A new insight into the lives and identities of three newborn babies abandoned in the 1960s in Louth and Antrim will be revealed in an RTE documentary to be screened on Rte television tonight at 9.30pm. Entitled The Phone Box Babies, the programme traces their lives from the time they were discovered by random passersby – one in a car in the driveway of a doctor’s house in Belfast, and two in phone boxes in Drogheda and Dundalk – to the time when, happily, they were reunited through the science of DNA.
Drogheda native, Paul Murphy, a well known journalist and former editor of the Drogheda Independent, was working with the Evening Press at the time when he discovered baby boy John at Laurence Gate, Drogheda. He found him late at night back in 1965 in a phone booth abandoned. He is interviewed in the documentary.Â
David McBride (born 1962, to the right in pic above), John Dowling (born 1965, to the left in pic) and Helen Ward (born 1968) are featured in the programme along with some of those who found them as babies. Happily, they were all adopted and had wonderful adoptive parents who helped them make their way in the world despite the poignant circumstances of their birth and abandonment.
The documentary airing on Rte One and Rte Player uncovers details about the babies’ biological parents, where they came from and why
they were given up. Fifty years on, they discovered their connection to each other and embarked on an emotional journey to uncover their identities and become a little family. David and Helen were the first to be reunited and to their shock and joy later discovered John after he had used DNA science to trace his origins. The documentary follows the siblings as they uncover untold stories that reflect the Ireland of the past.
