The next episode of ITV’s Long Lost Family: Born Without Trace will air emotional scenes as a man reunites with the woman who found him as a baby. On Boxing Day 1960 Harvey Shacklell, who is now 62 years old, was found in a cardboard box covered in brown paper on the doorstep of a house in Hayes, Middlesex that belonged to Mr. and Mrs. Wood.
Mrs. Vera Wood, who is now 88 years old, tells Harvey: “I’ve never forgotten you,” as she sees him for the first time since discovering him as a baby. The pair then go into her house and she tells him what she knows about where he came from.
Vera tells Harvey that she tried to keep him as a baby and even searched for him after he was taken away by the police, and later adopted by a different family. “I've always been thinking, where was I found? You saved my life really. If it wasn't for you, I wouldn't be here now,” he says to her.
Recalling the moment she discovered Harvey as a baby, Vera says: “I pulled this sheet of paper away, and there you are in the bottom of this cardboard box, and under the sheet of brown paper was a thick blue lady's cardigan, you're under it. No bonnet, no mittens, nothing on your feet. I lifted the box up and brought you in doors, phoned the police and in minutes the police turned up.”
Harvey was taken by police to Hillingdon Hospital before being fostered and then adopted by the Shackell family. Vera adds: “I would've loved to have tried to have kept you, but it was not possible. I've been looking for you, wondering where you are, who's got you? How have you grown up?”
She then gives Harvey a photograph that was taken at the time and tells him: “If anything happens to me now, I can go to my grave happy because I’ve seen you.”
Later in the episode Harvey finally gets the answers that he's been searching for and discovers that he has two older full siblings. Both of his birth parents have now passed away and one sister doesn’t want to be identified, but Harvey’s sister Cherry meets with him.
Cherry tells Harvey that his birth mother had no say in his abandonment and thought he had been taken to a place of safety. She also tells him that his father had multiple relationships with different women and had nineteen children in total.
Long Lost Family airs on ITV1 and ITVX at 9pm on Tuesday, June 27. For more showbiz and television stories get our newsletter here.
