Mum had to choose which of us to keep
Three sisters meet brother who was given up as a tot
THE siblings all have the same cackle, share dodgy knees and tease one another as if they have known each other all their lives. But 54-year-old Dave Ashford, who was put up for adoption as a baby, only discovered he had sisters Nicki, Becky and Katherine a year ago after they tracked him down on Long Lost Family.
“Within a split second of meeting each other, once we got over the initial shock, it was like we had always known each other,” Dave says. “All these little things were coming out.”
It was a complete surprise for Dave when he discovered their mother, Janet Saunders, had been given a terrible ultimatum in 1966 – give up her newborn son or lose both him and Nicki, then just 18 months old, to social services.
“Mum was 16 when she got pregnant,” eldest child Nicki Goscomb says. “She was a child, she made a mistake. She fell in love with our dad who was married and wasn’t able to be with him. She was told she brought shame on the family.
“She fought hard to keep me and her hand was forced – she had no choice but to give him up for adoption.”
It was a heartbreaking blow for Janet but not unusual at a time when single pregnant women were often forced into giving up their children.
Nicki says: “My grandmother said, ‘You have two children and no husband, you’re not fit to be a mother. Give him up or I will phone social services and they’ll get taken into care.’
“Nobody should ever have to choose. My brother was six weeks old and he was sacrificed so I could stay. It does make me feel guilty and sad. I was kept with Mum and he was given away.”
Her hand was forced but it was not unusual at the time
NICKI GOSCOMB WHO FOUND BIRTH RECORD
Afew years later, Janet had two more daughters, Becky and Katherine and was able to keep them because she had moved out of her parents’ house.
But she always longed to find the baby boy she was forced to give up.
Nicki, from Stroud, Gloucestershire, was
15 when she discovered Dave’s birth certificate hidden away in a tin and confronted her mum about it.
“I’m rifling through and find a ‘Nicholas
James’, born 18 months after me,” she recalls. “I thought, ‘Who can this be? I must have a brother’.
“But Mum shut couldn’t deal with it.
“It’s a part of her she had locked away because it was too painful.”
In another agonising blow, Janet never got to meet her son because she died in a car accident almost 15 years ago.
But Nicki and Becky fulfilled their mum’s wish and were reunited with their brother in December 2019 – as seen in the penultimate episode of this series of the ITV show.
“Mum said to me her wish was that Cilla Black would get her on Surprise, Surprise and that she would be able to down, she meet Dave,” 56-year-old Nicki says. “She wanted to get him back in her life and to know he was happy.”
Every Christmas and birthday, Dave always wondered if his birth mother was thinking of him.
He was happily adopted by loving parents who raised him in Wiltshire and they told him early on they were not his biological mum and dad.
Finding out after all those years that
Nicki and their mother Janet all right but it did affect me,” he says. “I did look into my adoption about 17 years ago before my daughter was born just to see. And I found some details out then, but to know now if I had taken the next step, I could have met her. That is the hard thing for me to take.”
Though he wasn’t able to meet his biological mum, he has gained three sisters in Nicki, Becky and Katherine, 51, who has severe learning difficulties, plus
ALL TOGETHER Nicki, in pink cardigan, alongside long lost brother Dave and Becky with their families a big extended family. The siblings are finding out all the traits they have in common. “We’ve all got bad knees,” Nicki laughs. “Dave and I have the same nose.
“He looks so much like my son. The mannerisms are so similar. Dave and I both like watching telly and don’t like doing any exercise. There are a lot of similarities.”
Dave, who now lives in Poole, Dorset, adds cheekily: “We’re all good looking! It was really strange when everyone was looking at me saying I look like my nephew. So strange.”
Another thing they curiously have in common is their accent, even though Dave who is married to wife Jennie, wasn’t raised in Gloucestershire.
“I noticed he had the same accent as us which I thought was bizarre,” Becky says. “How does that happen?” Dave adds: “At least I’ve found out where my accent comes from. Wherever people ask where I’m from.
“I’ve lived with my parents in Wiltshire all my life and I thought I’d pick up their accent but I haven’t. But now I know.”
Any nerves about meeting for the first time were eased straight away because they all got on like a house on fire.
They were brought together at a hotel in Cheltenham, the town where Dave last saw his birth mother.
Nicki says: “I was so excited but I was nervous. I worried what if he didn’t like us, what if he blames us, what if he resents us?
“So all of those feelings went through my mind but as soon I saw him we had a connection. It felt like coming home. We were just together, he was the missing jigsaw piece.”
Long Lost Family continues Monday at 9pm on ITV.
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