Foundling

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Hello, I'm Alexi and you're listening to the slow newscast from the observer. This week

is very special because we're starting a new six part series called Foundling. You can hear

the first episode here and you can access the whole series by searching for Foundling on the

Tortoise Investigates feed, on Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts.

Origin stories have always been important. You can't understand why Achilles died without

knowing that his mother held him by the heel when she dipped him in the river sticks.

And you can't understand why Bruce Wayne became Batman without knowing that his parents were

murdered. But you don't have to be a superhero to know how important it is to understand your

past. We don't know what happens in our earliest years. We can't remember it. We have to be told

it by our parents or grandparents where we come from, who we are. This second hand information,

this collective memory helps piece together the jigsaw puzzle of our own character.

But what happens if we have no origin story, if we grow up with a blank slate?

It's something most of us struggled to think about, even adopted children can usually request

access to their birth records. But what about a newborn baby found in a country lane in Suffolk,

six pounds and three ounces wrapped in a plastic bag? A Foundling? Even the word seems

decennzian, a relic of a time when children were thought of very differently.

What kind of journey does such a person have to go on to discover her past?

This is the question posed by Foundling, our new series by Lucy Greenwell and Katie Gunning.

Here's episode one, I hope you enjoy the show.

You wouldn't just drop it off in the middle of the countryside.

And hope to the best.

Yeah, there's obviously something fishy about the story.

So the story didn't ring true, but it didn't quite work out why for ages.

Yeah, it didn't really wash.

I'm sitting around a table with my sisters. We're drinking tea and going over a memory from when

we were kids. It's something we've been through so many times over the years.

We were like, why did you stop? Because she was driving. We said, why did you stop to look what it was?

Because she said it was in a plastic bag. And she said, I saw it on...

You see, this is a story my family can never quite put to rest.

Maybe every family has one of these. It's that thing that always comes up when you're together.

Someone mentions a name, a place, or a particular memory. And there you all go again.

The story gets told and retold. Details are debated. Bits get embellished.

And over time, it becomes family folklore.

We talk about it over the years. It's so weird and we used to guess where it was on that road.

But the thing is, this isn't our story. It belongs to someone else.

The £6.3 and a half ounce baby is doing well in hospital after being dumped in an

orange and white plastic bag around mid-morning yesterday.

A baby girl who appears from nowhere on Tuesday the 6th of October, 1987, lying on a patch

of damp grass beside a remote country lane in Suffolk.

The vest is white, sleeveless and much too big for her. She's lying half wrapped in a

Sainsbury supermarket bag like a makeshift plastic cradle.

Late that morning, a passing driver spots the baby. She's picked up, wrapped in a jumper,

and taken to hospital. A small miracle.

For years, I've thought about that day and wondered about the baby and the mother who left her there.

Because right from the start, there were questions.

Is it just like, how did it get there? How did it get there into this place in the middle of the

fields in the middle of nowhere? We lived nearby. I was just eight at the time, but even at that

young age, we knew that this real-life mystery happening on our doorstep was a big deal.

I can still remember where I was when I was told about the abandoned baby. I can see myself now,

I'm walking out of the black school gates, the sun's on my face. Our nannies come to pick me up

and she's standing there in the car park. You won't believe what happened today, she says.

And what she recounts, the lane, the baby, the passing driver, it feels like a scene from a film.

Except it's a film that, to this day, my sister's and I still can't quite make sense of.

When we got older, we were like, she found a baby. She what? How do you find a baby?

We talk about it occasionally.

That evening, we watched the six o'clock anglia news. Our big boxy telly lived on a tall chest of

drawers and I had to crane my neck a bit to see it. When you saw the baby, what did it look like?

Very happy. It was girly and smiling. It was, it was, it had less.

No one knows how the baby came to be there, but we feel like detectives because we're close to

the story. We actually know the woman who found the baby. She's our friend's nanny. And now,

there she is, being interviewed on TV. It's feet and hands with blue-ish, but it was perfectly

happy, very sweet. So what did you do after you got into the car? Well, I dropped my jumper

and about this point because I knew that you had to keep babies, you know, keep them warm,

drove down all the way down the road again just to turn around and sort of sped back and thought

the garden was going to be at home. He'll know what to do because I didn't know where to go next.

The news reader tells us that the midwives at the hospital give the baby a name, Heather.

For years, we focus on that day, that grassy verge, the baby. Over time, the story of the

Suffolk Foundling is rubbed so smooth by years of retelling, I can no longer get a firm grip on it.

And you, born, believed to have been delivered in the last 24 hours has been abandoned,

outside South Tugranong Fire Station in Canberra. And every so often, stories about babies being

abandoned crop up. A woman has been arrested after a newborn baby was found dead in a plastic bag

in London last week. This is an epidemic after this is now the third baby found either abandoned

or dead within the last month. Each time it happens, I think of that Suffolk baby. Who's was she?

What happened to her? And occasionally, when I search online for child abandonment,

I find there's very little to explain what happens to the babies who are left. And there's even less

about their mothers. I've spent decades as a radio producer researching true stories,

and yet after all this time, I know no more about the Suffolk baby than I did as a child.

So I make a decision to go back, back to the Suffolk of 1987, to try and answer the questions

that have nought at me for years. What happened to that baby? What does it do to you to know that

you were left abandoned? And perhaps even more intriguing for me are the questions about her mother.

Who would carry a beautiful healthy baby girl to a lonely country lane and just dump her there

in a plastic bag? When I was eight, it had felt like a beguiling who done it. Later, I'd imagined a more

nuanced story of trauma and loss. But what I've uncovered over the last year is a story which is

much more troubling than anything we dreamt of as children. It's about family. I think I'll always

be angry because you constantly think in, could it have ended differently, had things been different?

About motherhood. I don't think I've still fully accepted it to be honest. I still a part of me that

thinks this can't be happening, it's not real. And about how secrets can, in the end,

bubble up and destroy things. Life's always come out, don't I? Skeletons are always going to come

out eventually. I'm Lucy Greenwell and from Tortoise Investigates and the Observer, this is Foundling.

Episode 1. On the Verge.

Do you sort of start imagining who your mum and dad might be? Did you build up for little

fantasies about the kind of people they might have been at any stage? You always hope that it was

this lovely love story that they just couldn't be together, you just wish. Any family, anyone

from any adoptive background, you always hope and wish that it was some beautiful love story

that it was just unfortunate. Whenever I tell this story to friends and I explain that I've tracked

down the abandoned baby, they're amazed. I've got this huge mass of curly hair and that's always been

in the back of my mind. I instantly thought I'd have someone at the end of, you know, if I ever

did find them, that would have a huge mass of curly hair. Over the years, we referred to the baby

as Heather, the name she was given by midwives. But when I start asking around in the local area,

it turns out a few people know her new name and it doesn't take too much detective work to track her

down. So, meet that abandoned baby girl. Jess, she's now 38 years old, has big eyes, a huge smile

and that distinctive curly hair. So these are the newspaper cut-ins that I wasn't the prettiest

of babies, but there's little crocheted dress with crocheted booties. And I first got into hospital.

Looking quite alert. Yes. It's just a photos underneath it says, baby Heather, will she ever know

her mother's identity? And then this one's a baby abandoned baby Heather made ready for adoption.

For decades, this flimsy folder of newspaper cut-ins is all the information Jess has.

So Heather would be and transferred into a loving home just days after being left beside a

lonely Suffolk road. So that's obviously where I went into foster care. So that's about a week

after. These articles lay out what happened to baby Jess after she's handed to the nurses.

Reading them, it's clear to me that the midwives, social workers, the police and the press

are all desperately trying to persuade Jess's mother to come forward. Despite these repeated

appeals, no one does. Jess is placed in foster care and after three months she's matched with a

Suffolk couple who already have one adopted daughter. After this dramatic start, Jess tells me her life

was pretty happy. Actually, what she described is an adilic childhood. We had the park across the

road. My best friends were in the village next door. Yeah, we'd be playing outside all day every day

and then come in for a home-cooked meal at five on the dot every day and always a dessert,

which my friends always thought was amazing because they didn't have dessert. You know, there's

lots of jelly, there's lots of angel delight, lots of crumbles and apple pies and trifles.

She says there were aunts, uncles and grandparents living on the same street. Jess and her sister Laura

roam free, surrounded by love and affection. Jess has always known that she's adopted,

but she tells me that until she's 11, she never really thought to question why. Until this one day.

For her birthday, her parents had given her a TV for her bedroom, but the screen kept going fuzzy,

so she and her dad are out shopping for a new aerial. There they are, just parking up outside

being cute. And then I just kind of said, oh, I wonder, I did wonder a little bit about my adoption

as Laura knows about hers now. Laura is Jess's older and also adopted sister. A few weeks earlier,

Laura had found out about her own birth parents. And dad, being sad, just naturally said in a

Suffolk accent, oh bloody hell, he said, I always hoped that your mum would be here when you ask

that question, because it's not so straightforward as your sister. Then and there in the car,

he tells her that she was found abandoned and that no one knows who her birth parents are.

And then we kind of sat there in the car, in the car park, of being cute. And I just sat sobbing,

I didn't think, well you wouldn't, but it didn't ever cross my mind, it would be something like that.

I instantly felt very little again, I felt really young, because it felt like it was too much

information. Most of us have an origin story, how we arrived into the world, who was there,

what was said. Jess has assumed that she has one too, just like her sister, Laura.

But from this moment on, she's aware of a void, a complete blank where her beginning should be.

And that not knowing, it's tough.

I instantly felt, well you do, you just instantly feel rejected, like you feel that you can't,

that you're not really wanted, although I had this incredible upbringing where I was so wanted,

so loved. Why didn't that person want me? And I felt like I didn't even want to know anymore,

because it kind of ruined, yeah, that that perfect childhood suddenly had something else

laced in it. Yeah. Yeah. To reports for a bit.

For me, it kind of, it did it broke my little world of this perfect ill family that I'd been brought up in.

Jess tells me her parents reassure her that nothing's changed, that she's still the same person.

You know, constantly trying to tell me, you know, you're a good person, you know, and as much as

anyone tells you that, you don't feel like you are, like you feel like you're raised,

your roots are bad, you're like rotten, you've come from someone that can discard a baby and have

no thoughts or feelings about that.

As a teenager, Jess says she tells her friends that she was found, and they tell their friends,

and the story sort of takes on a life of its own. It was a big deal for my friends and stuff,

and it was just that whole constant of why do you not want to know, why are you not going to find out?

For years, she just didn't, but slowly that changes, and by the time she's in her early 20s,

she's intrigued by the mystery of her beginning. And I actually felt a little bit excited about it,

because I wanted to get the bottom of it, just the whole Sherlock Holmes situation of it all,

I wanted to figure it all out. From the very first time I call her, Jess is really open with me,

because let's be honest, a total stranger calling you up and telling you that they're obsessed

with your origin story must be a bit weird, but you seem to get it, why the mystery of who she is,

and the questions around it are in some way bigger than just her. And so she's happy to human me,

and let me play Holmes to her Sherlock. But when I first meet her, there really isn't all that much

that she can tell me. In the UK, all adopted children have the right to find out where they come from.

It's been enshrined in law since the mid 70s. The UN also recognizes that children have a right

to an identity, to know as far as possible who their parents are. But if you start out as a

Foundling, a lone baby with no backstory, this basic right is denied. There's no official record

for Foundlings to uncover, no paper trail. When she's 22, Jess decides she wants to see the place

where she was found, so she sets off with a friend armed with those newspaper cuttings.

I said, but I'm not 100% sure where the road is, so we might have to just knock on a few doors

and hope for the best. She tells me she remembers feeling intrigue, but also dread,

because until now it's all felt very abstract. But by going to the spot where she was left,

she's hoping she might glimpse some clue, something that might explain why she was abandoned.

So we can't have just drove around looking for little lanes. In the cuttings, it's variously

described as the side of a quiet road, a lonely roadside verge, or the side of a lane near Ipswich.

One article gives a more detailed description of how the lane runs between two small villages

and how there's a field on one side and a wood on the other. But it's hard to be certain where

the place is. There are just so many back lanes nearby, so many fields, so many clumps of woodland,

and with no other distinguishing features to go on, they don't manage it. They can't quite figure it

out. But by now they've got the bit between their teeth. They spot a bungalow nearby, set back

behind a thick, private hedge, and they knock on the door. This lovely little lady who'd lived

in the village all her life instantly welcomed us in with a cup of tea and a piece of cake.

There are a lot of what-ifs in this story, and this is one of them. What if Jess hadn't knocked

on this particular door where a woman called Jean lived? Because with Jean, Jess had struck goals.

And she couldn't be more excited because she just remembers every last detail. She said it was

such a hoohar. You know, there was so many police around in the village, and then they obviously

the rumours start flying around. There was a baby left down this road, and we all couldn't believe it.

We just couldn't believe it. She tells Jess that people talked about it for weeks afterwards,

and that there were a few theories circulating about who the baby's mother was. She said it has

to be someone local because no one would have known about that lame. So instantly, that's where my

mind went. Jean takes Jess into her back garden, and she said, you nearly got the right lane,

she said, it's that one down there, and she pointed, she said, should we have a drive down there?

Should we have a look? I said, yeah, all right. So she got in my car, and she was so excited.

It was brilliant, really. She made me excited about it. It was a different feeling altogether.

At this point, Jess tells me she feels like an old-fashioned sleuth.

Yeah, we jumped in my car, and she would take the next ride, and she said, I know exact spot

where it was. They drive about half a mile to a passing place on the lane, and she said, that's

where you were. Right there. Jess has quite strong feelings about the verge.

You know when you see flowers on a roadside, marking the place where someone's died in a car

crash. Well, for Jess, it's the exact opposite, the mirror image, in fact. She almost memorialises

this verge because it's the place where she believes her life begins. She once sent me a photo of it

with a heart emoji, the fact that it's beautiful, and it really is, matters to her.

But being at the verge that day has another effect. It alters how she feels about the fact that

she was abandoned. It makes her feel something more like anger. Of all the places you could have left

me, you've left me somewhere that nobody goes, unless you were local to that village, like nobody

goes down that lane. Why would you think anyone would have picked me up from there? She's thinking,

perhaps you ever left her there, didn't necessarily want her to be found. It wasn't even a road,

it's a track, so that in itself is difficult to stomach because it's so remote.

And for the first time in all these years, she says it strikes her that if she hadn't been picked

up that morning, she might not have survived. As Jess leaves the verge and says goodbye to Jean,

Jean repeats her theory that only someone local could have known about that lane. And then she drops

one more vital clue. She said, I've got my suspicions. And she said, well, there was a couple of

nannies in the village. She said, and they went from around here. She said, I'm sure one of them has

to something to do with it. For the police, this is an old case, long forgotten and largely mothballed

after Jess was adopted back in 1988. But I reckon there must still be a case file somewhere.

I begin making some inquiries of my own and I send off a request to Suffolk and Stabbery,

asking to see any paperwork they have about the investigation. And while I wait, I try to track down

the police officers who were involved. Their names aren't on social media, so I troll the

electoral register looking for addresses. It seems they all still live in Suffolk and I end up

driving around the county, parking in unfamiliar streets and posting letters through front doors.

I assume it's going to be straightforward that they'll be amused, flattered even to dust off

an old and puzzling case. But I'm wrong about that. The detective who's in charge of the case

doesn't want to talk about it, and neither do the two other retired officers who also worked on it.

I'm struck by this weariness I've touched on for something that happened so long ago.

It's only when I start to dig into the laws around child abandonment that I begin to see things

more clearly. Now, I know this might sound simplistic, but I simply hadn't thought of this story

as a crime. For us as kids, any police involvement was just about helping to reconnect mother and

baby, almost like a missing person case. And the police were keen to find the missing mother,

but Jess' abandonment was still investigated as a crime. The roadside verge was treated like a crime

scene. You see, it's an offence to abandon a child under two if it endangers their life or causes

them harm. That's punishable by up to five years in prison. Then there's a broader offence of

cruelty to a person under 16, including neglect, ill treatment, or abandonment. And for that,

you could get 10 years. And because we don't in the UK have a statute of limitations for serious

crimes, someone can be prosecuted today for abandoning a baby back in 1987. This case was never

actually solved, so new information, fresh evidence, or a recent forensic technology like DNA could

open it up again. You and I know that we don't want, that's absolutely not the motivation.

Neither of us wants that. Yet several former police officers seem genuinely concerned that my

reporting of this story may have a real life effect, a fresh criminal investigation. All of a sudden,

the stakes feel much higher. I check in with Jess. She's still certain that she wants to tell her

story and to try and find answers to the questions she's been asking for years.

Hi, this is Farnoosh Tarabi from So Money with Farnoosh Tarabi. And today I want to talk to you about

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I write again to all the retired police officers, assuring them that neither Jess nor I are

looking to reopen the case that we're not seeking new evidence. But they don't change their minds.

Eventually I find a fourth former police officer. Initially he says no, but after thinking

over he agrees to talk because he tells me Jessica deserves some answers.

Hello, how are you? You must be listening. In his retirement,

Oldwyn Jones sits on the committee of a village hall and so we meet there.

He's a former detective chief inspector at Ipswich Police Station. He's a tall polite man

with glasses and salt and pepper hair. Happens very rarely in Suffolk. In my experience,

unfortunately the baby is more likely to have been found dead than alive. It was a rarity to find

the baby alive. Babies are abandoned intermittently, but more often than not it's their lifeless bodies

that are later found. Of the four babies abandoned in Suffolk in 1987, Jess was the only one found

alive. What would you have been looking for when you went to the verge? Well, obvious things to get

at the feel of the place where it's been left and trying to weigh up. Why would you leave a baby

there? Oldwyn Jones visits the place where Jess was discovered just a few hours after she'd been

taken to hospital. It's always good practice to go and visit the scene of any major crime,

but there could be things forensically that may have been available such as tire tracks or footprints.

And had you found a footprint or a tire mark, what would you have done? Well, they could take a

cast. That was how they used to do it in those days. Take a cast and then you can identify the

tire and then you could up, for example, identify the tire and then they could tell you the make.

And it gives you a lead, but there was nothing from memory that I can remember like that being

found. He tells me that any potential lead had been washed away. One thing I'd remember about that

day was the rain. And as we went up to it, there was a torrential downpour and I couldn't help

but think that if this had happened a hour or two ago, the consequences were the baby who had been

exposed to heavy rain. In the first week, around 20 officers were on the case, doing house-to-house

calls, manning the verge, running vehicle tracks and monitoring a dedicated phone line.

Meanwhile, police have set up an incident room where relatives, friends or anyone with information

can talk to a woman police constable. If you can help, ring Ipswich, that's 0473-610-579.

It's the 1980s, remember. So the officers are working without any help from CCTV,

computers or mobile phone records, and investigations using DNA were in their infancy.

When the case paperwork arrives from Suffolk Police, it paints a picture of a pretty analogue

investigation. There's the appeal poster that was pinned up on notice boards across the county.

It carries a photo of Jess, taken in hospital when she's a day or so old. She's wearing a pale

crochet dress and next to her is a picture of the vest she was found in with an Adam's label

showing. Adam's was a popular kid's clothing brand at the time. I'm also sent two hand-drawn

maps with a small cross marking the spot that Jess was found and several ordnance survey maps

of the area with handwritten notes and markings on. There's a list of the 18 house-to-house inquiries

that were made in the days after. There's something else that arrives with the documents

some new press cuttings. These ones were written by a young reporter just starting out on the local

paper. I'm Terry Hunt. I was the editor of the Stangley and Daily Times newspaper between 1996

and 2017. When the baby was found in 1987, I was working in the newsroom with the newspaper

Terry Hunt still remembers the call coming in. I looked around the newsroom and the newsroom was empty

even in 1987. We didn't run on lots of stuff. I didn't have any option really. We had to go out.

So I grabbed a photographer and we headed out. I think there was one one policeman standing there.

How did you describe what it looked like that place? Just very very lonely, very lonely even for

Suffolk very lonely, which made me think it was strange. There was a bit of muddled thinking

on behalf of whoever left it there. That was my initial thought that I don't know what the thinking

is. Why didn't the person who left it leave it somewhere where they knew it was going to be found?

Everyone, the journalists, the police, even us young kids, though we can't quite put our finger on

why, we all think there's something strange about this story. Most babies are abandoned often in

places where they can be found readily. Public toilets, public libraries, hospitals, near police

stations, that's all that's been the pattern of abandoned babies. That's interesting. So there's

something unusual from the get-go. Probably yes, yeah. The police did receive some tip-offs.

There was a green Austin car seen parked nearby at a crossroads at 825 that morning.

The car's engine was running and a woman was spotted at the wheel covering her face with her hands.

There was a sighting of a second woman seen a few minutes later parked in a different lane,

not far from the verge. Two calls came in to the dedicated phone line.

One was such a silence and one was a local, a woman with a local accent, a suffoc accent,

saying words to the effect of I didn't mean it. A week later, a parcel of clothes was sent

anonymously to the hospital, addressed simply to baby Heather. Inside were five dresses and a

rumpersuit. As the search for the baby's mother continued, the district medical officer was quoted

in the press saying, the mother is probably tired, exhausted, he says, she's at risk of hemorrhage

and infection. At risk of infection, tired and exhausted, aged eight, my focus had been firmly

on the infant. I couldn't have fathomed the emotional cost of carrying a baby for nine months,

feeling it flutter and kick and then giving birth. There can't be many lonelier situations.

I hadn't considered what those final moments must have felt like,

dressing the baby, traveling to the verge, laying it down and walking away.

Sometimes I would cut through that little lane and I would always slow down and kind of try

to remember where the baby was was left. And then I'd think, I wonder what happened

to that little baby.

In 2010, after Jess visits the verge and gets that tip off from Jean about the local nannies,

she tells me she gets in touch with the police. One of the detectives agrees to meet her in a

supermarket cafe. He tells her everything he can remember, the car sightings, the strange

phone calls, door to door inquiries, much of the information I've seen in the police files.

He tells her about the frustration they all felt when they got nowhere.

This detective, he's one of the former police officers who didn't want to do an interview

for the podcast. But he does send me a note about one other thing he said to Jess.

It chimes with what Jess has already heard from Jean. He's telling Jess that if she wants to know more

about what happened that day, she should try and find this former nanny. And he tells me he

hands her something. I left her with a press cutting so that she had the young lady's details.

Jess tells me she's never seen this particular press cutting before. It's new to her.

It's the interview which Terry hunted when he spoke to the young nanny who found Jess.

And it includes a photograph of her. And then underneath it said her name, her full name.

And

armed with a name, Jess and her sister Laura go online. Laura posts a message on a family reunion site.

Does anyone remember an 18 year old nanny who found a baby in Suffolk in 87? And Jess turns to Facebook.

I just bombarded every single one I came across with the same name, roughly the same age.

With the same message, it was a copy and paste scenario. I think at least 20 people got that message

with the same name and surname. She says she keeps it simple. She names the village where she was

found and asks them. Did you ever live there? Most never reply. A few get back to her saying,

no, sorry, they've never even been to Suffolk. But then two days later, a message pings in.

It reads, yes, I did live there. I was a nanny there. Does that help? Jennifer.

I then replied and said thanks for replying. Did you find a baby abandoned in the village by any chance?

Jess. Yes, why? That's a long time ago. Jess explains that she is that baby,

and that she's looking for information about her birth, that she wants to find out more.

Jennifer replies, gosh, I'm so very glad you're okay. Last I knew you were called Heather.

On the grass birch, there you were, wrapped in a blanket or sheet. Sorry, I can't remember exactly.

With a bag of some sort and you, you were taken to the hospital and I never saw you again, I'm afraid.

I did a TV appeal for your mum to come forward, but I was never kept in the loop as to what happened.

Jess writes back, she's certainly doing fine, she types. I've been trying to track you down for

quite some time, just to say thanks really, and that you saved my life. I'm very lucky to be here.

She goes on to ask, I have a newspaper article with a picture of you on the front.

Did you get questioned by the police a lot? I've met one of them and they said they spoke to you.

Thanks so much, Jess. Oh, you're so very welcome. Right time, right place.

The place were a bit full on to begin with. It was a big thing in a little rural area.

I'm glad to have been one of the first people to have met you.

If I'd been asked, I would have called you Rebecca. Heather never seemed you.

When I read that out loud to my mum and dad, we all just went, that is such an odd thing to say,

because why would you say that? You've got it here. You've got it. Yeah. If I had been asked.

If I had been asked. I would have called you Rebecca. Yeah. Two exclamation marks. Heather never

seemed you. Heather never seemed me. See that, I think that's even weirder. That she's got a

version of you. Yeah. In her mind. Heather never seemed you. Like never seemed me.

Like you don't know me. If you just found me, you don't know me then, do you?

I then replied and said a lot of people in the village still think you have something to do with it

for some reason. Next time on Founding. If I didn't know and it was going to be as traumatic as it

has been, I probably wouldn't have carried on digging. Do you really mean it? Absolutely.

100%. You turn back the clock. Yeah. And I dug a little bit, not realising that tiny little bit

of a digging would turn into this huge pit of problems and a spindle of lies.

Thank you.

Founding was reported by me, Lucy Grimoire. It was written by me and by Katie Gunning,

who was also the series producer. The theme music was composed by Tom Kenceller. Sound design and

and additional music was by Rowan Bishop.

Podcast artwork was by Blithe Walker Sibthorpe.

The development producer was Jess Swinburne.

The narrative editor was Gary Marshall.

The editor is Jessica Corbett.

Thank you for listening to Foundling.

We hope you're enjoying the podcast so far.

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