When she was just a few hours old, Lisa was left in another baby’s pram with a note asking strangers to care for her. “The note pinned to me said, ‘Please take care of her, I cannot and never will be able to give her a good home where she will be happy. She is just born and needs a doctor,’” remembers an emotional Lisa, who was born in 1969.
Lisa’s story plays out on ITV show Long Lost Family : Born Without A Trace, which is returning for a seventh series, hosted once again by Davina McCall and Nicky Campbell. On the show, Davina and Lisa, now 55, visit Christchurch in Dorset where Lisa’s mum left her when she was just a few hours old. Spotting another child’s empty pram outside a health clinic, Lisa’s mum slid her own baby in, hoping the tiny tot would be quickly discovered by another mother who would be able to get help.
“My story started the day I was found,” Lisa tells the show. “What I need to know now is what happened before. Why was I left in another child’s pram? Who left me? I assume it was my birth mother. I just want to know the truth. I feel she must have been local to have known about the clinic.”
Returning to the street where her story started, Lisa, who had a loving childhood with her adopted parents, tries to put herself in her birth mother’s shoes “I’m trying to think how she must have been feeling, waiting for somebody to leave their pram outside and take that opportunity, waiting for that perfect moment so I would be found quickly,” says Lisa. “I can only assume that my birth mother was young, maybe frightened. I was only hours old, she must have known what she was going to do.”
Lisa was brought up in Hampshire by her adoptive family and later had a son of her own. In 2005 she accessed her adoption file and read for the first time the note she was found with. “To actually have the original note means so much to me, it’s the one thing that connects me to her. So precious,” says Lisa. “It just reminds me how much she wanted me to be happy. It takes the negativity of the abandonment away because I know she cared.”
Episode one of the new series also tells the story of baby Simon. This newborn tot was left in an outside toilet block next to a children’s home in Wales. “I was only a few hours old when I was found,” says Simon, who is now 58. “Nobody has ever come forward. As far as I know there was nothing left with me, no note, nothing, just as I was.”
Simon grew up in a village 10 miles away from the children’s home with his adopted family. His parents told him he was a foundling when he was nine years old and Simon confided in his best friend, whose mother remembered the police investigation around Simon’s birth and reassured him that every effort had been made to find his biological mother.
After growing up, Simon wed his dear wife Helen, and the couple went on to have three daughters. His adoptive parents are now dead.
After watching Long Lost Family : Born Without A Trace in 2023, Simon told Helen he would like to find his family through DNA testing. Helen gave Simon her full support but was then diagnosed with cancer, which killed her. After her death, Simon decided to go ahead. “In September, she passed away,” says Simon. “It is hard, but she’d want me to carry on.”
Simon has zero photos of himself as a baby but host Nicky and the team put that right. An old black and white newsreel from 1966, appealing for Simon’s mother to come forward, shows Simon as a baby being cared for by a nurse. “That’s the first time I’ve ever seen myself as a baby,” says Simon on the show. “I look as if I was cared for. There’s so much to take in. It’s mindblowing. I hope that by doing this now I do get my answers, because that’s what I need.”