Find long lost after 66 years

‘most wonderful childhood and adoptive parents,’ which is everything they had hoped for.

And she’s more than delighted to have found that she has not one but two sisters. Janice was just two-years-old when she was adopted from the children’s home. Stephen says he and his older sisters only learned that she’d gone when they went to visit her one day in the babies’ and toddlers’ nursery. “We were informed rather brusquely that Janis didn’t live there any more,” he said. “No further information was available to us, despite us asking where she had gone.”

Kathleen was also sent away – to live with her maternal grandparents in South Shields before Janis was adopted – but Stephen and Carol remained in care. In the 1950s children’s homes were austere places and the siblings have many tales to tell of harsh treatment. But what distressed them the most was the way they ‘lost’ their baby sister.

While nothing can make up for the lost years, they are now looking forward to getting to know each other and becoming a family once again.

And they’re also hoping to welcome Janice back to Yorkshire. Stephen says: “Janice wants to come to Huddersfield and see our old house and Fieldhead.

“She’s never been back – but then she didn’t know she was from Huddersfield. We’re so happy to have found her. She says she’s glad that I never gave up trying to find her.”