

as well as giving details of her birth mother, Mary McGow.

When I saw my mum's name, the floodgates opened.

It was quite amazing to have a name.

And where she came from.

Where I came from.

She's a Geordie lass.

And I was born in Yorkshire.

It was...amazing.

I couldn't wait to get home and get on my computer.

And start searching for her.

The next stage in the process was to contact social services.

I then had to apply for my adoption papers from the court.

Which was so, so sad to read.

But the saddest bit is the very last line.

Why is the child offered for adoption?

And she's put, "Mother unmarried. No home or parents."

She wasn't a youngster.

She was 29 years old when she had me.

So I really wanted to find her.

And I've got to do it now.

Before it's too late.

Not realising when I did my searches...

that it was already too late.

Alison's mum had died 23 years ago.

I missed meeting her.

And...

I regret that.

She may have missed the chance to meet her birth mother,

but Alison's search didn't end there.

I thought, "Right, I'll apply for the death certificate."

I was upstairs and I opened it. And my hubby said, "Are you all right?"

Cos I just screamed when I opened it. And I came running downstairs.

And I said, "I've got a sister!

"I've got...

"I've got a sister."

Alison's mother's death certificate showed that Mary had

had another daughter.

But would she be able to trace that daughter

and find out the truth behind her adoption?

In Scotland, Michael and James Buckley's search

had reached a crucial stage.

They last saw their younger brother John in Glasgow 50 years ago.

I was 21 when I got married. And it was the last time I saw him.

After decades of unsuccessful searching,

they decided to seek help from a professional family finder.

Jennifer Hill contacted a researcher based in Scotland to check

birth, death and marriage records.

A week elapsed.

Quite an anxious week, waiting to hear from them.

But when we did, the information we got was absolutely fantastic.

The kind of detail that was in it.

We looked into the marriage of Sarah and James Buckley,

which were the parents in this instance.

So we knew that we were looking into the right family.

And then of course, the bit of information we were absolutely

desperate to see was the full date of birth for John Buckley,

which was brilliant.

The next aim was to try to bring his current whereabouts up to speed

and hopefully find out where he currently was living.

So we have an extensive range of databases

that we are able to access.

We put in the full name, put in the date of birth of John Buckley,

and we had a match come up.

I jumped up off the sofa, I was so excited.

I said, "They've found John! They've found John!

"I need to phone Michael. I need to phone him at work.

"I need to phone him." I was over the moon. It was amazing.

I was absolutely gobsmacked.

Absolutely gobsmacked.

I phoned him at work and I said, "Michael, they've found John."

"No." I said, "Yeah, they've found him. They've found him."

Then he phoned James and he was phoning us.

And everybody was phoning us. It was like a hotline to the White House.

I was...

I was blown away.

You know, I'm quite an emotional person

and I think I cried for days after it.

The family asked Jennifer to act as an intermediary.

She wrote to John to see if he would be open to contact.

When we send a letter out to a subject,

it's always a really nerve-racking moment.

You're just absolutely praying, you know, please just say,

"Yes, I'm absolutely thrilled to hear from them.

"And I can't wait to see them again."

It's a heart-in-your-mouth moment. Definitely.

120 miles away, John received a letter telling him

his brothers were trying to find him.

I got the letter in. So I phoned them up.

And they said, "Your brothers are looking for you."

He says, "Can we pass your information on?" I says, "Yeah."

I didn't think I'd ever see my brothers again. It was just...

I think before I'd got the letter, it had actually gone out of my head.

And his wife of 34 years, Betty,

was thrilled about the family making contact.

It was just like a bolt out of the blue

that all came about.

Delighted. Over the moon. You know?

So where had John's life taken him

since he last saw his brothers in the 1960s?

I started to get in with gangs and that, so I decided to leave.

From there, I went to Manchester.

I was roaming around.

The only reason I think we lost touch was

because when I decided to go on my own, it was...

Everything just went out of my head

and I was just thinking of myself, really.

Number one. And that was it.

In the early 1970s, John left the north of England altogether.

Drifted about, in and out of London. Then I settled down and met Betty.

-Then the rest is history from there, really.

-HE LAUGHS

Betty's been my rock. I don't think I'd be here if I hadn't had Betty.

And Betty knew only too well how much he longed to see his brothers.

There was no way he could really get in contact with them.

We had tried a few times, but with no dates or anything...

I think he just really gave up.

When I got that letter through the post, it was...

-HE SIGHS

-Oh, God.

After 50 years apart, finally the brothers were in contact again.

And he came on the phone...

I said, "I never thought I'd speak to you again."

Cos that was the way I felt. I never thought I would.

Cos I hadn't a clue where he was.

And that was... I couldn't actually say a lot cos I was just choked up.

I'm quite an emotional person, as you probably realise.

I know it seems strange, but...

..it seemed as if we hadn't been apart at all.

I just...

It was so lovely for John.

I was at a loss what to say, really.

I just said, "Look, it's great to speak to you

"and know you're still alive."

It was like a weight off my shoulders.

I was aware that something great had happened in my life

instead of sometimes a lot of bad things happen in your life,

you know? And...

Aye, it was amazing. You know?

Having missed out on half a century together,

the brothers didn't want to waste any more time.

And just a few days after their emotional phone call,

65-year-old John Buckley finally made his journey home.

Mike and I went to Carlisle to pick him up off the coach.

We just stood there and we waited. The coach was a few minutes late.

Waiting for the bus to come in, it was like standing on hot coals.

It really was.

I looked out the window and I says to Betty, "Look, there's Michael."

And it was.

HE SNIFFLES

And as soon as he walked off the bus...

I knew it was him. I says, "Michael..." I says, "John."

We burst into tears, obviously.

-The minute he came in, I was just...

-HE EXHALES

But the joy of being reunited has also been tinged with some sadness.

Since we've been together with John,

we've found out he's got lung cancer.

But at the moment, as far as we know, the news is good.

But it just makes it more poignant.

Today is another momentous occasion for the brothers.

Two weeks after John first met up with Michael and James again,

he's travelling up to Scotland to be officially introduced to

the rest of his older brothers' families.

I'm quite looking forward to it.

-I know Betty is.

-THEY LAUGH

I am, actually.

My nerves are not so bad today.

And it's a big day for another reason.

Michael's also celebrating his 69th birthday.

Pretty honestly, I never thought I'd see John again.

And it's nice he's going to be here today...

..to help celebrate my birthday.

It will be the first family celebration the brothers have

shared together since James' wedding in 1966,

after which John disappeared for 50 years.

-Have I got enough tissues?

-HE CHUCKLES

I've got a bagful for you, love.

-You'll be all right.

-Aye, I will.

Right, shall we carry on?

Probably a day we never thought we'd see. I don't mean him being 69.

I mean John being here.

Yep.

Hi, John. You all right, mate? Nice to see you again.

And you.

Happy birthday.

-Hi, Betty. You all right?

-Happy birthday, Michael.

Nice to see you again.

MUFFLED SPEECH

Hi, honey. Lovely to see you again.

This is Jill.

As well as sharing their first birthday together

since John was a teenager, the brothers are introducing

him to the nieces and nephews he never knew he had.

-And that's our daughter.

-Hello, nice to meet you.

I'd just like to thank you all for coming

and helping celebrate my birthday. And to welcome...

-HE CLEARS THROAT

-..welcome John back into the family.

Thank you very much.

Cheers, everyone.

-ALL:

-Cheers.

Cheers to John. And cheers to Betty.

-ALL:

-Cheers.

And a happy 79th birthday to Michael.

-Aye.

-LAUGHTER

Christ, if I make that, I'll be lucky, aye.

It's even better now we've found you, John. It's good.

-I'm practically crying.

-Come on, Betty. Come here.

I've been waiting to meet John my whole life, really,

cos we were brought up always told about him

and always knowing that my mum and dad were looking for him.

And it's amazing. It must be the best sort of birthday present ever.

Cheese.

Parmesan!

I wasn't sure if we'd ever meet our Uncle John.

Hoped we would.

But obviously, it shows that if you look hard enough,

you can find people.

It's great. Really, it's fantastic.

It really is great.

And as I say, I couldn't have asked for a better day. It's...

To make a pun, it's the icing on the cake.

-Talking about cakes...

-LAUGHTER

-As we move swiftly onto that...

-LAUGHTER

-ALL: # Happy birthday to you... #

-Thank you.

# Happy birthday, dear Michael

# Happy birthday to you. #

APPLAUSE

Thank you very much.

John, seeing as you're the guest of honour today,

you can have the first piece.

There you go.

Not too big, though.

Right, that's it. I'm keeping the rest for myself.

It was fantastic to finally have them all together again.

The three amigos I call them now, you know.

Are you ready?

Never give up. There's always a chance that they could find them.

In Worthing, Sussex, Alison Searle has never given up on her

search for her family.

After discovering she had been adopted,

Alison has been trying to trace her birth mother.

She's found out that her mother is no longer alive.

But the death certificate revealed something incredible.

I've got a sister!

I've got...

I've got a sister.

Alison was determined to track down the sibling she never knew she had.

I put it in a social media site.

And came up with about five of the same name.

I typed in a message that only they would know

and understand.

Two people came back to me and said, "No, sorry."

But then this lady came back to me and said yes.

The message was absolutely specific to my mum, so I just immediately

thought, "Well, it must be a cousin that we'd not known about."

So I replied to the message and just said, "Yes, that was my mum."

And she said, "How do you know all this information? Are we related?"

And I said, "Please phone me immediately."

I telephoned straight away,

not even thinking for one second that it would be my sister.

This person was a total stranger.

And then she just said, "Are you sitting down?

"Because I think I'm your sister."

And at 7.35 on the 1st of February 2010,

I spoke to my sister for the very first time,

which was...amazing.

Absolutely amazing.

That was the point of total shock.

Bemused. Excited. Ecstatic.

We were both in floods of tears. Screaming at each other.

"I can't believe this."

And she said, "I've got another sister as well.

"And a brother."

I felt complete.

I'd found my family.

Even though Mum had died...

I had family.

After baby Alison's adoption, her mother, Mary,

had gone on to meet a man in the RAF,

set up home in Leeds, and had had three more children.

June, Liz and their brother, David.

We used to fight like hell, of course, cos we're so different,

-character wise.

-Yeah.

But we were very close. You would defend me to the hilt.

-As a family, we were very close.

-As a family, yes.

My mum kept us very close.

She was so private that nothing should go out of the family.

You know, you don't tell other people your business.

Of course, this is how she'd been all her life, you see.

But in 1985, Mary decided to reveal something which explained why

she had been so guarded about her past.

She just basically sat us down one day and just said,

"I have to tell you that you have a sister.

"And I had to have her adopted. She was born in 1957.

"I had to go to a mother and baby home in Halifax.

"And she was adopted from there."

Well, basically, Mum said they took her away.

They told her that she had been adopted

and that she had gone to America.

And that she couldn't have any contact at all with her.

So she was very upset about that.

And then we realised that she used to always watch

Surprise, Surprise

and was hoping that Alison would find her.

Or at least be searching for her.

And I believe she went to Halifax quite a lot.

And it turns out that she was hoping to see Susan...

on the streets of Halifax.

You know, we could tell by the way she was

talking about it that it had upset her terribly.

And, you know, I think she said, "There isn't a day goes by..."

Yeah, she did. Yes.

"..that I don't think about her."

June and Liz had tried to trace their half sister,

but they were looking for Alison under her name at birth - Susan.

With the wrong name, and faced with the restrictions around tracing

adopted relatives at the time, the sisters drew a blank.

Until that fateful day, 25 years later,

when Alison got in touch out of the blue.

The sisters were desperate to meet.

So it wasn't long before Alison was heading up to Leeds.

We were so excited and waiting for her to come.

Then she got lost in the car.

And went straight past the house.

I reversed the car back up into her drive.

And I just started to shake and shake and shake,

cos she'd come out and she was stood there.

I just about took it out of gear, put the handbrake on.

I never even turned the engine off. I just opened the door.

And we...we hugged.

It...

It was...

..as though I'd come home.

We just hugged and just cried,

like she had always been my sister.

It was so...

..wonderful.

We couldn't stop staring at her because she was

so like our mother and she has all our mother's mannerisms.

And when she showed me the photo of my mum...

It was beautiful. It was so warm and lovely to know

who I was and where I'd come from.

Since they've been reunited,

Alison, Liz and June have spent lots of time together.

But there are still some mysteries surrounding their mother, Mary,

and her life back in the late 1950s.

Today, the sisters are meeting up again for a very special journey.

So excited to meet my sisters today.

Every time is like the first time.

I've got goose bumps everywhere.

THEY LAUGH

-How are you?

-I'm all right.

-You've been crying, haven't you?

Alison, Liz and June are going on a trip that they hope will

fill in some of the blanks in their mother's early life.

-Happy.

-I've been so excited about this.

-I know.

First stop is the West Yorkshire Library

in the nearby town of Todmorden.

Liz and June know that from the ages of 17 to 29, their mother,

Mary, lived and worked in a nearby textile mill.

They're meeting Ruth Beardsley, a local expert and curator

of an exhibition about the mills in the area, to find out more.

Here is the hostel brochure which was produced probably

when your mother was in the hostel in the '50s.

Right.

And it was called a home from home.

Despite Mary having been a closed book on a large part of her

younger years, she had spoken freely

and warmly of her time at the Triangle Mill.

And the workers' accommodation.

They had to convert the mill owner's house into a hostel

to recruit young women from another part of the country

where employment was very scarce,

where there were high levels of poverty

and where there was very little for women to do

-apart from going into service, if they were lucky.

-Right.

-Sure.

Most of them came from the northeast of England.

-Did your mother come from the northeast?

-She did, yeah.

-Yeah.

-Right.

-All the women in the hostel worked for William Morris's mill.

-Right.

-All the girls were woken at 6.30.

-Ah, right.

And they had to be in the mill by 7.30.

-Right, OK.

-Wow.

-And if you can imagine 100 young women trying...

THEY LAUGH

..trying to get dressed and breakfasted and out.

-What a change of just a lifestyle.

-Yeah.

-You know?

Well, working in the mills was very, very noisy.

-That was a big feature of it.

-Yeah.

They even learned to sort of lip-read.

Yes, I said to you earlier, she was very good at lip-reading.

I heard about that earlier.

-Yes, yeah.

-They all talk about lip-reading.

-Yes.

Mum could, yeah.

One of the things that they were passionate about was dancing.

My mum loved dancing.

-Back in the hostel...

-Yeah.

..they would move the chairs and tables back in the dining room

in the evening. This was the dining room there.

-Right.

-And practise their dancing.

And they were so keen that the managers gave them

their own band on a Friday night.

Oh, wow. Wow.

In the winter months.

Mum loved to jive. She loved to jive.

-People would be making their own entertainment.

-Yes.

It was during her time at the Triangle Mill that Mary met

Alison's father.

Perhaps at one of these dances.

Looking at the photos here, they've all got smiles on.

So did they have a good time?

All the ladies I've spoken to had a wonderful time.

One or two of them said it was the best years of their life.

-And they have had good lives.

-Yes.

They saw the hostel as a gateway out of, you know,

poverty for some of them.

-Into financial independence...

-It would have been for our mum.

And for many of them, it was an opportunity.

Many of them got married from the hostel.

The next stop on the sisters' tour is Halifax

and the mother and baby home where, 58 years ago, their mother,

Mary, gave birth to and then had to give up Alison.

-Being there, I think, is going to be...

-Yeah.

-..quite emotional, isn't it?

-Quite sad, I think.

Yeah, cos it's my...my beginning.

-Your beginning.

-It is.

-Yeah.

I began...

There was an ending and a beginning there, wasn't there?

-Yeah.

-Of course, because your parents, your adoptive parents,

-it was the happiest day of their life, taking...

-Oh, yeah.

-Finding you.

-Picking me up.

Picking you up, of course.

So it was the saddest day and the happiest day.

-Beginning of another life.

-Yeah.

-Yeah.

It's nice that we're all together again.

-Absolutely.

-I think that's the special thing.

That's right.

The building has now been converted into flats.

Alison takes a moment to reflect alone at the only place she

and her mum were ever together.

'I think we'll get closure and say goodbye to Mum.

'And thank her'

for giving me life.

And doing what she did.

'And the circumstance she was under to do it.

'That'll be nice.

'Just to put a lid on that one.'

Mother and baby homes, like the one where Alison was born,

were first founded in England in the late 19th century.

Most were run by religious charities.

Unmarried pregnant women would stay there for the birth

of their children and for several weeks afterwards.

Following the birth,

the homes would often facilitate the adoption of the babies.

In the late 1960s, there was still

nearly 200 mother and baby homes in the UK.

To find out more about their mother's experience in one of these

homes, the sisters have arranged to meet an expert in this area,

Dr Eloise Moss.

The mother and baby homes that were created, they're actually

spaces in which mothers are given the opportunity to make a choice.

So they would be admitted about two months before they were due

to give birth. And they would stay there.

And they could stay there for up to three months afterwards.

There was a nursery inside the home. There were two large dormitories.

So, I mean, what might be a comfort is to think that actually,

she would have been around a lot of other young women

in the exact same position, chatting to them,

in a community of other people feeling the same way.

Particularly in this period,

there is a great deal of stigma attached to single mothers.

They are seen to have been promiscuous and irresponsible.

And the stigma doesn't only lie with single mothers,

but it can attach to their children.

-Yeah.

-As well.

They would've had to decide how on earth

they were going to juggle looking after a baby, finding a job.

A lot of employers would not have been willing to hire a

single mother because of the stigma attached to it.

So the likelihood of your mum actually being able to find

a job with you would have been fairly slim.

So it was really going to be a sort of fall into poverty,

had she actually stayed with you.

(God.)

I can say with almost total certainty that the reason

she would have given you up for adoption really was a last

resort and because she must have felt so desperate and so

worried that she couldn't give you a happy childhood and a good life.

Yeah.

-Yeah.

-Yeah.

(God.)

For all three sisters, today has been a voyage of discovery

about their mother's early life.

We found out so much more today about Mum's life

and about the time she had Alison.

Yeah.

And it's just given us even more closure and even more information.

-Yeah. That really was nice.

-Yes.

And we found things out about our mother that we didn't know.

I'm glad Alison found us

cos we would never have had this experience.

And for Alison, it's the end of a search for answers that

began 50 years ago, when she first found out she'd been adopted.

I've had a fantastic journey and I've found...

wonderful, wonderful family.

And I couldn't ask for more.

And I'm still finding out things every single day.

It's hard but very, very worth it.