Anyone watch The Phone Box Babies on RTE ?

[deeahgwitch]

It’s an Irish production by RTE following on from ITV’s Long Lost Family - Born Without A Trace. Three full siblings left in tartan shoppers in Ireland and Northern Ireland.
They believe there is a fourth sibling, abandoned in Newry who has yet to come forward. I think the baby was abandoned in 1965. It would be fantastic if they too came forward and met their siblings.
An amazing story and the 3 siblings were great. As was their half brother - his father was having an affair with their mother.

I just watched it. I remember the Long Lost Family show about them. How lovely for them to have found each other and it's great that they get along so well. They all seem really lovely people. I can only imagine the closure it must give them to have found each other.

Their poor mother, she must have really suffered to have had to hide pregnancies, give birth in secret and go on with her life as if nothing happened. How desperately sad. I wonder did she know anything of what happened to her children. This country really was a shit place for women back then. And what a shock it must have been for their 14 half siblings that their father had led a double life. That would rock your world.

It’s an extraordinary story.
I’m glad the now grown up babies got some answers and found each other.
But so many questions still left to be answered.
Their father’s behaviour was unbelievable - 14 children with his wife and at least 3 with Marcella.
Did Marcella give birth and then he took the babies and placed them in tartan bags and drove off and left them to be found ?
If he was in a band he was probably travelling around the country.
Did he live in Dublin ?
Did his wife or family suspect ?
It was amazing that John’s daughter watching the original ITV programme in Australia, which featured David and Helen, saw a resemblance to her father who was also a foundling. Try as I might I just couldn’t see a resemblance.
Were David, Helen and John brought up in different religions ?
In the past I think authorities were very strict about that - but in these cases they wouldn’t have known what religion the birth mother was.
It was telling that Marcella, in later life had a doll she carried with her.
What deep trauma she must have suffered.
i know in London in recent years, three abandoned babies with the same mother and father have been found.
What is the sad story behind these children’s abandonment 🥲

I thought that Marcella was actually a bad person. To get pregnant once and have to abandon a baby is bad enough but possibly 4 ?! Even then there were ways to prevent pregnancies. And how selfish was he to continue to get her pregnant and then to leave them in such dismal conditions. He was a creep and she knowingly had an affair with a married man for years. I wonder how she hid her pregnancies from people . I felt so sorry for the guy whose father it was. To find out your father was such a liar must be pretty devastating.

I understand where you are coming from @Soonenoughbut perhaps she had no access to contraception, had no sex education either. Perhaps she was uneducated.
I certainly don’t condone having an affair with a married man, and one with 14 children at that !!!
His poor wife - did she know ?
Was Marcella the only one ?
Because of his job he had plenty of opportunity for dalliances.
I thought it was very “big” of his son to be so welcoming to his half siblings.
I can understand that some of his full siblings were still processing the situation.

I thought it was strange one baby was left in a car in Belfast - the car belonged to the wife of a Belfast gynaecologist.
Did Billy know the man ?
Was it Billy who dropped the babies off ?
How did Marcella hide the pregnancies ?
So many questions…..

The 3 “children” were so upbeat.
Remarkable people.

i didn’t get the feeling they drove away, the child found in the phone box in North I think had a warm bottle of milk, the lorry driver waited for the phone and they drove away as he entered the phone box. Found straight away.

Another in a car, that has to have more to it.

From what I saw I am not so sure they were not watching and waiting for the babies to be found. Just my feeling from the story.

It was well known just how vile the ML’s and M&B’s were, as bad as it seems to us now, it might just have seemed the best option at a very vulnerable time.

She wasted her life on a man, made huge sacrifices, granted she had an affair but those days were different times and young girls coming to Dublin were unbelievably naive and vulnerable.

Where i currently live prior to me moving here it is still talked about the man who would befriend young country girls manipulate them into compromising situations take photos and used them as blackmail. This for many is in living memory the person was well known and apparently had made a decent (compared to everyone else) living.

It was very difficult and different times.

DublinFemale, I'm with you. There's no judgement from me for Marcella but I do judge the father if I'm honest. He was a married man with 14 children. He should never have allowed the relationship to start in the first place. He wasn't the one who had to go through the trauma of hiding a pregnancy and birth and the huge loss of the babies she carried.

It's very hard to put ourselves in the times Marcella lived in. God love her, she suffered a lot.

IMO Marcella paid a very dear price for the decisions she made.

The video of her with her doll is sad, she couldn’t have her children, all she had was a doll as a reminder.

By today’s standards would Billy have been an abuser, I mean in control terms?

All the women, Marcella and his wife were short changed, Billy was the winner having his cake and eating it.

It is a sad story with an unusual but fabulous happy ending.

Wise words @DublinFemale