The Phone Box Babies review: Hugely moving account from Ireland's Handmaid's Tale era

Irish Times

17 hours ago

Much of the story told in The Phone Box Babies (
RTÉ
One, Thursday, 9.35pm) was previously covered by Channel 4's Long Lost Families. But this fascinating account of three siblings abandoned as infants in the 1960s is nonetheless hugely moving – and, unlike the C4 take, the RTÉ documentary captures both the tragedy and joy of their experiences without yanking enthusiastically at the heartstrings.
The Phone Box Babies is also a grim portrait of Ireland during its
Handmaid's Tale
years when women were punished for their sexual activity while the men were allowed carry on regardless. In this case, the woman was Marcella Byrnes, who had a decades-long relationship with William Watson. He was married and had 14 children with his wife – and at least three with Marcella, newborns she left in phone boxes and, in one case, a car.
While aware they were adopted, the three grew up with no idea that they were 'foundlings' – babies abandoned by their parents and discovered and cared for by others. They discovered the truth by various means. 'On my birth cert, it said baby exposed on Ladywell Terrace, March, 1968,' recalls Helen Ward, who was discovered in a phone box in Drogheda, Co Louth. 'Father unknown, mother unknown. I was just so saddened.'
Eager to know more about her origins she went on
Joe Duffy
's Liveline, which is how she came into contact with the truck driver who had found her wrapped tightly and with a still warm baby bottle.
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In Belfast, meanwhile, her older sibling David McBride learned when he went looking for his birth certificate that he had been found in a car in Newry, Co Down. As with Helen, the bombshell raised more questions than answers – which led him to appear on
Davina McCall
's Long Lost Families. One DNA test later, Helen and David were meeting in Carlingford, Co Louth. 'Shock is right,' says David. 'All I knew was that people from the south of Ireland didn't like us because we were from the north. It was like the bottom had fallen out of your world.'
Siblings David McBride, Helen Ward and John Dowling. Photograph: RTÉ
There is then a further twist when the daughter of third sibling, John Dowling, is watching Long Last Families from Australia and immediately recognises that Helena and David are dead ringers for her dad. The three meet for the first time and are surprised to discover an instant connection. But there is sadness, too, as they learn both their parents have passed on.
Phone Box Babies is a well-executed tear-jerker, but also contains lots of tragedy. They discover their father, William, was a band leader who was often on the road, where he appears to have got up to more than just entertaining the public. Yet while he had a 'cake and eat it' existence, his secret paramour, Marcella, had a far less happy life.
She lived in Dublin for many decades and it turns out that she worked in a store future snooker champion
Ken Doherty
would frequent as a child with his mother. He recalls her being full of life and mischief.
Marcella was obviously haunted by having to give up her children – in her final years at a nursing home in Co Kerry she carried with her a doll, though she refused to say what it represented. Her kids feel it was her way of holding on to some connection with them. The documentary concludes with another surprise: the siblings believe there may have been a fourth child still out there – and potentially unaware of their origins.
The bleakest fact of all, however, is that, by David's reckoning, being abandoned was perhaps the best they could have hoped for. Had Marcella handed the children over to the care of the church – as was the custom – they could have been illegally exported for adoption to United States or worse.
'I think she made the right choice,' he says. 'If she had gone into one of these Magdalene laundries, life would have been so much different for her, so much different for us. We would have been treated appallingly.'
"It was still a very conservative Catholic society and that bore down most
severely upon women"
The Phone Box Babies reveals new insights into the lives and identities of three newborn babies abandoned in the 1960s in different parts of Ireland. The babies were discovered by…
— RTÉ One (@RTEOne)
Phone Box Babies can be viewed on RTÉ Player