An 87-year-old man, who has spent most of his life thinking he had been orphaned as a baby, has finally found out the truth surrounding his birth - that he was probably born following an affair. The story of Mark Chesterfield features in the latest epsiode of ITV's Long Lost Family on Monday, July 11. The popular ITV show, presented by Davina McCall and Nicky Campbell, has shown some highly emotional moments and in a recent episode, two adopted Welsh siblings, met each other for the first time. You can read more about that here.
Proud father-of-five Mark has been trying to reclaim his identity ever since he found out at the age of 74 that he wasn’t an orphan, as he’d always believed, but had a mother who’d wanted to be part of his life. Having traced his Welsh mother's side of the family, he went to Long Lost Family to find out about his father’s side, but was in for a shock when he discovered the truth.
Fourteen years before contacting the Long Lost Family team, Mark uncovered letters from his mother that the Foundling Hospital in Hertfordshire where he spent a large part of his childhood had never shown him. “She wrote to the Foundling Hospital and enquired about my living,” said Mark, as he teared up, reading his mother’s letters. He added: “I was shocked when I saw these. I read them sometimes when I’m feeling low but it assured me that she cares. I’d always thought that I’d been thrown to the wolves.”
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Mark was given to the Foundling Hospital on July 5, 1934 when he was 11 weeks old. The hospital, which is now a school, was an institution for children whose parents were unable to care for them. Born Malcolm Bruce Wilcox, Mark’s name was changed when he was given to the hospital. “There was a lot of bad times. Very bad. We didn’t have love, we didn’t have care at all.” Mark revealed that the headmaster of the hospital was “thrilled to lash boys”. He added: “They’d cane you for anything. Very, very cruel.” At the age of 15, he left the Foundling Hospital and joined the Royal Airforce at 18. In 1955, he married his wife, Betty, and the couple had five children.
Mark discovered that his mother, who was called Eileen, had been born in Abergavenny. Upon visiting the local registry office, the 87-year-old saw a copy of his mother’s birth certificate. But that wasn’t the end of the trail.
Eileen had two younger children - Jeremy and Yolande. Mark made contact with them when he found out about his mother, 14 years ago.
Talking to Long Lost Family host Nicky Campbell, Yolande said: “We’d gone through some old family photos and we came across a postcard sized picture with a baby on it and I turned it over and it said, Malcolm Bruce.” After seeing the photographs, she spoke to her mother (who was 91 at the time), who told her that she would have been ostracised at the time for being unmarried with a baby. An emotional Yolande told Nicky that she felt that she didn’t find her brother sooner.
Having now been welcomed into his new sibling’s life, Mark was then determined to find out about his father. He said of this: “It’s like having all the information about my family tree in a box and I can’t shut the lid down, because it is not full.” It was with this, that he required help from Long Lost Family.
After extensive research, the team were finally able to give an answer to a lifelong mystery. Long Lost Family co-host Davina McCall revealed to Mark where his father came from.
She told him that his father was called Walter and he sadly died when he was 53 years old. Walter was married and had a daughter with his wife, a year before Mark was born. Davina told Mark that his father had likely had an affair with his mother, Eileen. She then told him of a cousin on his father’s side, Elaine, who desperately wanted to meet him.
The episode ends with Mark meeting his new cousin - the first person he had ever met on his father’s side. Upon meeting Elaine, he broke down in tears and told her: “I am so thankful that you provided your DNA and have given me the answer to a question I have waited 88 years for.”
At the end of the episode, an emotional Mark declared: “I knew more about me than I ever knew existed.” With that, he welcomed his new cousin into the family.
Long Lost Family airs on ITV at 9pm on Monday, July 11
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