Long Lost Family reunites biggest family ever with record 19 siblings
Harvey Shackell was left on a doorstep at Christmas as a newborn baby but has now been reunited with his 19 brothers and sisters.
What did you miss?
Long Lost Family Born Without Trace: What Happened Next has reunited a man with their biggest family on record.
Harvey Shackell previously appeared on the show and was reunited with Vera Wood, the woman who found him on her doorstep at Christmas as a newborn baby. But in the latest update on the ITV show which sees Davina McCall and Nicky Campbell help adopted and fostered children find out about their birth parents and reunite them with their families - Harvey learned he had 19 brothers and sisters.
What, how and why?
Born Without A Trace focuses on foundlings - babies found abandoned - and uses DNA to trace their relatives. Harvey Shackell was found on a doorstep on Christmas night in 1960.
Thanks to continuous investigation by the Long Lost Family team, further DNA searches found Harvey had two full sisters. Sister Cherry told host Campbell why he had been abandoned when she and her sister had not. She revealed that her father was 21 years older than his mother and that his father had several other mistresses. He had taken Harvey away the night he was born, against his mother's wishes and said he had gone "somewhere safe".
The show saw Harvey and Cherry reunited. Cherry revealed that as his father had other children and their mother had gone on to marry again, he had many other half siblings. She told him: "I'm so sorry." Harvey hugged his sister and told her: "It's not your fault. I don't want ever to think that I don't feel ill towards you or your family. It was my father's fault, and he decided to do what he did and thought, Well, I'm still here."
Cherry asked him: "They told you about your half brothers and sisters? I'm hoping we all meet and get to know each other."
McCall said: "Tracing Harvey's birth family, we discovered the largest number of half siblings we've ever found." Harvey was seen having a video call with some of his brothers and sisters. He revealed: "It's lovely being one of 19 siblings."
McCall revealed: "Harvey's new family is spread across the globe despite knowing of his existence for only a year, they've already travelled back to the UK and made sure that Harvey knows what he means to them." He added: "They tell you that they love you, and you just feel as though you're wandering around in bubble wrap."
What else happened on Long Lost Family?
Caroline Harris-Gray met her half brother and sister and her aunt on a previous series of the show after producers were able to trace her late birth father through DNA. As a baby she was found in a vegetable box in the matron’s room of a hospital in Tottenham.
A new search by the Long Lost Family investigation team found her late mother and on What Happened Next she was reunited with her half-siblings Julie and Steve.
Meeting for the first time Steve told Caroline: "If we'd known about you, we would have been looking for you all this time. We don't know what's going through her mind. I still find it very hard to believe that she's actually given you up. It's very hard because when we were growing up, she was always there for us. It upsets me a bit. I just feel upset that we didn't know you sooner." Caroline told him: "We can write that page together."
Caroline said afterwards:"I'm a whole now. I know who my dad is, my mum. So that's incredible."
Read more: Long Lost Family
Long Lost Family: Born Without Trace, ITV1, review (The Telegraph, 2 min read)
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