Susanne Barrow, 50, who was discovered in a phone box in East London as a baby, has finally found both of her parents after nearly a decade of searching. She first appeared on ITV's Long Lost Family in 2024 and is returning for a follow-up episode that reveals further discoveries about her family tree.
Decade-long search ends in emotional reunion
Susanne's birth mother left a note with her, writing: "I cannot keep the baby. Please call her Maria. My maiden name is Roberts and I would like her to have it. I have no one to help me so please take care of her for me. I am going to try and find her again, even if it means going to jail."
Despite newspaper appeals, no one came forward to claim the baby. Years later, Susanne accessed her social work files and found a scribbled record of a message left on an answering phone in council housing offices when she would have been just three months old. The note stated: "There was a telephone message, a very distraught sounding woman who was crying and therefore, message very garbled, saying, I want my baby back."
Susanne was devastated to learn her mother had tried to find her again, but her plea had been ignored. When she appeared on the show in 2024, after six years of work by the ITV team, she discovered a half-brother, Brian, whom she never knew existed. They shared a father, but her mother remained a mystery.
New siblings and a mother's identity revealed
The show's head of research, Ariel Bruce, said in 2024: "Susanne's search has taken six years to date. We'd begun to give up hope, but suddenly we received notification that a relation had uploaded their DNA to one of the sites, so her search was resolved through luck more than design."
Since then, Susanne has grown close to Brian, and the pair have discovered they have up to nine more siblings, becoming close with another sister. Susanne said: "Brian is a great big brother to have. I think I've been so lucky and fortunate, and he just oozes niceness." Brian, 56, added: "We get on really well. It's a real good fit. It's everything that I wanted and hoped it would be. I still every so often have to pinch myself to remember that you know you've got a little sister here that you had in your life all this time now, and will be in your life forever."
However, Susanne's father has not agreed to meet her, despite knowing she exists. She said: "I think I've grown to accept the fact that I might never meet him, and that's been quite difficult."
Mother traced through a viewer's tip
Susanne also told co-host Davina McCall that she made more progress on the other side of her family away from the ITV cameras, likely as a result of the programme airing. She explained: "After the original program aired, a woman got in touch and said that she might have some information on my birth mother."
She went on: "I went to meet her, and she just started telling me a story about her having a baby that was given up for adoption and the circumstances. I was sat there listening, thinking, right, 'what's this got to do with me?'. And as the story unfolded, I just thought, hold on a minute. There's a lot of things that tie up with me. She said at the end 'What do you think?' And I said 'There's a lot that matches here' and she nodded. And I asked her if she made a phone call, and she started crying at that point, and said yes, that was her. So it was just, it was a moment where it felt like it was real."
The unnamed woman agreed to a DNA test and has since been positively matched as Susanne's mother. Susanne added: "It was almost like a spark igniting that had maybe just been there, you know, like when you're trying to start a car. We get on really well yeah. She's had a lot of loss in her life, and it's just so lovely that now there's this joy as well, and I've been able to sort of tell her to forgive herself. So I think she's feeling more positive and is getting used to telling people."
Susanne was one of the very first foundling cases the Long Lost Family team took on almost a decade ago. Reflecting on her journey, she said: "As a foundling, you don't ever know where you've come from. You don't get a history, a background, and so you are just unknown. I guess, in a way, I kind of feel like I've been discovered. The future is unwritten. So we'll see what happens next."
In the same episode, the team catch up with foundling Tom Yeo, left under a bench in the waiting room of Reading train station in 1965. There has been an unusual development in his story: his appearance on the previous programme has inspired a folk song. Long Lost Family: Born Without Trace – What Happened Next? airs on ITV and ITVX on Monday at 9pm.
