Unearth the Past: A family history & genealogy podcast

S2: Ep 3: Unveiling the History of Ireland's Mother and Baby Homes with Daniel Loftus

• Dr Michala Hulme • Season 2 • Episode 3

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What if the stories of your ancestors could reveal unexpected truths and reshape your understanding of family? Join Dr Michala Hulme for a captivating conversation with genealogist Daniel Loftus. Their journey begins with the roots of genealogy, as Daniel shares his personal experience of navigating through the intricate branches of his family tree, piecing together dates and facts that reveal fascinating family stories.

As Michala and Daniel navigate through the history of Ireland's mother and baby homes, they reveal the heartbreaking stories of children who lived and died within these walls. The conversation takes a deeply personal turn as they discuss Daniel's connection to this dark chapter of history and his efforts to honour these forgotten children through "Project Infant". He offers a hard-hitting analysis of the government's role and the ongoing investigation into these institutions, shedding light on a painful past that still echoes today.

They wrap things up with a compelling discourse on finding relatives born in these homes. Daniel provides practical advice on how to find information on people who had a connection to the homes. Buckle up for a profound exploration of genealogy and the enduring legacy of Ireland's mother and baby homes.

To contact Michala, please visit https://michalahulme.com or social media @drmichalahulme

To contact Daniel, please visit https://danielsgenealogy.com or social media @danielmloftus

Project Infant is looking for volunteers to help uncover the names of the mothers and children who died in these homes from this period of Irish history. If you want to get involved, please visit: https://projectinfant.ie/volunteer


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Speaker 1:

Hello and welcome back to the World of the Past, a family history and genealogy podcast brought to you by me, dr Mikaela Hume. So how has your week been, folks? I hope it's been alright. It's been freezing, isn't it? Here in the UK? I don't know about you wherever you are in the country. If you're in the UK, I know we have a lot of listeners. In America it has been so cold. We have had snow and all sorts frosts. I am growing some potatoes which I forgot to cover, so I was going to have them for Christmas dinner, but we'll see what they look like this week.

Speaker 1:

I am joined by a very, very special guest. He is the future of genealogy and he is doing some absolutely amazing work on mother and baby homes in Ireland. Ladies and gentlemen, please give a warm podcast welcome to our guest today, daniel Loftus. Daniel, thank you so much for coming on the podcast. I really, really appreciate it. I think I followed you on all your social media channels and I know that you have quite a fan base. Let me tell you. Can I ask you how did you get into this chaos then? How did you start researching your family tree? What was your motivation?

Speaker 2:

Well, I mean well. Firstly, thank you for having me on. I suppose when I got into my family tree it would have been January 2017 and it was after a week. So not very cheery, it was after a week.

Speaker 1:

That must be the most unique thing you have ever heard of how somebody got into their family tree. Well, it was after a week.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, after a week and a very long time journey home, because where I am, I am in Cork and the wake was in Dublin. That was about two to two and a half hours and basically I was playing like 20 questions with my mom and dad, kind of quizzing them on the family, and just kind of go like well, can you tell me about Annie Mae, my granny, and or Nan Loftus, nanak Banded, you know all of that. And I, about a couple of days later, I was sitting on the couch just flicking through Google trying to find three family tree builders and I started building my tree on a site called Family Echo. It's still going and I still use it for some trees and I started building my first one there. And it's always kind of funny to go back and look what my tree looks like and kind of thinking, oh my god, you know, look at how much I've kind of gone on since then. And as it kind of kept going, you know my, you know I sat down with my mom one evening kind of, and I was, I filled out what I knew on Family Echo and I was like, okay, well, I know this, I know that and I know this. So when I did that I was kind of saying, mom, can you help me fill some of this in? And she pulled out this book and it was a nice.

Speaker 2:

The history of our family is a first anniversary present for my dad on their first wedding anniversary and on their wedding anniversary and I believe the idea is first wedding anniversary is paper and that was that was the traditional, I think gift is paper, the theme or something I don't know. But my mom gave my dad that and, lo and behold, my dad was not the one to use it, it was my mom. So she ended up sitting down with my paternal grandmother who died in 2005, and I was about one and a half. I didn't have the family tree bugged us yet and I don't know if I was talking a whole lot and could ask very long sentences about tell me about Nana's dad, you know different things like that, yeah. And so my mom was basically kind of getting all the info from, like her family and had this big nice tree about you know her family and how much she's done, and it was definitely kind of helpful for me kind of getting started because the game he's done the work from and you know dates.

Speaker 2:

She kind of gave kind of as time went on I was able to kind of disprove it because dates we didn't seem to really care a lot about. I know that kind of seems kind of quite rude, but kind of we generally didn't seem to or, like you know, dates weren't a big deal. So we ended up. So we always celebrate. My grand mom and Nana lost his birthday on September 13th but it was only when my dad had to renew something that he had to get a copy of his mother's birth certificate. And they rang up the GRO and said general register office and it said you know, we're looking for the birth certificate and on.

Speaker 2:

September 13th and the year and they general register office, run them back and said well, we didn't exactly find one for September the 13th, but we found one for October the 13th, would you like a copy? So we got the copy and lo and behold, thanks to the info that Nana lost, us have written down the book. We confirmed it was her and she's October the 13th, so it's like celebrate her birthday on September the 13th but, her official birthday is October the 13th.

Speaker 2:

Oh, my goodness. So a combination of all that would have been probably how I got in and just trying to especially like Granda Callum, who was the brother of the person we went to the wake. So he died January 2017 and then my granddad would die in that May and kind of he was in hospital a lot and kind of he wasn't talking a whole lot and it was hard to watch but kind of you know, you know he's very interested that I was doing a family tree and you know he's very glad. You know, and we just kind of asked him you know my mom? Because it's kind of here and sort of going he was. She's kind of like you know who were your parents and you know he just you could just hear him say and mom got close to him, you could just like hear him say you know Patrick Cleary and Kathleen Foley and kind of, um, you know I it was.

Speaker 2:

You know that was kind of a very big help because that helped me get back on that bit and I was doing all my own research at a subscription to roots island and I was looking at all the lovely birth certificates and sorry baptisms on there and Obviously I was very new to generalities. So at the time, what I didn't realize until very much later, I was making loads of mistakes from the point of I had said, oh, this woman, 19, born in 1910, was my great grandmother, because it was the only one showing up. I didn't know about our synergy die at that point. So I was going off this was, this is fact, this is my one. Yeah, this is it. Yeah, I'll spoil it for you and say no, it wasn't no. So I kind of I kind of made a number of mistakes at the start, but kind of you know if you didn't make mistakes?

Speaker 2:

are you really learning on?

Speaker 1:

mother and baby homes and can you just tell me, yeah, how did you get into that? So what was you? You know, how did you sort of come about that research? What was it that really got you interested in it?

Speaker 2:

Yeah, so this, but I can actually say in full because I Wanted to make sure that I could say it before because I'd used to kind of like redact some things or kind of would Change some things, but this will be the full story from start to finish. So about a year Year you, almost two years ago, I'd say I got a text from a cousin, mine in London, and he had said, because obviously I'm the family historian that people will come to me if there is a surname that we share, and of course his surname was Loftus, my own surname and said, hey, I'm going to a band that had, you know, oh, they had the most random name, I can't think about the top head, I should remember it but kind of he said I'm going to see this band and they had written a song about the tomb mother and baby home. And the tomb mother and baby home was a Just a brief introduction, was kind of it was a home that ran from 1925 to 1961 and if you've heard of tomb, the main reason why you would have heard of that is because there's been a mass grave found in the remnants of or kind of the kind of what would remain of a former septic tank, as as found on an ordinance survey map by Catherine Coralist, and it garnered international attention and because of the way that these children were interred and I use that word very, very loosely, and there was one, loftus, that died at the home and he wanted to see if we were related. Long story short, we weren't. We were a little. We were a little far at the beaten track. We come from around a place called Bahola, which is near Kilchima, a little bit away from it, and, and this one came from Kala, which is on the Coast, kind of kind of at the top, male almost, and so I kind of did a little bit of, you know, googling about it and didn't really kind of Thought, you know, oh, I'll go back and have a look at that something.

Speaker 2:

But even before that, about six years ago I've written about this before on my blog, but kind of my mother is adopted and we didn't really know a whole lot. She didn't really know a whole lot about where she came from and I can remember it was when I was still in my first secondary school and I remember telling the kind of s&a that I was friendly with and she's this people only friend of that school, anyway, she. So we got my mom's original actual birth cert, you know, in the post. So she wasn't the name she is now. She was the name she had back when she was born and the location of birth said best for a house. So I was kind of thinking what in the name of heck is best for a house? And I did a bit of googling and the first thing I saw was the BBC article about the history of it, and it was a modern baby home, so it was the same kind of umbrella that Tume had fallen under too. And then I thought, okay, you know, these seem to have come up a lot and this home ran from 1922 to 1998, was one of the longest running ones, and my mother was one of them. And the one thing that I found with this one is there were 923 children who died there over the course of the 76 years, and then you had, then you had 859 of them are still missing. No one knows where they're buried and it was that that kind of you know, you know, beating to me like my mom could have been number 924, like she could easily not survived it and we weren't really sure, kind of you know how long she spent there, for it was two months, but kind of in I'll get to that bit more but kind of based on the fact that mom knew she's. She was born late November and she was adopted mid January. So kind of we thought, oh, she's probably there for about two months, so kind of you know, she survived, you know being there. And Then we I Mean I Gone looking more into modern baby homes and the one thing I looked for weirdly, I don't even know why I looked for it, but kind of the one thing I looked for was the database of those that died in modern baby homes, because I was curious, you know, curiosity and all that and and there wasn't one.

Speaker 2:

And I thought, okay, where are the names for these children? Then and the journal had published the names of the tune babies and the Irish examiner had done their whole front page in January 2021 of the names of the best for babies. And I thought, okay, but how many more were there? And the commission of investigation into modern baby homes looked at 18 and I couldn't find names for the other 16. So I thought, okay, you know, let's see if I can have a go. And I went looking at. You know, I picked a house off the list and that was Kilrush nursery in County Claire, which ran for only 10 years, from 1922 to 32, and I Kept thinking, oh, I can find the names, like these death entries are right here, in plain sight. I'm looking at them and I Call because I'd always wanted to do a project.

Speaker 2:

At some point I had started doing a one-place study and found it might necessarily been the team for me to do it. Just Personally, I didn't think that kind of that was the best thing for me to do. I just didn't click with me or whatever, and I Thought, you know what, I'll give this a try. And you know I started off kind of researching. I spent three days flat, like three full days, from like more until evening, researching the children that died in the Kilrush nursery, and that was the first addition to project infant. And I thought you know what I want to. I want to do more and I want to kind of, you know, remember all of them because there were 9,000 children that died supposedly in the 18 institutions that were investigated. So like I only had, I think, about 270 I think it's actually 270 now because I found one today who died up in Dublin.

Speaker 2:

But kind of looking through, I thought there's still so much more to do and I quickly found that there's still, you know, a lot of the government having done or, in my opinion, for doing, the bare minimum in some cases. And that's where I wanted to kind of, you know, step up and try and do you know something for this? Like I'm not getting paid, like this is all my own time and my own kind of funds, kind of funding this, and I honestly wouldn't change it. So we ended up so obviously they were the main catalyst that you had so many children that were missing that had been found, the names of a lot of them weren't known, my mom being born there, and the thought, oh, could that last us in tune be related to me, even though they weren't. So that that was the kind of main things.

Speaker 2:

And then that all kind of tumbled Into this big research project that I thought I probably would have given up in a month, but it is now 16 months In a day's time. It's currently the 15th of November, so 16 months tomorrow will be. When I started it and it's honestly been the most kind of, I suppose, intense 16 months, kind of trying to, you know, build up the content that's on it and just trying to research these names, because every time that I looked at a government statistic report, obviously they weren't going to name every child in the report but kind of they didn't make an effort to name any of them and I thought, well, that's not right. Like these children, you know they existed, they were people and they deserve to be remembered appropriately, not just by a number. And you know, all of that kind of tumbled into me wanting to do this database and right now I think we're up to 3,700 odd people on the site.

Speaker 1:

Wow, dan. For anybody who's not from this country, right, who has never heard of a mother and baby home, can you just explain what they are?

Speaker 2:

Yeah, I can.

Speaker 2:

So mother and baby homes were mainly set up in 1922 was kind of when you find most of them setting up and starting up Most, not all, but they were kind of. I suppose the general thing was the people were calling for separate institutions for mothers and their children to be, because typically before that they were housed in workhouses where you could have, you know, illness, you have all sorts of people in it and they wanted, I think kind of the general idea was to kind of have a separate place for these women and children to kind of like be raised and at the start kind of I think people thought it was a very good idea and kind of when the first one was kind of I suppose the first one would have been the first one might have actually been pellets town, which is in Dublin City in an area called Cabra, but these homes were meant to. Now it also depends on actually what kind you're on about, because you've got mother and baby homes, you've got Magdalen homes, you've got all sorts of ones Children's homes, orphanages, you know, depends which one you're on about, but mother and baby homes would be typically for women, in a sentence would be for women to give birth to their children and it was typically unmarried mothers. However, they were kind of places for married women to give birth to, but nine times out of 10, it was probably an unmarried mother who was going into it and obviously at the time, getting pregnant and having a child outside of marriage was seen as a sin and kind of the idea was that you know my, you know the idea in the eyes of the church was that my own grandmother, who had my mom, had sinned by having a child outside of marriage and you know the general kind of forced around that was for penitence. So you know, for women to pay for these sins, and that often took the form of hard labor while being pregnant, so scrubbing floors, doing loads of cleaning, like whatever it is and they could be in there for a number of months.

Speaker 2:

So I think my own, I think my grandmother, was in there for maybe three months and typically you would be greeted and this is based off of kind of other accounts that I've heard from people. You would be, you'd go in and you would be greeted by the nun and you would be given a house name. So say, if I always call my grandmother Anna whenever I'm referring to her, because I think it's still sensitive to kind of bring it up. So I kind of give her an alias and I'm referring to her. So if Anna was her name, she's given a house name which wasn't her own one. So for three months of her life Anna was her own, her dean.

Speaker 1:

So why did you do that, dad? Do you know why they gave them those names?

Speaker 2:

They gave them because they didn't want the other women to know who each other were, who each other were. So it was basically you were somebody else. And there was one I was at the best for a commemoration this year, giving a very short talk and more of a speech, and there was one mother who was there in Resverand in the 1980s and how she was, how she kind of saw being given that house name as being stripped of her identity. I think her name was Deirdre and she was given Claire or something.

Speaker 1:

I was going to say, when you go in the workhouse and you give up your clothes and you put on the workhouse uniform, that identity of you and what you wear went, didn't it, and you put on this uniform and now you're part of an institution. So it's like when you come in, your name is gone, your identity is gone and you have this area. Yeah.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, and typically you'd be in there for a number of months and potentially even a period of time after the birth has occurred. So I don't know how long my grandmother was still in Bethlehem after my mom was born, but she might have been there for a week or two after. And it was basically, you know, you were meant to nurse a child. You were given maybe like 20, 30 minutes to go in, you know, breastfeed the child and then go out again, like you were not a bond with this child. And kind of slow.

Speaker 2:

That would have been a general idea with how most of these things worked and then they would either be you would typically be adopted out.

Speaker 2:

However, there has been evidence and many proven cases that basically these babies were sold abroad, so typically they were sent to the US, and the case if you ever watch it is the movie Filomena, with Judy Dench and Steve Kogan, based on the true story of a woman named Filomena Lee talking about her son, anthony, who was born in Seanus Abbey and he was sent off to America to live there and, I think, became Michael Hess and Michael Heiss I can never get the pronunciation right, so I apologize.

Speaker 2:

So, and you know I won't get the whole thing away but it's definitely worth a watch as it is based on a true story and kind of how, I suppose, how women were treated in the homes and how there was still obviously a stigma around you know, being unmarried and having a child, and I address now, in July of 2022, there was a birth information and tracing act brought into law and that October is the day before my birthday, so the 3rd of October 2022, there was a service called Birkinfoie, which is a service for Tusla, the Ireland family.

Speaker 2:

So, like you know, social worker will try and you know, get your files from when you were in the modern baby home or whatever institution you may have been in, so whatever info they can give on you. And we got my mums. So we requested in January. We didn't do it straight away because we weren't ready just yet. So we did January 11th and we got her files back September the 8th, which is near enough eight months. It was 240 days, nearly eight months after, you know, we put in the request and in theory we should have gotten them in 30 days.

Speaker 1:

I was going to say was that is that because there's so many to process and it took so long? Or was there something to do with it?

Speaker 2:

Maybe, I think the general reason and the general explanation was that there is a massive backlog. I mean, why wouldn't there be? Because this is a groundbreaking law to try and get you know for adoptees, to try and get their info. Because it was basically you know and I hate to put this more up there, but it was like you know, you were trying to par info from from like the dead almost sometimes. You know you might have had better luck with that than you would have had to kind of go through hurdles and like and like.

Speaker 2:

For my mom we got her file back and I was both horrified equally horrified and surprised at the kind of what was in it. So it was basically a PDF file with about 30 pages in it. Half of it was database stuff. So I don't know why it took from April to September to compile all of it. If it was all in a database it should have been very easy to find. So it wasn't. And we got this 30 page file back and in it was letters of correspondence between religious orders. So you had the nun in Bezra and the nun in Stimulon, which is where my mom was sent top to. So we thought she was in Bezra for two months, like I said earlier, she's actually in there for two weeks and then was sent off to Stimulon to be adopted by my grandparents, collin and Kathleen, and they I mean it was surreal because later on it was letters between my grandmother, anna, and the nuns and they were basically praising her for not being greedy and wanting to kind of take my mom. Now she she had willingly given her up for adoption. She knew that she wasn't going to be able to give her the life that she deserved, so it was not like for separation in my mom's case.

Speaker 2:

So and honestly, I was, I was crying, basically reading these letters between my mom or my, and between Anna and the religious orders, because it was basically, you had, you know, I, I, I trust you have the codes that I gave when I went there and you know to put the, the little medal or something that I also gave on, the little jacket that I, that was part of the clothes and you know it was, it was.

Speaker 2:

It was hard. Anna had gone up a couple of times to actually visit my mom while she was in small and before she was adopted, and the last one was saying you know, basically, you know, I can't bring myself to kind of go back again and I was and I just saw a whole Anna. You know it was so hard to read and, like you know, me and my mom, we were, we were, we were, we were, we were crying and hugging at the same time and we were just trying to. You know, I mean, I was kind of too more of the crying, but kind of it was just kind of so hard to kind of see it written in the in a letter.

Speaker 2:

Like oh you've got me and, oh sorry, I was trying to admit there's a little more like art, but it was going to take a doctor anyway and she. So that was kind of the harder part of it, but kind of the more bit that made me a little more worried or more horrified, as opposed to the right word that I had. It was a bit more colorful language. But basically, on the baptismal register, because my mom was baptized at Bess for a couple of days after she was born she had. So in the baptismal register it gave the name of, you know, my grandmother, which we knew. So it said Anna, but her real name and you know. It said where she was from and you know where she was baptized and when and by who. But there was one field at the end where it said it gave my father's name, their marriage date, the church and the postcode they got married in, in there, black and white, and my mom's name. Now, and I should also just disclose this, they didn't get married in Ireland, they got married in London. So you can imagine that I'm questioning how they first of all got that info, because it was one in a different country and, two, she was only in their care for two weeks. So how they had. When my mom got married to my dad, you know and I just and I'm not going to give away their own info here but, like you know, when they got married they didn't have a marriage announcement, there was no online thing. So, like there was no way, they I would have thought they could have found out unless and like my mom and someone suggested me, oh what, if? What? If? You know, she had to get proof of her baptism. She's baptized. The baptism she had was under her name. Now it wasn't under her birth name. She only knew her birth name a couple of years ago. So she couldn't have turned around and said, oh, my name is black, but my actual name at first because I'm adopted was this, and then they could go back and go like, oh, this is it. So they managed to somehow find that out and I just find it so ridiculous that they turn around and say, oh well, we don't actually know, but it was 859 children and it was. Oh, it was unbelievable because it made me angry, like I get queries saying oh, I'm just out of finding out that I know my mother had a baby in a modern baby home. Where do I go? Like this isn't well documented in terms of. So what I do is I take. I take queries from people who say I found out that my mother had a baby in a modern baby home and can you help me? So, kind of I try.

Speaker 2:

I've gotten a few queries where some people have come to me looking to try and find the names of the children who were born there. And, granted, these would have happened probably in the 30s or the 40s or the 50s or whenever the children were born. And the biggest kind of help for that has been the Irish Civil Registration Index, and I'll tell you why Because more often than not it will give the mother's maiden name and if it was an unmarried mother so let's say, john Smith was born in Bezra John Smith's mother's maiden name would also be Smith. So you'd be able to. There's a few telltale signs that you'd look out for to try and establish kind of what child is which. Now, I never say you know, I am 100% sure that this is the one I give. Okay, based on the criteria you gave me, these are the ones that I am coming up that fit the criteria, so, and then it's up to this person that they want to go and find the search themselves and buy it. But what I have done more recently is I've looked into people who've given me query or I've gotten queries from people who know stuff about their birth parents or parents and want to know more. So I can talk about this now that it's over and done with and I got permission.

Speaker 2:

But there was one case and it was for a 94 year old adoptee and she, she's so sweet. I was just about to leave the best book in the nation and this lady came up to me and said you might be the man I'm looking for and I thought, okay, let's see where we go. And she brought up her 94 year old mother and she was saying you know, can you tell them? Can you tell him? You know what you know? And you know I gave him my contact information and we chat, chat for a while trying to you know, just try and write up what info we had. And you know, I got this, this and this and, long story short, I was able to give her back up to her grandparents in terms of family tree and I was able to give her and it was so great because I was thinking I need to get this done.

Speaker 2:

I want to give her answers because any adoptee would probably be hitting roadblocks with Tusla. We hit roadblocks, I hit roadblocks. So, like you know, it's a, it's a, it's a common thing and I don't think there's any fault of the social workers there and I think that's kind of what some people might attribute it to. I think it's because it's a backlog and kind of the I think, unrealistic parameter they set and thinking, oh yeah, we will get it done in 30 days. I think that was unrealistic from the start and I think they were already up against it from the very beginning.

Speaker 1:

And I just asked you a quick question, dan. Right, yeah, go for it. There's probably somebody listening to this who has just got a certificate come through their door and they found out that they have a relative that was born in a mother and baby home. So where do they go, right? Where do they start looking, what, what, what do you do if this comes up in your family tree?

Speaker 2:

I was frameless from the point of if I didn't know Anna's name and we discovered, oh, this is your mother's name, so Ibra gave the name. So let's say Anna Jeffries that's not her actual name, anna Jeffries and she was 28 or 27 and you'd Anna would actually give a residence of where the person was. So she was in Waterford and I'm not going to go any more to the city than that, but I was able to kind of now, thankfully Anna's name was very rare so it didn't take me long to find them. But what people come to me is saying you know, oh, I only have a couple of details and you know, often it's small details and as serious as it sounds, it's often the kind of things that someone might consider irrelevant. That might help figure it out. For example, you know it kind of like from stuff from family stories. You know it might have said you know, oh, someone had loads of sisters and if I'm finding a family with. So again, civil registration index is handy because if you go and family search or find my past or ancestry or whatever site you want to use to look at this collection you can look at. So you could do okay.

Speaker 2:

So I'm looking for Anna Jeffries, mother's maiden name Kotlin, and you can look at oh, here's one, and again there was only one person for Anna, but you can just get rid of the name Anna and then you can look for any children with the Jeffrey surname but the mother maiden surname Kotlin, and that kind of brought up a number of other siblings for that person and then you can take oh well, yeah, it did say that you know that Jane had two sisters or Anna brother, and you know it's small details like that that can help you refine it down with the best ones.

Speaker 2:

If it gave you an age, it gave you an idea of where you were looking. So if you had a rather common name, you could kind of refine it down to maybe like a three years. So you could kind of go maybe, let's say, the person born 1945, so you can kind of do 1944, 45 and 46, kind of, if you weren't exactly sure. So, because sometimes the age might not necessarily be correct, but honestly it's the locale that will help. So a combination of the name, the year or the age and the locale of where the person is can often help you to find the person. Now, it's not always as easy as that. But that's kind of it depends on the case.

Speaker 1:

And what happened then to Anna? So obviously she heard your mum. Your mum goes in the home. Did you find out, like, did she remarry? Or you know like, did she have any more kids? Were you curious to find out what had happened after that point?

Speaker 2:

She did. Now again, I had run the piece by my mum because I had written about this before, and she said, yeah, that's fine, because I'm not giving away any identifying information. So after my mum was born, my mother, anna, had another child, who I'll call Rochelle, and then later had married and then had two more, eric and Eve, and we had met Eric, eve, anna and Rochelle. And it was brilliant because Wow.

Speaker 1:

So you got to meet Anna. Anna did you?

Speaker 2:

I did, wow, anna is alive and well, you know, I got a photo of my mum, rochelle, anna, eric and Eve all standing together and it was so weird because you could actually see the resemblance.

Speaker 2:

Like my mum is a spitting image of Anna, like if you kind of held a photo of the two of them up together you could easily see, you know, how similar they are.

Speaker 2:

And it was so weird because you know, like we've good relationships with, like my mum's a doctor family and you know we wouldn't change that and but kind of the weird part was they didn't necessarily look anything like us and you, just as irrelevant as it is, you know, you would kind of think you know, well, you know they don't necessarily look like me, but when you sit Anna and mum next to each other it's spooky and like it was amazing, like initially, kind of, and honestly they're they've all got their WhatsApp group now and they're all chatting and it's so lovely and like they're all keeping in contact and it's honestly.

Speaker 2:

And I'm co writing the piece with my mum at the moment. But one quote I did want to share is so like you know, it's sort of like you know as much as you want the relationship so like like a modern daughter bond. It won't be there because of the I'm not trying to hide your brother 50 years separation. You know it like. Because of that, you know it won't quite be a traditional thing, but they'll still be great.

Speaker 1:

That's all right, yeah, but that's the thing that I think that's okay. I think I work with a lot of unknown parentage cases and I think people think that you know, like, what sort of relationship are we going to have if we find that person? What sort of relationship are we going to have with our new siblings that we didn't know about before? And yeah, and whatever form that takes, you know whether you speak every day, like I have a client, I found his birth family and he speaks to his half sister, you know every day, right, but some people that doesn't work like that and I think, whatever relationship you find, you will find a relationship that works for you and I think that is the most important thing. Can I just ask one more question, dan? Right, so obviously, so obviously, you've found Anna now.

Speaker 2:

Yeah.

Speaker 1:

Is your mum keen to know more about a biological father, or she not interested? And the other question I was going to ask you in all of this is has DNA helped on this journey?

Speaker 2:

Okay, this is going to be fun to answer. So we do know my mom's actual father's name and I use Smith quite a lot as an example, which is ironic. I had always said to mom I now call it karma and genealogy, and why I call it that is because I jokingly said to my mom oh, forget your file if we ever find out your dad's name. Imagine if they were Smiths. And I kid you not. When we scroll down to the page that gave father's name, his name was Smith and I almost thought, well, that's me done.

Speaker 1:

Then Well, I was going to say they're not from Cavern, are they? Because all my family is Smith from Cavern.

Speaker 2:

No, Waterford. No matter how hard we try, be it my mom's adopted family or her birth family, they never leave Waterford. Right apparently they're stuck in Waterford. Yeah, so we do know his name. I don't know if my mom wants to kind of go there.

Speaker 2:

I think she kind of wants to kind of take a bit of time to process it, because I think we're still both processing it even today. This is information that my mom had never had access to for years. And for what? Like you know, I really hate it because the common air that you get with adoptees is they're being evangelized again as if they don't know best and kind of with my mom, like you know, she deserved to know. Like you know, imagine if you had a health scare and you can't get that information because it's locked away and, like you know, it's abysmal. Personally, but like with with my biological grandfather, just for the sake of this, we'll call him I almost said one name, which is actually my name we're calling Chris. So Chris had, from what we can gather, he married and had a number of other kids and from what I can potentially find from my DNA matches is I found, my more of his grandchildren. So more first, well, half first cousins of mine, and so with the the.

Speaker 2:

St.

Speaker 1:

Timorgans coming up quite high. Then, dan, on these potential relatives.

Speaker 2:

I think one of them might have been. I think one of them was 700 and the other was 500.

Speaker 1:

Wow, yes, they're pretty high yeah.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, so kind of, from what we can tell, they're my first cousins and they're my mom's niece and nephew. So you've got a Jeremy and Catherine. We'll call them. Yeah, and they are kind of the closest matches on my dad's or on her dad's side. But there's kind of one person because we weren't contacting anyone just yet, because we were kind of thinking, ok, how do we want to approach this?

Speaker 1:

I was going to say, like, have they seen the matches and reached out to you? Because I've been reaching out to quite a few people and it's I always find it the most awkward thing ever. Like sending an initial email and often if it's a high centimorgan match and I have a good idea, or I think I have a good idea of how that person is related to somebody that I'm researching, I kind of want them to figure it out for themselves.

Speaker 1:

So I'm like oh, have you seen you are a match with so and so. Oh, that's a really high number. Have you thought about you know? I kind of want them to sort of go.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, I get, are they my?

Speaker 1:

auntie rather than me. Yeah, oh, by the way, I found you. I found you a new auntie. Have a. Have a nice night. What you haven't eaten pizza yet. Just like your granddad was unfaithful. Yeah, you know. Can you imagine? Yeah.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, I mean, and that was the thing because we weren't exactly sure how we were going to approach it. So, in terms of Jeremy and Catherine, Jeremy has not logged in since we've taken our tests. We both did it together. I felt so sorry for my mom because she had to do it again because the first one it didn't go through right.

Speaker 1:

So, like I was there and like mom's, like I was going to say it's like that's happened to one of my clients this week, right, so I went to go back to it and now so I've been doing the DNA of somebody who again is coming on the podcast and he doesn't know who his dad is, and I was like, look what I said. Obviously my normal protocol is that if I find who your dad is, I would obviously not want to announce that on a podcast, yeah, so yeah, you know but he, because he's like TV, is like no, no, it's fine, I'm more than happy, just tell me on the podcast will change his name.

Speaker 1:

I was like are you sure? Like you know that'll be the first time you're going to hear it? Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, no, that's fine. So I was like I mean, it depends on your decision, yeah, it's your decision, but anyway. So I got a message about it it's the first time it's ever happened basically saying that they couldn't extract his DNA.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, that was the same thing. And mum was like this better work, yeah. And, like you know, kind of thinking this better work this time or else I'm not doing it. I'm taking it as a sign to not do it and I'm thinking, please go through with it. Yeah, and I'm. I'm really glad that she went through it, because there was one match, because I was going through my matches and I thought, oh cool, we're screwed here, you know we're not getting anywhere.

Speaker 2:

So there was one match, who I'll call Mary, and was shown up as a sixth, at eighth cousin, as 11 centimordial. So I was kind of thinking, oh great, you know, I literally went through top to bottom. What can I find? On my mom's, however, second to third, so there is a very significant difference. So I'm really glad that she had, you know, went for it again and it went through, actually with Mary, because Mary's on my mom's dad's side. She reached out, ok, yeah, and she I kind of said, hi, you know, I don't seem to know where you fit in. Can you help me figure it out?

Speaker 2:

I was sort of saying because I just went when I, fairly comprehensive, found a tree and thought, oh, dang, like you know, this, this, this, this might not go well, and the thing we just ended up saying was so, like you know, oh, mom's adopted was when I, exactly like she is, and we didn't really know much about that family tree and kind of you know, they went back and forth and kind of you know I didn't still extend any information, but one of the things that kind of me and one kind of one like, oh, kind of Mary, kind of said, you know, you look really familiar and like you know, you really look like you know. They didn't give a name but you really look like one of my close family members and we thought like oh, that could be, and I'm. I told mom I don't think she said to yeah, but kind of I was, I was tempted to kind of tell her like OK, to tell us who, like you know, ok, ok, it gives a little yeah, yeah, ok, to give us a little yeah, yeah, I kind of give us a little yeah, but we haven't sent it yet. But kind of Mary's been the only kind of cousin that has actually reached out on that side, on on a side, no one, but there actually aren't very many matches on her. So kind of actually there aren't very many matches on my mom's at all.

Speaker 2:

Kind of my dad has doubled what my mom has, practically Daniel Loftus.

Speaker 1:

Can I just say a huge, huge thank you for coming on the podcast. When he came on, by the way, folks, when he first logged on, I said to him just let you know, this is probably not like the normal podcast. She do Like. I have the naughtiest dog in the world and let me tell you he has lived up to his reputation during this podcast. He has a hairbrush, he's ripped up an envelope. He was humping my arm for a good 20 minutes while Daniel was saying something like really quite emotional. Yeah, he's been an absolute nightmare, a nightmare. So if you are coming on this podcast, just be warned, you know.

Speaker 1:

I don't know what's going to happen. I don't know what's going to happen, dan. Can I just say so? I don't know how I'm going to do this. This podcast at the moment is an hour and a half. I have to somehow magically get this to half an hour. We have chatted on for that long. I really hope you Sorry, no, no, no, oh, my goodness, no way.

Speaker 2:

I was kind of thinking I've probably talked on for a bit. No, we have the chop at a couple of bits.

Speaker 1:

Yeah but can I just say thank you so much and I hope you, I hope you, come back on at some point and we'll do a part two, because, oh God, I definitely do. Oh, please, come back on and do a part two, especially, like, because we've spoke about the amazing research. You do so if you've got any updates or even if you've got a project on the go and you know you happy and you want to come on and talk about it. Dan, please come back on because I've had a great time. I've had a great time. I'm glad. Yeah, I've laughed. I've cried to the first person that's actually made me cry in a podcast. So, yeah, thank you. I've laughed, I've cried. You know it's been a great, you know a great emotional rollercoaster. So, dan, thank you. Thank you so much. Now can I just say a huge thanks again to everybody for listening. I really, really appreciate it. I love it when you send me messages and send me tweets and message me through my website. If you don't know what my website is, it's wwwmakaylahuecom. Find me on social media.

Speaker 1:

Dr Makayla Hume Remember Makayla's got no in it. My mum was weird. She thought she was being quirky. It's ruined my life, but yeah, if you need to get a hold of me, please do. If you want to get a hold of Dan, I've put. If you read the description of the podcast, I put a link to Dan's social media and also through his website and also through the brilliant work he's been doing on Mother and Baby Homes, which is absolutely fascinating, and I hope it comes back on to talk about that because it's a really great project that he's working on there. I hope to see you again next week. Have a good week researching. Goodbye.