In the blood | Foundling Ep 3

Summary

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Foundling | Tortoise Investigates

Episode 3: "In the Blood"

Host: Lucy Greenwell
Date: April 7, 2026

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Episode Overview

Episode 3 of "Foundling" delves into the remarkable and harrowing discovery that Jess, the baby abandoned in Suffolk in 1987, is not the only child her birth mother Jennifer left behind in secret. Through expert interviews, moving testimonies, and careful reconstruction of late-1980s Britain, reporter Lucy Greenwell unpacks the phenomenon of concealed pregnancy and abandonment, the lasting impact of secrecy and trauma on everyone involved, and the complicated, sometimes painful exploration of family through modern DNA technology. The episode’s big reveal is the discovery of Jess’s half-sister, Helen, also a foundling—deeply shaking the long-held perceptions and hopes Jess had about her origins.

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Key Discussion Points and Insights

1. Concealed Pregnancies: Fear and Trauma

[02:22-04:35]

• Sylvia Murphy, midwife and public health researcher, describes her work interviewing women who concealed their pregnancies.
  • Unified by fear: fear of families, job loss, abusive partners, or simply the stigma.
  • Most confided in no one; a few gave birth completely alone.
  • Quote:

    “They spoke of terror, of being paralyzed, of that fear just taking over…still could not go and tell their mother.” (Sylvia Murphy, 02:22)

• Lucy draws connections to Jess’s birth mother and the possibility of concealed trauma influencing Jennifer’s choices.

2. DNA Discovery: Unexpected Revelations

[05:02-13:46]

• Jess submits her DNA to Ancestry, hoping for answers. Within minutes, social worker Ariel Bruce (of ITV's "Long Lost Family") spots a match: Jess is connected to another foundling, Helen.
  • The revelation that Jess has a half-sister shocks both women.
  • Quote:

    “14 months old, like, no, no words can express when you think that someone has dumped you on the side of a road that they’d then go and do it again.” (Jess, 13:25)

• Both girls were found abandoned as newborns in different counties, 14 months apart—an extremely rare occurrence.

3. The Second Abandonment: Helen's Story

[14:00-18:09]

• Helen was discovered in a cardboard box outside a hospital in Chesterfield in late 1988.
  • The local press dubbed her “Jill” before adoption.
  • Interviews with hospital staff and midwife Daphne Lewis highlight the care taken to ensure the child was quickly found.
• Lucy explores the physical geography of Helen’s abandonment and the emotional difficulty of imagining how a mother could walk away—twice.

4. Stigma and Silence: The 1980s Context

[20:03-26:05]

• Lucy and former Just Seventeen features editor Fiona Gibson reconstruct the pervasive ignorance and stigma surrounding teen sex and pregnancy in the late 1980s.
  • Minimal sex education, widespread myths, and isolation.
  • Societal disdain for single mothers; political and media moralizing under Margaret Thatcher.
  • Quote:

    “Becoming pregnant by accident as a teenager…you can hardly imagine anything more terrifying and awful, really.” (Fiona Gibson, 22:49)

• Jess struggles to understand why her mother couldn’t seek help: “...why would you not?”
• Lucy contextualizes: Abortion was legal but hard to access; social services intimidating, especially for someone in a controlling family environment.

5. The Ripple Effects of Secrecy and Abandonment

[27:52-29:46]

• Sylvia Murphy notes the lifelong trauma and sadness for women who conceal pregnancies and give birth alone, a “ripple that lasted a lifetime.”
  • Doing this twice, as Jennifer did, is almost undocumented in research.
  • The impact is long-lasting, regardless of later life successes.

6. Jess & Helen’s Reunion and Rift

[32:25-35:02]

• The sisters meet on camera for "Long Lost Family," an emotional, life-changing day for both.
  • “I cannot believe how similar we are…I can’t wait to meet her kids, her fiancé…change both of our lives for the better.” (Jess, 33:16)
• Hope soon turns to heartbreak: their fragile bond collapses over differing attitudes toward their birth mother.
  • Helen seeks a relationship and forgiveness; Jess refuses.
  • Helen’s illness, not animosity, is cited as why she missed Jess's wedding.
  • “Never in a million years did I think that was the one and only time I’d ever see her and ever meet her.” (Jess, 34:07)

7. Family Secrets Unravel, but Answers Remain Elusive

[35:02-43:31]

• After the sisters’ story airs, Jennifer admits the truth to her immediate family, but avoids contact with her found daughters.
  • Jess describes a tentative, comforting relationship with her “new” grandparents and aunt Rachel, but Jennifer herself remains distant.
  • Jess and Jennifer have only one stilted phone call, in which Jess declines a relationship:

    “I just shut it down really quick and I just said, look, I’m not the one that wants to talk to you. Helen’s the one that wants to talk to you, not me. I’m not interested in a relationship with you. I never have.” (Jess, 40:19) “I have your number, so if I ever do want to contact you, I will. But I said, I probably won’t and let’s just leave it at that.” (Jess, 40:43)

  • Jess reflects on her reasons for not pursuing answers:

    “I just know I wouldn’t ever get the answers that I need or want because I feel like her life has been built on a web of lies.” (Jess, 43:17)

8. The Search for Jess's Father: DNA, Rumor, and New Roadblocks

[44:02-47:39]

• Jess, assisted by aunt Rachel, investigates her paternal origins—her DNA reveals an unexpected Germanic heritage.
  • A possible candidate is identified, with a matching surname and several other children in the area.
  • Before Jess can approach, she receives a text from Jennifer’s therapist (from Jennifer’s phone) asking her to "let sleeping dogs lie" and stop searching, claiming Jennifer “genuinely does not know who the father is.”
  • Jess bristles at the oddity and possible ulterior motives behind this message:

    “When has a professional therapist ever written a message from their client’s phone and to their client’s abandoned child telling them to back off?” (Lucy, 47:39)

9. The Emotional Fallout: Anger, Grief, and Unanswered Questions

[48:20-48:43]

• Jess and Lucy reflect on the lasting frustration:
  • “I’m not out to break up families and I’m sorry I was born like, what do you want me to do?” (Jess, 48:29)
  • “I think I’ll always be angry because you’re constantly thinking, could it have ended differently had things been different?” (Jess, 48:43)

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Notable Quotes & Moments

• "They spoke of terror, of being paralyzed, of that fear just taking over..."
  (Sylvia Murphy, 02:22)
• "14 months old, like, no, no words can express when you think that someone has dumped you on the side of a road that they’d then go and do it again."
  (Jess, 13:25)
• “Becoming pregnant by accident as a teenager… you can hardly imagine anything more terrifying and awful, really.”
  (Fiona Gibson, 22:49)
• "Never in a million years did I think that was the one and only time I'd ever see her and ever meet her."
  (Jess, 34:07)
• "The concealed pregnancy left a ripple that lasted a lifetime."
  (Sylvia Murphy, 28:47)
• "I just know I wouldn't ever get the answers that I need or want because I feel like her life has been built on a web of lies."
  (Jess, 43:17)

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Important Timestamps

• 02:22 - Sylvia Murphy discusses fear of concealed pregnancy.
• 05:02 - Jess’s DNA test triggers the discovery of a half-sister.
• 13:12–13:46 - Jess's shock at learning her mother abandoned another baby.
• 14:00–18:09 - Helen's abandonment story; parallels with Jess.
• 20:03–26:05 - The societal context and stigma of teen pregnancy in the 1980s.
• 32:25–35:02 - Jess and Helen’s emotional in-person reunion and subsequent falling out.
• 39:46–43:31 - Jess’s only phone conversation with her birth mother Jennifer.
• 44:02–47:39 - The search for Jess’s real father and new family drama.
• 48:20–48:43 - Reflections on anger, pain, and the search for meaning and closure.

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Tone and Narrative Voice

The episode is at once forensic and empathetic, with Lucy Greenwell’s narration methodically piecing together fragmented histories while respecting the emotional complexity of Jess, Helen, and the surrounding family. Jess is straightforward and sometimes brusque, honest about her boundaries and lingering pain, while the expert and historical context ground the sensational elements in sobering reality. Lucy’s tone is reflective and, at times, incredulous—clearly invested in the search for understanding, but unflinching about the limits of what can be known.

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Summary

“In the Blood” is a powerful exploration of family secrets, the legacy of hidden trauma, and the life-altering consequences of abandonment. By centering lived experience, psychological research, and cultural context, the episode reveals just how rare, painful, and misunderstood cases like Jess’s and Helen’s truly are. Whether closure is possible or not remains uncertain; what’s clear is that every search for kinship and truth comes at a cost.

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Transcript

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[Lucy Greenwell (Narrator/Reporter)]

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[Jess (Foundling) / Helen (Half-sister) / Various Interviewees]

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[Lucy Greenwell (Narrator/Reporter)]

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[Jess (Foundling) / Helen (Half-sister) / Various Interviewees]

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[Lucy Greenwell (Narrator/Reporter)]

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[Jess (Foundling) / Helen (Half-sister) / Various Interviewees]

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[Lucy Greenwell (Narrator/Reporter)]

Tortoise.

[Sylvia Murphy (Midwife and Researcher)]

I want to use their words rather than my words, because they spoke of terror, of being paralyzed, of that fear just taking over, of them not making a sound. Some of the women might have birthed in their homes, maybe in a quiet room or and they were biting down on Pillows. And the fear was so great, they still could not go and tell their mother.

[Lucy Greenwell (Narrator/Reporter)]

Sylvia Murphy is a midwife and public health researcher at the University of Limerick in Ireland. She's one of the few people to have researched the phenomenon of concealed pregnancies. In 2013, she put an advert in an Irish newspaper calling for women who'd hidden their pregnancies to get in touch. 30 women came forward from all over the country and from different backgrounds, but one thing united them during their pregnancies fear. Fear of telling their families, fear of losing their job, or fear of their abusive partners.

[Sylvia Murphy (Midwife and Researcher)]

And they coped, really, by telling nobody. Or on occasion, maybe one or two people may know. But generally keeping the pregnancy hidden and concealed from the outside world.

[Lucy Greenwell (Narrator/Reporter)]

Most of the mothers she talked to ended up getting help before they reached full term pregnancy. But a few of them never told anyone and ended up giving birth alone.

[Sylvia Murphy (Midwife and Researcher)]

Women who risk giving birth unassisted are generally young and or have had significant trauma in their lives.

[Lucy Greenwell (Narrator/Reporter)]

So the pizza. Just to get that clear, the women you spoke to who had given birth unassisted were young and they'd had significant trauma in their lives. That is the tragedy.

[Sylvia Murphy (Midwife and Researcher)]

Yes.

[Lucy Greenwell (Narrator/Reporter)]

Every single one.

[Sylvia Murphy (Midwife and Researcher)]

It wasn't.

[Jess (Foundling) / Helen (Half-sister) / Various Interviewees]

Yes.

[Sylvia Murphy (Midwife and Researcher)]

Yes.

[Lucy Greenwell (Narrator/Reporter)]

I've been thinking a lot about trauma and about what might drive someone to hide a pregnancy, give birth in secret and then abandon their baby. Because the story I've been investigating about Jess, a newborn baby found lying by a remote country lane in Suffolk in 1987, has just taken an unexpected turn.

[Jess (Foundling) / Helen (Half-sister) / Various Interviewees]

When this was like 8 o' clock at night, it actually came up as Ariel Bruce. And I went, who on earth is Ariel Bruce? I was like, who is this? And so I answer it. I went, hello?

[Lucy Greenwell (Narrator/Reporter)]

Jess is staring at her screen, trying to understand her DNA results, when her phone rings. When she spat into that tiny plastic tube and sent it off to a laboratory, Jess was hoping that the results might shed some light on the defining mystery of her life. Who gave birth to her and why did they abandon her? She hoped that somewhere in the vast library of DNA held by ancestry, there would be someone who shared enough of her genes to give her answers. And it seems to have worked. The scientific data shows that she is related to someone with the same surname as the nanny who found her. She's thinking it can't be a coincidence. But what she hasn't considered is that these commercial DNA companies, they work both ways. When you send in your saliva, you don't just get to scan the vast database of DNA material, you become part of the Searchable index yourself. Jess DNA has only been on the site for half an hour and already it's been spotted. Someone is urgently trying to reach her. I'm Lucy Greenwell and from Tortoise Investigates and the Observer. You're listening to Foundling episode three, in the Blood, Born Without Trace. They've had no way to unlock the secrets of their past. There's so many if buts. And Ariel Bruce, the woman whose name has just flashed up on Jess's phone, is a post adoption social worker. She's doing research for a long running ITV show called Long Lost Family. The program reunites missing family members, sometimes after years of separation. And it's massive. Each episode pulling in millions of viewers, one of whom's Jess. She's watched the show's emotional reunions for years. Hello. What she doesn't know is that they're putting together a special series about foundlings

[Fiona Gibson (Just Seventeen Editor)]

tracing birth families using the latest DNA technology and painstaking detective work.

[Lucy Greenwell (Narrator/Reporter)]

As part of this detective work, Ariel Bruce has been keeping a close eye on the Ancestry DNA site, looking out for potential matches for someone called Helen who's trying to trace her family and Jess DNA profile has just pinged up. It's a close match to Helen's. So Ariel's asking about Jess and about

[Jess (Foundling) / Helen (Half-sister) / Various Interviewees]

her family and I said, yeah, I was abandoned as a baby in Suffolk. And she went, oh. She said, right, okay, this is a bit more complicated than I first thought.

[Lucy Greenwell (Narrator/Reporter)]

And there are things Ariel clearly doesn't want to tell Jess over the phone. She wants to do it in person. But she does reveal who Helen is.

[Jess (Foundling) / Helen (Half-sister) / Various Interviewees]

She's a half sibling.

[Lucy Greenwell (Narrator/Reporter)]

She hasn't thought about siblings. But here's Ariel telling her that she's got a half sister called Helen.

[Jess (Foundling) / Helen (Half-sister) / Various Interviewees]

And I was like, wow. And so we all sat there and was like, what has just happened?

[Lucy Greenwell (Narrator/Reporter)]

The TV company offers to send a car to bring Jess to London. For Jess, it's a no brainer. She's so intrigued to meet her very first blood relative that within 48 hours, she and her fiance Jamie, they're on their way to Ariel Bruce's house. She tells me that as she sits in that car, she's aware that she's on the cusp of something big. But she doesn't know the extent to which her life's about to turn upside down.

[Jess (Foundling) / Helen (Half-sister) / Various Interviewees]

I was so full of nerves. So, so full of nerves. I felt like I was opening up a can of worms way quicker than I wanted to. Like, it was just unfolding in front of me and I could do Nothing about it. I didn't know if I wanted any of that. But then at the same time, like, curiosity sort of overcomes, doesn't it, at the time.

[Lucy Greenwell (Narrator/Reporter)]

Remember, at this stage, Jess is pretty confident. She knows exactly who her mother is and she's keen to meet Helen because she hopes Helen might shed some light on. On why she was left on that roadside.

[Jess (Foundling) / Helen (Half-sister) / Various Interviewees]

I know it sounds awful, but I'd kind of hoped it was a really sad situation. She didn't mean it. And one day, if I did ever speak to her or see her, she'd be absolutely full of regret and be an actual nice person, like a good person. And then I'd feel better about myself because I'd had this in my head that I was not a good person for so long.

[Lucy Greenwell (Narrator/Reporter)]

When Jess first meets Ariel, there are no cameras, it's just the two of them.

[Jess (Foundling) / Helen (Half-sister) / Various Interviewees]

And we sit down and she said, I'm sure you just want to get straight into it. And I was like, I don't even know if I do. I was like, I'm not your average person, because I've put a hold on this a lot of times, so I'm a bit scared about what you're going to say.

[Lucy Greenwell (Narrator/Reporter)]

Ariel's already told Jess on the phone that she has a sister, but she'd held something back. Now she tells Jess her sister Helen is also a foundling. Hey.

[Jess (Foundling) / Helen (Half-sister) / Various Interviewees]

Hello, Davina.

[Lucy Greenwell (Narrator/Reporter)]

How you doing? All right, thank you. Come on in. Thanks.

[Jess (Foundling) / Helen (Half-sister) / Various Interviewees]

Thank you.

[Lucy Greenwell (Narrator/Reporter)]

150 miles north of London, the presenter of Long lost family, Davina McCall, is at Helen's home delivering the same news. We have had a match. Okay, who is it?

[Jess (Foundling) / Helen (Half-sister) / Various Interviewees]

It's a half sister.

[Lucy Greenwell (Narrator/Reporter)]

Oh, God.

[Jess (Foundling) / Helen (Half-sister) / Various Interviewees]

Oh, sister.

[Lucy Greenwell (Narrator/Reporter)]

I can't believe that. Did she know about me? She didn't know about you. She didn't know. She didn't grow up with your birth mother either, because she is also a foundling.

[Jess (Foundling) / Helen (Half-sister) / Various Interviewees]

Oh, my God.

[Lucy Greenwell (Narrator/Reporter)]

You joking? Oh, no. Younger, older.

[Jess (Foundling) / Helen (Half-sister) / Various Interviewees]

Oh, my God.

[Lucy Greenwell (Narrator/Reporter)]

Back in Ariel's house, Jess, the older of the two, is asking the exact same question.

[Jess (Foundling) / Helen (Half-sister) / Various Interviewees]

And so she was like, so she is younger. And it was. It was just like that. Very calm, very slow. And I was like. And so I shook. I just shook. And I was like, how much younger? Because again, that's really, really important.

[Lucy Greenwell (Narrator/Reporter)]

Why?

[Jess (Foundling) / Helen (Half-sister) / Various Interviewees]

Because how much time between her and me did this woman give herself before she got pregnant again?

[Lucy Greenwell (Narrator/Reporter)]

How much older? 14 months older.

[Jess (Foundling) / Helen (Half-sister) / Various Interviewees]

Who? Been serious? God,

[Lucy Greenwell (Narrator/Reporter)]

I can't believe that.

[Jess (Foundling) / Helen (Half-sister) / Various Interviewees]

14 months old, Like, no, no words can express when you think that someone has dumped you on the side of a road that they'd then go and do it again.

[Lucy Greenwell (Narrator/Reporter)]

Never.

[Jess (Foundling) / Helen (Half-sister) / Various Interviewees]

Every scenario I came up with, never did that one scenario come up like that. She'd done it again.

[Lucy Greenwell (Narrator/Reporter)]

Hi, Daphne, can you hear me?

[Fiona Gibson (Just Seventeen Editor)]

Yes.

[Lucy Greenwell (Narrator/Reporter)]

How are you?

[Jess (Foundling) / Helen (Half-sister) / Various Interviewees]

I'm old, but I don't.

[Lucy Greenwell (Narrator/Reporter)]

I don't.

[Jess (Foundling) / Helen (Half-sister) / Various Interviewees]

I don't feel myself old.

[Lucy Greenwell (Narrator/Reporter)]

Yeah, I'm 90. It's now 37 years since the December morning when a newborn baby was spotted near the kitchens of the Scarsdale Maternity Hospital in Chesterfield, a very different part of the country to where Jess was found in Suffolk. One of the porters brought back child to me and tell me, oh, that knit at me sister Les.

[Jess (Foundling) / Helen (Half-sister) / Various Interviewees]

I said, look what I've got.

[Lucy Greenwell (Narrator/Reporter)]

It just been below a window. That child was. I need somebody that put it there. And the child was hungry.

[Jess (Foundling) / Helen (Half-sister) / Various Interviewees]

Good size.

[Lucy Greenwell (Narrator/Reporter)]

Daphne Lewis still remembers it clearly. It was just before Christmas in 1988, and Daphne was the senior midwife on duty in the hospital's special care baby unit. The person who put that baby there, she put the baby there. That the child should be seen, the child should be seen, and she was seen and found. Like the discovery of baby Jess, Helen's abandonment attracts attention. The story's covered in the regional and the national press. The local TV station sends a reporter to interview Daphne and runs the story in their evening bulletin.

[Jess (Foundling) / Helen (Half-sister) / Various Interviewees]

She was found when she was just hours old by a maintenance engineer near the hospital kitchens. He rushed her straight to a special baby care unit.

[Lucy Greenwell (Narrator/Reporter)]

The story of exactly where Helen is found there varies. Some reports say near the kitchens. Others mention the hospital laundry or the doorstep of the special care baby unit. But everyone agrees about the cardboard box. On a cold, frosty morning in December 1988, Helen Knox, at just a few hours old, was discovered in a cardboard box outside a hospital in Chesterfield. I just know that I was placed in a cardboard box with a pillowcase right around me. It was around half past nine in the morning. That child was cold. I could never forget that, that bit. And they left me here. Must have been a horrible reason for him to do. The baby's named Jill by the midwives.

[Jess (Foundling) / Helen (Half-sister) / Various Interviewees]

And how is she doing now? Very well. She loves being cuddled, fed, feeds well,

[Lucy Greenwell (Narrator/Reporter)]

and for this brief moment in time, she's a local celebrity.

[Jess (Foundling) / Helen (Half-sister) / Various Interviewees]

But they are concerned about her mystery mother.

[Lucy Greenwell (Narrator/Reporter)]

She left it in hospital. That mystery mother never comes forward. And Jill is adopted by a local couple and renamed Helen. Okay, so this is a pathway between the fence and the high red brick wall. I was just wondering where the kitchens were. The scarsdale Maternity Hospital no longer exists, but most of the old Victorian building that housed it originally the town's workhouse, is still there. It's an imposing three story brick building with a central tower. It's now been converted into flats, but it's possible to figure out where the kitchens once were and where Helen may have been left. And the thing that always comes back to me is when you've left a baby, your baby on a verge or under a window here, it's just the walking away that gets me that kind of surprises me and makes me wonder what that's like, that sense of lightness. Is there a relief to it? Is there a misery to it? I just. It's so hard to imagine what it feels like to just have a baby, wrap a baby in a bag or in a box with sheets in it and then just go about your normal

[Jess (Foundling) / Helen (Half-sister) / Various Interviewees]

life and you don't get to know

[Lucy Greenwell (Narrator/Reporter)]

the details of the next bit. You don't get to know. I was struck by this, on the verge in Suffolk too. But since then I've begun to wonder. The verge was central to the story that Jennifer told the police in 1987. But was it true? Did Jennifer ever actually leave Jess? On the cold ground there, I put myself in Jennifer's shoes. I could almost imagine it the first time. I mean, you're 18 and you discover you're pregnant, you're terrified, you can't tell your parents, you can't tell anyone, you don't know where to turn. And in that panic you make a choice, one that looking back, is a muddled short term solution. The kind of terrible decision that perhaps only a frightened teenager could make. But doing it again, not just hiding a pregnancy, but giving birth alone and abandoning the baby a second time, it's much harder to reconcile. None of the researchers or psychologists I've spoken to in the course of reporting this story have come come across women who abandon more than one child. The point is, it's so unusual, there really isn't any meaningful data on it. There was a story recently about three siblings abandoned in East London across eight years. That story attracted a huge amount of public and media attention precisely because it's such a rarity. The thing is, trying to understand what happened in 1987 through the prism of today's social mores, it isn't quite fair because it was almost 40 years ago. It was a different world.

[Fiona Gibson (Just Seventeen Editor)]

My name's Fiona Gibson and I was features editor on Just Seventeen magazine.

[Lucy Greenwell (Narrator/Reporter)]

Just Seventeen was the best selling teen magazine of the day and Fiona was an editor there in the late 80s. Teenagers read it avidly for fashion, for advice, true stories, pop stars. If anyone was taking the temperature of the time, it was this team of magazine writers.

[Fiona Gibson (Just Seventeen Editor)]

There was a record player, music blaring, Yaz would be playing, you know. Bross Brother beyond were great favorites.

[Lucy Greenwell (Narrator/Reporter)]

They weren't that much older than their readers and the office had the vibe of a teenager's bedroom chatter, phones ringing, desk phones.

[Fiona Gibson (Just Seventeen Editor)]

Of course, we were still on manual typewriters then, so it was clatter, clatter, clatter. A lot of laughter and chatter.

[Lucy Greenwell (Narrator/Reporter)]

They had in mind a typical reader, Tracy from Grantham. She didn't have loads of money, didn't live in a big cosmopolitan city and, crucially, wasn't that well informed. These are the female reproductive organs, the ovaries, fallopian tubes, uterus and vagina. This was key because sex education in the 1980s was minimal, to say the least. Here's how the menstrual cycle works. Each one of your two ovaries contains many tiny egg cells. There'd be the mechanics of sex and reproduction, maybe some diagrams that made you cringe. And for most of us, that was it.

[Fiona Gibson (Just Seventeen Editor)]

I mean, we'd have hundreds of letters coming into the problem page every week at just 17, you know, and the level of ignorance and misinformation.

[Lucy Greenwell (Narrator/Reporter)]

The magazine had its work cut out.

[Fiona Gibson (Just Seventeen Editor)]

We often did things about myths in those days. There were a lot of myths about sex, you know, and how babies were made and things like, could I get pregnant if he puts his tongue in my mouth? Could I get pregnant if I have a bath after my brother? Amazing things, you know, if her boyfriend said, I don't want to use a condom, you know, I'll withdraw, it'll be fine. Or, you know, it's your safe time of the month. That was a big thing back then. If I won't let him or I won't do it, something terrible will happen to his penis. His balls will actually explode. Do you remember that one?

[Lucy Greenwell (Narrator/Reporter)]

The overriding fear of pregnancy was always there, the backdrop to almost everything they did.

[Fiona Gibson (Just Seventeen Editor)]

Becoming pregnant by accident as a teenager. In those days, you can hardly imagine anything more terrifying and awful, really.

[Lucy Greenwell (Narrator/Reporter)]

Today, teen pregnancy rates are at their lowest since records began. But back in the late 80s and early 90s, they were roughly twice as high. And teenage pregnancy was a major political flashpoint.

[Fiona Gibson (Just Seventeen Editor)]

Civilised society doesn't just happen. It has to be sustained by standards,

[Lucy Greenwell (Narrator/Reporter)]

widely accepted, accepted and upheld.

[Fiona Gibson (Just Seventeen Editor)]

And we must draw on the moral energy of society.

[Lucy Greenwell (Narrator/Reporter)]

Margaret Thatcher swept to power in 1979, with a conservative party which stood for traditional family values, self reliance and individual responsibility.

[Fiona Gibson (Just Seventeen Editor)]

Indeed, I wonder whether the family has

[Lucy Greenwell (Narrator/Reporter)]

been sufficiently highly regarded in recent years. One minister labeled single parents. And as part of an evil trend, the moral campaigner Mary Whitehouse saw single mothers as evidence of a slide in the nation's moral standards. Many of them will not bother with contraceptives even if you give them to

[Fiona Gibson (Just Seventeen Editor)]

them, because deep down they want a child.

[Lucy Greenwell (Narrator/Reporter)]

And particularly the deprived and insecure young people very often want a child to have somebody to love. Social housing was scarce and a belief took hold that young single mothers, this symbol of national decline, they were welfare scroungers who were deliberately getting pregnant to jump the housing queue. So when Jennifer was pregnant with Jess and then Helen, there was a genuine stigma. Single mothers and their buggies were cluttering up our pavements.

[Fiona Gibson (Just Seventeen Editor)]

I mean, looking back at the 80s, I thought it was quite a modern time, you know, as a young woman myself, but we were literally in the dark still.

[Lucy Greenwell (Narrator/Reporter)]

Getting advice or help meant, God forbid, asking someone. In real life, none of my friends

[Fiona Gibson (Just Seventeen Editor)]

had frank conversations with their mothers about sex. It was all between us, all ridden with myths and misinformation. I mean, I wouldn't have gone to my doctor about anything remotely embarrassing because my mum saw the same doctor and my dad did, even phoning a helpline. One family phone on the wall, perhaps, or on a table in the hallway. You know, you're not allowed to use the phone. It was the family phone and mom, somebody was always at home.

[Lucy Greenwell (Narrator/Reporter)]

So talking to a doctor or accessing social services, it wasn't simple back then, I get that. But not impossible.

[Jess (Foundling) / Helen (Half-sister) / Various Interviewees]

And it's not like we were in the 50s or 60s where you had no support. We're in the late 80s now, where you could have had an abortion, you could have gone to social services and said, I want to put this baby up for adoption. You could have got support. And that's the thing that runs through my mind all the time, is why would you not?

[Lucy Greenwell (Narrator/Reporter)]

Back then, abortion was legal, but not easy to access. There were only about 60 clinics in the whole country, so you may have had to travel. And once you got there, two different doctors had to certify that the procedure was justified. And the majority required a general anaesthetic. I've spoken to a number of people who know Jennifer's family to try and understand the backdrop of her Life in the 1990s. Her parents were teachers and Jennifer's the second of their three children. She was clever, did well at school I've been told that her father, who died not so long ago in his 80s, was one of those strict old fashioned dads. Keeping up appearances was important. People who knew him have told me that there was a contrast between his warm public exterior and, and a more controlling side in private. That at times he could be bullying psychologically and occasionally physically, to put it mildly. Jennifer's pregnancy wouldn't have gone down well. I've been told Jennifer would have found it hard to go to her mother for help because she'd have immediately told Jennifer's dad and she was petrified of her dad finding out. So when Jess asks why would you not get help? Maybe, just maybe, this is part of the answer. Sylvia Murphy's research is the closest I can get to understanding what it may have been like for Jennifer to give birth alone to Jess and then again to Helen.

[Sylvia Murphy (Midwife and Researcher)]

Most women, they would not be prepared or have any equipment or gathered. So women might have, you know, torn the cord with their hands or some utensil that they found in a bathroom or had lying around the house. There was. These women could equally, you know, bleed to death. It's a hugely risky experience to give

[Lucy Greenwell (Narrator/Reporter)]

birth unassisted and the risks don't end there. Giving birth alone can have severe long term effects.

[Sylvia Murphy (Midwife and Researcher)]

She has flashbacks around, you know, smells cause she can remember perhaps you know, her bowels opening. She can recall that degree of, you know, birthing on her own unassisted and the pain and it going on for a long, long time.

[Lucy Greenwell (Narrator/Reporter)]

What she's saying is that doing all this on your own is an experience that would never leave you.

[Sylvia Murphy (Midwife and Researcher)]

The concealed pregnancy left a ripple that lasted a lifetime. That was a word one of the women used that, you know, that it's never left them. There's always still something even where they went on maybe to have a career or a successful career or relationships, that it was always something that stayed with them to a greater or lesser degree. And it was a time of great sadness.

[Lucy Greenwell (Narrator/Reporter)]

So doing it twice as Jennifer did, Sylvia can only speculate.

[Sylvia Murphy (Midwife and Researcher)]

So perhaps this family situation is still the same and the woman you know, there's been no resolution. So she's fallen pregnant a second time.

[Lucy Greenwell (Narrator/Reporter)]

The trauma and fear that may have led Jennifer to make those decisions the first time round, perhaps they're still present. Women who abandon babies are so little studied that there's no one to help really explain this double abandonment. Were there certain pressures, demands or threats around Jess and Helen's births which led to extreme decisions? If there were, they're known only to Jennifer.

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[Brooke Devard (Naked Beauty Host)]

hello, it's Brooke Devard from Naked Beauty. Join me each week for unfiltered discussion about beauty trends, self care journeys, wellness tips and the products we absolutely love and cannot get enough of. If you are a skincare obsessive and you spend 20 plus minutes on your skincare routine, this podcast is for you. Or if you're a newbie at the beginning of your skincare journey, you'll love this podcast as well. Because we go so much deeper than beauty. I talk to incredible and inspired, inspiring people from across industries about their relationship with beauty. You'll also hear from skin care experts. We break down lots of myths in the beauty industry. If this sounds like your thing, search for Naked Beauty on your podcast app and listen along. I hope you'll join us day or night. Verbocare is here 247 to help make every part of your stay seamless. If anything comes up or you simply make need a little guidance, support is ready whenever you reach out. From the moment you book to the moment you head home, we're here to help things run smoothly because a great

[Jess (Foundling) / Helen (Half-sister) / Various Interviewees]

trip starts with the right support.

[Brooke Devard (Naked Beauty Host)]

And hey, a good playlist doesn't hurt either.

[Lucy Greenwell (Narrator/Reporter)]

A few weeks after learning of each other's existence, the long lost family producers choose a date to film Jess and Helen meeting for the first time. It's a big thing meeting my half sister. It's a very big, life changing thing for us both. It's not just something that's going to happen today, this is going to be for the rest of our lives.

[Jess (Foundling) / Helen (Half-sister) / Various Interviewees]

It's exciting being a foundling. You never think you'd find anybody. So meeting her today will be something really special.

[Lucy Greenwell (Narrator/Reporter)]

We're going to connect on a big level. I can't wait just to see her in person.

[Jess (Foundling) / Helen (Half-sister) / Various Interviewees]

They had, like, I don't know, five, six, seven and eight cameras all around the room for different angles, and they literally just let us sit there and talk. And we talked, I think, for maybe two hours solid.

[Fiona Gibson (Just Seventeen Editor)]

I can't believe.

[Jess (Foundling) / Helen (Half-sister) / Various Interviewees]

I cannot believe how similar we are. I'm over the moon. We all make some memories to get the light wave. I can't wait to meet her kids, her fiance, and it's just going to change both of our lives for the better. This is a police poster. I was only tiny.

[Lucy Greenwell (Narrator/Reporter)]

After the cameras are switched off, they carry on talking. They're put up in a hotel and they stay awake, still talking, till the small hours. There's so much to discuss. Helen knows nothing about their birth mother, so Jess shares everything. The nanny, job in Suffolk, the suspicions that the old lady Jean and the policeman had both mentioned. Next morning, they hug goodbye, get into their cars and drive back to their separate lives.

[Jess (Foundling) / Helen (Half-sister) / Various Interviewees]

Never in a million years did I think that was the one and only time I'd ever see her and ever meet her.

[Lucy Greenwell (Narrator/Reporter)]

What starts with a huge surge of hope and relief crumbles over the coming months. At the heart of it, they disagree about Jennifer. According to Jess, Helen wants a relationship with her mother badly enough that she's willing to forgive her. Jess isn't. Helen gets in touch with Jennifer. They meet up and they've since forged a close bond. Over time, Jess tells me, Helen stops returning her messages. Helen's invited to Jess's wedding, but she

[Jess (Foundling) / Helen (Half-sister) / Various Interviewees]

doesn't come, which was gutting. And I was really heartbroken. So many times I've tried to meet up with her. It just didn't come.

[Lucy Greenwell (Narrator/Reporter)]

I wrote to Helen to find out her side of this story. She didn't want to be interviewed, but she did send me an email. In it, she disputes Jess's version of events around the breakdown of their relationship. She says she didn't stop contacting Jess, that it was Jess who didn't want to stay in touch because Helen had chosen to forgive their mother. She added that it was ill health that kept her from Jess's wedding. Nothing more. By the spring of 2021, a strange silence has settled over Jennifer's family. Her parents and siblings know about the DNA results. They know she's got two more daughters, but Nobody confronts Jennifer. And Jennifer doesn't admit anything to anyone. Her husband, who she's been married to for years, he knows nothing. Her two almost adult children, they have no idea about the existence of their half siblings. And Jennifer doesn't reach out to Jessica or to Helen. She doesn't engage with the producers of Long Lost Family. But the show that they filmed months earlier is about to be broadcast. Both foundlings are about to reveal their stories on national television. And so Jennifer finally breaks her silence. How might it be for a woman to have a concealed pregnancy and abandonment revealed by someone else? Oh my goodness.

[Sylvia Murphy (Midwife and Researcher)]

I think that is really difficult. Women did talk about that, that exposure, about exposure to judgment, you know, that shame that you might have felt for what you did, you are punished.

[Lucy Greenwell (Narrator/Reporter)]

After Jennifer confesses to her close family, Jess tells me she expects her birth mother to get in touch with her and with Helen. But that's not what happens, not initially. Jess does get a call from Jennifer's parents, her new grandparents, and they begin a tentative relationship. They travel to visit Jess and they invite Jess for a return visit at theirs.

[Jess (Foundling) / Helen (Half-sister) / Various Interviewees]

And it was lovely. Like, you know, my granddad is a fantastic cook. He made us a lovely meal because they're very well traveled, they've traveled the world and they've done lots and lots of amazing things. And he's done some sort of South African chicken with sticky rice. They made us feel really welcome and it was lovely. And it, it did have that essence of you're staying at your grandparents house. It, it had a lovely feel to it and I feel like it started quite well.

[Lucy Greenwell (Narrator/Reporter)]

Jennifer's parents and her siblings, Sam and Rachel heartily embraced Jess. There are meals, phone calls, WhatsApp conversations. If you find this hard to get your head around, you're not the only one. Everyone's seemingly playing happy families while Jennifer and the two daughters she gave birth to in the 80s don't communicate. Even though Jennifer's finally told her parents about the baby she left, she doesn't explain how or why. And she's yet to show any interest in meeting the two women. Jess grandparents do encourage Jess to contact Jennifer. Perhaps they encourage Jennifer to do the same, I don't know. But neither Jess nor Jennifer take that step. She gets scraps of information instead. Details about Jennifer's life and about her two children. And Jess gets answers to a few questions like did Jennifer's mother not suspect something? She says she didn't. But there is one story she tells. It's about a time when Jennifer's mum and her grandmother went to visit Jennifer while she was working as a nanny

[Jess (Foundling) / Helen (Half-sister) / Various Interviewees]

in Suffolk and apparently they drove away and she said, if I didn't know better, I would say she was eight months pregnant because she was so big.

[Lucy Greenwell (Narrator/Reporter)]

I'm intrigued by this. So someone did notice her changing shape back in 1987, but seemingly never mentioned it to Jennifer. If Jess is hoping that her newfound family will report back on exactly how Jennifer managed to hide her pregnancy and why she left Jess by a road, well, she's set to be disappointed. And Jess still doesn't try to contact her birth mother for answers. In the six years since, she never has, they've spoken only once. Seven months after Jess DNA proved that they were mother and daughter.

[Jess (Foundling) / Helen (Half-sister) / Various Interviewees]

There was no warning, no one messaged me to say, jennifer's about to ring you. So there I am trying to get two kids to bed at 7 o' clock at night with a number that I don't recognise on the phone.

[Lucy Greenwell (Narrator/Reporter)]

SOBBING Hardly able to get the words out is Jennifer.

[Jess (Foundling) / Helen (Half-sister) / Various Interviewees]

It was hysterical. And again, that was another thing that I sort of picked up. I thought, oh, God, I cry like

[Lucy Greenwell (Narrator/Reporter)]

her down the phone. Jess hears Jennifer say that she wants her to know that she's there if Jess wants to talk.

[Jess (Foundling) / Helen (Half-sister) / Various Interviewees]

And I just shut it down really quick and I just said, look, I'm not the one that wants to talk to you. Helen's the one that wants to talk to you, not me. I'm not interested in a relationship with you. I never have.

[Lucy Greenwell (Narrator/Reporter)]

So many of the questions that Jess has about her origins could have been answered in this phone call, but Jess tells me she feels a bit ambushed, caught off guard without her thoughts in order.

[Jess (Foundling) / Helen (Half-sister) / Various Interviewees]

I have your number, so if I ever do want to contact you, I will. But I said, I probably won't and let's just leave it at that.

[Lucy Greenwell (Narrator/Reporter)]

What did she say?

[Jess (Foundling) / Helen (Half-sister) / Various Interviewees]

And she was like, I don't understand why you're not angry at me. And I was like, because I got no reason to be, really. I don't have them feelings because I've had an amazing upbringing. And I said that to her. I've got incredible parents, I have no reason to be angry. And I said. And I did say that she was. I said, unfortunately, you're just irrelevant in my life.

[Lucy Greenwell (Narrator/Reporter)]

To be honest, it sounds quite brutal to me.

[Jess (Foundling) / Helen (Half-sister) / Various Interviewees]

And then like, continuously sobbing all the way through the conversation, but I kind of cut it there and I said, look, I'm going now. And that was the end of that conversation. That's the only other time I've spoken to her.

[Lucy Greenwell (Narrator/Reporter)]

Three days later, Jess texts Jennifer to say sorry she hasn't been in touch. Her birth mother tells her, you have my number.

[Jess (Foundling) / Helen (Half-sister) / Various Interviewees]

I'm here to answer any questions if

[Lucy Greenwell (Narrator/Reporter)]

you're ready, if you're ever ready. But Jess doesn't reply. It strikes me that she gave you away as a baby. But she's there now, wanting, openly saying, I'm ready to talk. And I find it really curious that you. Because I know you've got big questions about it. Why didn't you get help or have an abortion or get the social services or tell a friend or get your help from. Even if you couldn't tell your mum? Yeah, but you said. But you've never contacted her since then.

[Jess (Foundling) / Helen (Half-sister) / Various Interviewees]

No. That was the one and only time.

[Lucy Greenwell (Narrator/Reporter)]

I mull over this for months. It's so hard to get why, after years of hunting for her mother, when they finally get to talk, Jess effectively turns away. But the search and the meeting are two very different things. During the search, Jess is in control. She sets the pace, decides which leads to follow, and stores each new discovery. Newspaper cuttings, names, numbers, clues on her laptop. But entering a relationship with Jennifer, that's very different. Her mother stops being an idea, one that she's wondered about for decades, and becomes real. At that point, I feel like Jess loses her sense of agency. Perhaps what Jess is doing on this call is reclaiming control.

[Jess (Foundling) / Helen (Half-sister) / Various Interviewees]

I just know I wouldn't ever get the answers that I need or want because I feel like her life has been built on a web of lies. And so I'm not actually sure she even understands what's the truth and what's not anymore.

[Lucy Greenwell (Narrator/Reporter)]

A few months ago, I sat down and wrote to Jennifer explaining that we were investigating Jess story. I said that we weren't planning to identify her and I asked her if she'd like to talk to me for the podcast. But since then, I've heard nothing back.

[Jess (Foundling) / Helen (Half-sister) / Various Interviewees]

I remember it was a really hot day and we'd had lovely time in the garden and stuff with the children.

[Lucy Greenwell (Narrator/Reporter)]

Jennifer's sister, Rachel has come to stay with Jess. The relationship between aunt and niece is warm and friendly, and Rachel's updating Jess about the effect of her arrival on their family. The revelations, yes. But on top of this, the way Jennifer's reacted since the facts seem to be changing, her family sense that the full story still hasn't been told. It's causing rows, anger and bewilderment, and there's still a missing piece of the puzzle. Jennifer knows everyone's wondering, but she's keeping quiet. About who Jess father is.

[Jess (Foundling) / Helen (Half-sister) / Various Interviewees]

I mean, you don't solve half a jigsaw, do you? You want the whole thing. And so, you know, I always said if, like I find out one half, I want the other half. You just do. I always wanted to know if I was gonna ever find out. I wanted to know both. And I just, I said, like, we've got to try and figure this out.

[Lucy Greenwell (Narrator/Reporter)]

Rachel tells Jessica that she and Jennifer, who are three years apart in age, spent a lot of time as teenagers in the local pubs, drinking, having fun and dancing. So Jess quizzes her, is there anything she remembers? Flings, one night stands, relationships. Jess shows Rachel a page of her DNA results, a page that caught Jess attention when she first saw shows her genetic heritage in percentages. There's something strange. Over half of Jess's DNA has Germanic heritage.

[Jess (Foundling) / Helen (Half-sister) / Various Interviewees]

You know, look at this DNA, look, you know, 51. Is there nobody you can think of

[Lucy Greenwell (Narrator/Reporter)]

that was like her birth mother's family seems solidly English. So Jess is thinking this must be some kind of clue to her paternity. Rachel's also curious. In fact, she's brought some old photos. They peer at them. Fuzzy images. Lineups of people with their arms around each other, mullets, beers in hand and a darts board in the background. Rachel points to one man. She says Jennifer dated him on and off around 1987. She was, in Rachel's words, obscure.

[Jess (Foundling) / Helen (Half-sister) / Various Interviewees]

She said, oh, I know the family still. Like they're still within our town. They're all there.

[Lucy Greenwell (Narrator/Reporter)]

And what's more, he has a Germanic surname.

[Jess (Foundling) / Helen (Half-sister) / Various Interviewees]

And I was just holding onto it, like I really was holding onto the fact that it had to be something.

[Lucy Greenwell (Narrator/Reporter)]

Jess digs about online and discovers that this man has five children with his long term partner. Possible half siblings for Jess.

[Jess (Foundling) / Helen (Half-sister) / Various Interviewees]

And I sat there and I found all five siblings that evening.

[Lucy Greenwell (Narrator/Reporter)]

That evening in the garden with Rachel.

[Jess (Foundling) / Helen (Half-sister) / Various Interviewees]

Yep, in the garden. And I left it for a bit though, because I thought, okay, I found them, I know they're there. And I said, but I just need to figure out how I'm going to approach this because I didn't want to just go all guns blazing over a glass of wine in the garden and destroy anyone's world. So I just said, right, okay, I'm going to think about this.

[Lucy Greenwell (Narrator/Reporter)]

A few days after Rachel leaves, Jess receives a text message. It's sent from Jennifer's phone, but oddly, the message is written by her therapist. Leave it alone. Please back off and let sleeping dogs lie. Jennifer genuinely does not know who the father is.

[Fiona Gibson (Just Seventeen Editor)]

Please have some consideration for the impact another search could have on another family.

[Lucy Greenwell (Narrator/Reporter)]

The therapist is asking Jess to stop looking for her dad. Jess's first thought is when has a professional therapist ever written a message from their client's phone and to their client's abandoned child telling them to back off? And her second thought what or who is Jennifer trying to hide? Next time on Foundling. I did feel like smashing glass over

[Jess (Foundling) / Helen (Half-sister) / Various Interviewees]

his head to be honest, and he

[Lucy Greenwell (Narrator/Reporter)]

just acted normal because he knew that I couldn't kick off in pub car park or he knew I wouldn't kick off.

[Jess (Foundling) / Helen (Half-sister) / Various Interviewees]

I'm not out to break up families and I'm sorry I was born like, what do you want me to do?

[Lucy Greenwell (Narrator/Reporter)]

I just started to like think of little things that had not made sense.

[Jess (Foundling) / Helen (Half-sister) / Various Interviewees]

I think I'll always be angry because you're constantly thinking, could it have ended differently had things been different?

[Lucy Greenwell (Narrator/Reporter)]

Foundling was reported by me, Lucy Greenwell. It was written by me and by Katie Gunning who who was also the series producer. The theme music was composed by Tom Kinsella. Sound design and additional music was by Rowan Bishop. Podcast artwork was by Lola Williams. The development producer was Jess Swinburn. The narrative editor was Gary Marshall. The editor is Jasper Corbett. Thank you for listening to Foundling. We hope you're enjoying the podcast so far. You can listen to all six episodes today by subscribing to the Observer. By subscribing, not only do you get all our podcasts before anyone else, you also get access to our premium newsletters, exclusive offers from our partners Mubi and I, escape tickets to our events, and much, much more. Subscribe [e-mail] subscribe or via the link in the show Notes. Subscribe today for pound one for your first month,

[Sylvia Murphy (Midwife and Researcher)]

Tortoise Investigates.

[Lucy Greenwell (Narrator/Reporter)]

Leadership used to mean having all the answers, but today's best leaders embody a more human approach. I'm Jack Myers.

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And I'm Tim Spengler.

[Lucy Greenwell (Narrator/Reporter)]

Tim and I have spent our careers inside media, marketing and culture and we partnered with the Acast Creator Network to start Lead Human to answer one simple question. What does it really look like to lead in this AI dominated world?

[Jess (Foundling) / Helen (Half-sister) / Various Interviewees]

The biggest tip for being a creator? It's a job. What I learned from Michael Jackson Here's

[Lucy Greenwell (Narrator/Reporter)]

a man who understands precision. It's about answering the questions that are hard, not about answering a bunch of

[Jess (Foundling) / Helen (Half-sister) / Various Interviewees]

teed up questions that are fake.

[Lucy Greenwell (Narrator/Reporter)]

What we're looking for are real stories and practical advice that you can use with your teams right away. Subscribe to Lead Human with Jack Myers and Tim Spengler Wherever you get your

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[Jess (Foundling) / Helen (Half-sister) / Various Interviewees]

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