Can you help David?

David Stevenson's mother is missing

On Thursday 15 December 1960, at approximately 6pm, a newly born baby was discovered lying in the hall on the second floor of a block of flats in Golders Green, London, UK.

He had been abandoned.

He was unharmed and dressed in a nappy and a vest and wrapped in two multi-coloured blankets, one with a picture of a teddy bear embroidered on it.

Despite extensive police enquiries and media exposure at the time, neither parent of the three-hour-old baby boy ever came forward.

Some 50 years later, we still hope that someone can help us find living relatives of the infant the press nicknamed

'The Rainbow Baby'.

The baby was given the name David by the WPC that took care of him that day. David is now a 50-year-old man with three teenage sons of his own. He would still dearly love to know who his parents were.

Can you help?

If you can provide any information that may lead us to find out more about David's parents he would love to hear from you.

Casting the net wide

David's parents could be anywhere...

David is keen to speak with media outlets throughout the UK (and around the world) so that he can let his mother know that he is searching for her. If you can help David to reach more people with his story, please contact him at david@therainbowbaby.com.

David welcomes all correspondence from the public. He reads every email he receives and if you write to him you will receive a reply.

David appeared on 'Outlook' on the BBC World Service on Tuesday 10 February 2009.

David was interviewed by veteran broadcaster Matthew Bannister.

• Listen to David on Outlook with Matthew Bannister

Daily Mail 2009

48 years later...

In February 2009, freelance journalist and author Hilary Freeman interviewed David to find out if he had ever had any success in tracing his birth parents.

This new article focussed on David's on-going search for his birth family, on how he now feels about them and what it would mean to him to have contact with them after all these years.

The article was published in the Daily Mail on Thursday 5 February 2009 under the headline:

'So who is my mother? Dumped in a stairwell at just four days old, David's poignant story was front page news in the [Daily] Mail. For 48 years, he's known nothing about the mother who abandoned him. Now he's trying to solve this haunting mystery... and he needs YOUR help.'

If you missed the article in the paper you can read it online on the Daily Mail website.

Daily Mail 1960

Front page news...

A few days after David was found, a story about him was published in the Daily Mail, a national newspaper in the UK. Even though the paper was read by millions of people and the story about David was on the front page, no-one ever came forward to claim him as their own.

David was completely unaware that the Daily Mail had tried to help him until some 30 years later. The British law that controls adopted children's access to records about themselves changed and David requested his adoption records from the local council in the hope that they might reveal some clue to his identity.

To his amazement, two vital documents were tucked inside the folder of social workers' notes. One of these was the police report filed by the WPC who rescued David. The other was this newspaper cutting. It wasn't until David paid a visit to the Newspaper Library in Colindale, London that he discovered that the cutting was from the Daily Mail and had been published as a front page story on Wednesday 21 December 1960.

The article read:

The Rainbow Baby left in hall
Do you know the Rainbow Baby? His picture was issued by Scotland Yard last night. The four-day-old boy was abandoned in a second-floor hallway at West Heath Court, North End Road, Golders Green last Thursday. He was dressed in a white candlewick shawl, lined with green, with a yellow bear embroidered on it, and a pink cardigan with a blue Fair Isle pattern. Over him had been laid a blue flannelette blanket decorated with a pink and black lamb.