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Adopted

All Phil knows is that his mum, Doreen, was adopted at the age of three and grew up in Northern Ireland.

Doreen: grew up in Northern Ireland.

The only records she has of her childhood are old photographs of the farm where she lived.

And she remembers getting Christmas presents sent from an Auntie Marjorie and Auntie Dorothy.

She was adopted by a brother and sister called Joseph and Margaret McNeill and believes she ended up with them after being orphaned.

Unravelling the mystery

Phil travels to the village of Clanabogan where his mum grew up in Northern Ireland.

There he finds some relatives of the McNeills who surprise him by giving him his mum’s original adoption papers.

Margery, Phil's grandmother.

These reveal that the "Auntie Margery" who wrote to his mum when she was a child was, in fact, his birth grandmother.

They uncover the fact that his mother, whose birth name was Margaret not Doreen, was born in Liverpool.

What happened to Margery?

Records show that Margery was a single mother and lived in the Anfield area of the city until World War II.

He’s told that it’s likely there could have been family connections with the people his mum was sent to stay with in Northern Ireland.

Graham's photo with Margery third from the left

But he still has no answer to the question of why his grandmother gave her daughter away to a family on the other side of the Irish Sea and then lost all contact with her.

In Liverpool, Phil finds a death certificate for Margery Evelyn Steane who was born in 1902 and died in 1990.

Living relatives

Since the Inside Out film was made Phil has returned to Birmingham and used the details from his late Grandmothers' Death Certificate to trace one of her relatives - Graham Steane from Newcastle.

Margery is standing fourth from the left.

Graham and Phil have been in contact over half a dozen times and spent more than an hour in collective telephone conversations.

Graham - Phil's Cousin, once removed has provided him with old Steane archive photographs dating back to 1905!

The facial similarities between his own Mother - Doreen and those of his late Grandmother - Margery are startling!

Phil's search to discover exactly how his Mum spent the first three years of her life in Liverpool AND how she came to be adopted by the McNeills in Northern Ireland continues!