Credit, Helen Ward
"I was found in a bag, dressed in blue."
Raised in a warm and loving family in Belfast, Northern Ireland, David McBride always knew he was adopted.
But it was only at the age of 15, when he requested a birth certificate to join the Army, that he realized how little was known about his origins.
The document was practically blank. The names of the biological parents were unknown, as was information about the place and even the date of their birth.
His adoptive father told him what little he knew. McBride had been abandoned and, as a baby, was found in the front seat of an unlocked car.
Together, McBride and his father decided to find out everything they could about his origins. They began researching at the local public library, poring over newspaper clippings.
At the time it was found, the case made headlines because child abandonment was virtually unknown in Northern Ireland at that time.
McBride explains that the Church often offered support — or at least shelter — to mothers and babies who might have been born out of wedlock.
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"If a woman got pregnant outside of marriage, she was rejected. And there was a tendency to hide everything."
The newspaper clippings didn't provide much information, but they confirmed that he had received good care. "I was well fed and well looked after."
He imagined his mother was young and scared. He decided to try to find her.
The 'tartan twins'
However, the decades passed and, despite searches and even appearing on a BBC program about abandoned children, McBride found few answers.
So, encouraged by his sister, he decided to take a DNA test.
The result changed everything. He had a biological sister.
"It was a wonderful surprise... It was as if Christmas had arrived."
Her name was Helen Ward. But instead of answering his questions about her mother, she had many questions herself: she had also been abandoned when she was a baby.
“I was found in a green bag, in a phone booth,” says Ward. "The first thing I thought was that we were the twins in the bag."
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They weren't twins. They were born seven years apart and were found on opposite sides of the Irish border. Still, the similarities were striking.
“A truck driver found me,” says Ward. "Inside the bag was a warm bottle and a change of clothes. I was very well dressed and warm."
Like McBride, Ward was raised by a loving adoptive family. But when she became a mother, she decided she needed to know more about her biological mother.
She contacted a social worker in the area where she had been found and received a birth certificate similar to the one McBride had seen years earlier. It contained the information "unknown mother", "unknown father" and "girl found unprotected in a telephone booth".
"I was very shaken. We have so many questions, and it's very difficult to find answers."
Ward also did her own searching in the following years: she told her story on a radio program that took calls from listeners and found both the police officer who had handled her case in 1969 and the truck driver who found her.
But it was after receiving a DNA test kit from a friend to do at home that she found the brother she had lost. “It was incredible,” he says. "I kept pinching myself to make sure I wasn't dreaming."
A new search
When they finally met in person and recognized physical characteristics in each other, the experience was almost overwhelming.
"You try to take it all in. There's so much to say that it feels like it's going to explode," says Ward.
"As soon as we met, everything around us seemed to cease to exist," says McBride.
But, when one search came to an end, another was resumed: that of the parents.
Eventually, they discovered that their mother had died at age 90, shortly before the two met. The father had passed away years before.
Still, they managed to reconstruct some parts of the family's history.
"Our mother was from the country. Our father was from the city," says McBride. "She was much younger. A fascination with the city took her from the west coast of Ireland to Dublin. Our father was a conductor in Dublin. She probably met him when she frequented the dance halls. They had an affair that lasted 40 years or more."
McBride believes that, for the relationship to have lasted so long, the two must have been in love. But it was a complicated relationship.
He was married. Furthermore, he was Protestant, while she was Catholic.
At a time when Ireland was deeply divided by religious differences and remained socially conservative, David believes the two were simply breaking too many taboos.
"Catholics and Protestants. Children born out of wedlock... What chance did they have?" he asks.
A third brother
However, there was still one more surprise waiting: Ward remembered a story he had read during his years of investigation and began to wonder if he could have another brother.
"The story was about a baby found in a telephone booth in 1965," he says. "He was in a bag, with a warm bottle. All the details of his story were also part of my story and David's."
A young Australian woman who watched a television program made by McBride and Ward about their search began to think about her own Irish father, John. It turned out that he was, in fact, their biological brother.
“He was the middle child,” explains Ward. "When the three of us sat down to get to know each other, it was surreal. You're looking at your family. And a thousand questions come up. But in that moment, it was magical."
These unanswered questions leave a void that, they acknowledge, may never be filled.
But both Helen and David say they can't judge their mother for the decisions she made.
"It must have been horrible for her," says Helen, "to abandon all three babies so soon after carrying them in her belly and giving birth."
David remembers seeing a video of his elderly mother clinging to a doll and refusing to let go.
"I wonder if, toward the end of her life, her mind said, 'This is my daughter. I've lost three children and you're not going to take her from me.'"
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