Parents of abandoned babies ‘had affair lasting 40 years’
THE Irish parents of two abandoned babies who featured in an ITV show about reunited families were believed to have had an affair spanning 40 years and both lived in Dublin.
David McBride (58), who lives in Birmingham, was just two weeks old when he was found in the passenger seat of a car in Belfast in a tartan holdall in 1962.
Six years later, in 1968, Helen Ward (52) was found as a baby in a similar checked bag by a truck driver in a phone box in Dundalk, Co Louth, and he spotted two people driving off in a car shortly after he stopped to investigate.
The Irish Independent first profiled her story in 2012 when she began a hunt to find her biological mother.
DNA tests revealed Helen and David are full-blood siblings who only met on the show after 51 years.
Now it has emerged their birth mother, who never married, was in a secret relationship with their father that lasted possibly 40 years.
It was also revealed he was a well-known band leader in a dance hall band in Dublin and managed a shop.
Given that she was Catholic and he was Protestant, there would have been a huge taboo surrounding their relationship and having two babies out of wedlock would have compounded the stigma.
Viewers watched host Davina McCall break the news about their parents’ secret relationship on last Monday’s gripping episode of ‘Long Lost Families’.
“Your mother and father had an affair. He was married ... we know from when you were conceived obviously they were having an affair then and before he died in 1993, they were seen together before that so that’s 30, possibly 40 years.
“And they both lived in Dublin. We do know that your mother was Catholic and your father was a Protestant. He had 14 other children... some of them knew about the affair but had no idea about you.
“He was from Dublin, he managed a shop and he was a band leader in a well-known dance hall band in Dublin and he did that seven nights a week.
“She’s from Kerry and she never had any more children.”
They were also told their mother died in November 2017 at the age of 90, so she gave birth to David when she was 34 and she had Helen when she was 41. Their father died in 1993 aged 82.
Helen told Davina she imagined it must have been a “very lonely situation” for their birth mother, being pregnant out of wedlock during the 1960s. They were then shown a photograph of both their parents, with their father bearing a striking resemblance to David.
The black-and-white picture showed him wearing a white tuxedo and holding a trumpet in a photo from his days as a musician.
He also had 14 other children who were born between 1938 and 1960, some of whom they have now met.
The show then came to a close filming the reunited siblings travelling to their mother’s grave in Kerry.
“I just feel so happy after all these years to finally know who our mum and dad are; that’s just so nice. It’s absolutely lovely,” said Helen.
Her story was featured by the Irish Independent in 2012 which then led to her being reunited with the lorry driver who found her as a baby in a phone box, a man named Donal Boyle from Macroom, Co Cork. She was adopted at 13 months old and had a “very happy life” with her new parents.