A woman named Christine, abandoned as a newborn at Waterloo station four years after the Second World War, has been reunited with a half-brother more than 75 years later through ITV1's Long Lost Family: Born Without Trace, reviewed by Christopher Stevens.
An unmarried mother left a bundle of cloth on a train carriage seat at Waterloo and slipped away without identifying herself. A porter heard a whimper minutes later, found the infant and called the police. Doctors estimated she was about five weeks old, though she weighed barely 5lb.
The couple who adopted her named her Christine, not knowing her birth mother had given her a different name, a fact that stayed hidden for more than 75 years.
The show's chief researcher, Ariel Bruce, matched Christine's genetic signature to a half-brother a year older than her, a man named Barry living in Fleetwood, Lancashire. Barry had also never known his mother and had a difficult childhood in foster care, but he had a birth certificate. Once the team learned the mother's name, they were able to establish when and where Christine was born.
Tracing the birth father
Further DNA matching identified Christine's birth father as a merchant seaman from the other side of the Atlantic, who probably never knew she existed.
Stevens writes that the detail which dates the story most for him is not the genetic decoding or the absence of CCTV, which did not become common at stations until decades after 1949. It is the fact that the baby was found by a railway porter, whom he imagines cycling home in uniform to tell his wife about his day.
Elsewhere on television
On Ireland with Martin and Roman Kemp, the pair visited a herbalist who told them cobwebs make good bandages. Martin Kemp said webs are not recommended by everyone and that it is best to consult a professional before disturbing any spiders.
Stevens predicts shows like Long Lost Family will eventually become redundant as AI makes genetic analysis as routine as taking aspirin, with smartphones potentially able to sample DNA in future, first for security and identification purposes.
