Long Lost Family: Born Without Trace concludes this week with another heartbreaking story – that of foundling Caroline Harris-Gray.
Caroline was just days old when her birth mother made the gut-wrenching decision to abandon her baby daughter. She left her in a vegetable box in the matron’s room of a hospital.
But why did her mum leave her there? Who were her parents, and what happened to them?
Caroline Harris-Gray, now a therapist, finally gets answers in episode 3 of Long Lost Family: Born Without Trace.
Long Lost Family: Born Without Trace season 5
Nicky Campbell and Davina McCall have returned to host series five of Long Lost Family: Born Without Trace. Each episode introduces a ‘foundling’, someone abandoned as a baby, often in the first days and weeks of their lives.
With the help of a team of genealogists, the orphans are able to solve the ultimate mystery of their lives – who they are. Born without trace, with no birth record or name, they have previously had no way of discovering the basic facts of their identity.
Using genetic genealogy with DNA technology, the team behind Long Lost Family spend up to five years unlocking the secrets of the past – often with emotional consequences.
Series five of this ITV series features five new foundlings on a quest to find out who they really are. They include a woman found as a baby in an open-top Aston Martin in Marylebone, and a baby found on a doorstep at Christmas 1960.
However, the third and final episode of Long Lost Family introduces Caroline Harris-Gray. Her mum abandoned her at a hospital when she was just 10 to 14 days old.
The last instalment also introduces police detective Paul Watts, who was abandoned in a paper bag on the steps of a church in Finsbury Park, London.
What happened to Caroline Harris-Gray on Long Lost Family?
Episode three introduces us to Caroline Harris-Gray, who was found abandoned at Tottenham’s Prince of Wales Hospital in Tottenham, London, over 50 years ago.
Now a therapist, all she knew about her past was that she’d been abandoned on July 11, 1968. She says: “As I’ve grown up, I’ve got different bits of information from different people…
“I’d like to know the truth. I look in the mirror and I don’t know who I am.”
Eager to find out as much as possible, Caroline visits Haringey archives. Though there is no identifying information about her birth mother, the Tottenham Weekly Herald includes a photo from the moment she was found and details the condition in which she was left.
Breaking down at the particular way she was dressed, Caroline says: “She did care… I was dressed with love. That’s what I get from that.”
Tragically, the Long Lost Family team are unable to discover more about Caroline’s birth mother. However, Caroline believes her mother could have been an Irish-Catholic nurse with red hair, who went missing.
She admits: “My mum must have been desperate.”
Caroline Harris-Gray on Long Lost Family: ‘I don’t know who I am’
The team on Long Lost Family: Born Without Trace place Caroline’s DNA on an online database that traces birth relatives, and are able to identify Caroline’s birth father Ray.
Sadly, he passed away from cancer in 2009. But Caroline is ‘shaken’ as she discovers she has living relatives – her auntie Gloria, and her birth siblings, brother Paul and sister Tina.
Caroline learns that her father likely knew nothing about her. Fireman Ray, who was bipolar, had an ‘fling’ with Caroline’s mum before returning to his girlfriend, later wife, and settling down to raise their two children.
Paul says: “He was brilliant at his best. I feel sorry for Caroline that she missed that.”
Though Caroline’s search was pre-dominantly focused on finding her birth mother (and the search for her remains ongoing), she is overjoyed to learn about her birth father.
She says: “It’s just that blood connection, isn’t it.”
Long Lost Family: Born Without Trace concludes on Wednesday, June 28, 2023 at 9pm on ITV1. All episodes are available in ITVX.
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