Woman dumped in dustbin at birth finally tracks her mother down after 46 years

London: Haunted by guilt over the baby she abandoned, Angie Smith has spent 46 years wondering what became of the tot found dumped among the rubbish.

But after years of desperate searching by the child she left behind for fear of shaming her family, the 70-year-old was finally reunited with Michelle Rooney – and given the opportunity to tell her side of the traumatic story.

And as they clasped their arms around each other in an emotional embrace, the torment gripping Angie over what happened to the youngster dubbed Dustbin Baby melted away.

She said: “We were strangers, yet she was my flesh and blood and as we hugged I felt an immediate bond.

"For so long I’d worried about her and if my actions had caused her lasting damage. Now I could see her beautiful, smiling face and all those worries fell away.

“Abandoning Michelle was an act of desperation for which I have felt guilty my entire life. Not a day has passed when I didn’t think about her.

"I always wanted to find her, but I didn’t know how. Even if I did, I didn’t think she’d want to know me… the mother who’d dumped her as a newborn baby.”

But she need not have worried. Michelle, 46, who was adopted and grew up in a happy, loving family, had found out the truth about her real mum at 21 and embarked on a search for her that would last 25 years.

After the reunion, Michelle said: “I was so nervous my heart was pounding as I saw her for the first time.

“But as we embraced it was like greeting an old friend. It felt natural, as if we had always known each other, yet also surreal.

"I’d been searching for Angie for 25 years and now that missing part of my life was complete. Finding her was never about recrimination.”

Angie was a 23-year-old divorcee when she secretly gave birth to Michelle in her dad’s freezing garden shed one night in 1968.

She cut the umbilical cord with ­scissors, put the afterbirth in a bin and hid her in her bedroom, wrapped in a bin bag.

The baby was later smuggled out of the home in ­Walthamstow, North East London, inside a laundry bag and taken to nearby flats where she was left in the lobby.

Angie believed she was leaving the child ­somewhere safe where she would be spotted, but a resident thought the bag was rubbish and dumped it by the bins.

Michelle was found 24 hours later after a tenant heard her cries.

The Mirror appealed for the mum to come forward but Angie, who had sons aged three and four, was too terrified.

Her teenage marriage had collapsed and she ended up living with her parents but got ­pregnant after a brief liaison with milkman John Good.

She dreaded what her mum and dad would do if she confessed.

Angie added: “I had a difficult ­relationship with my mother.

“She made it clear after my ­disastrous marriage that if I did anything else to bring shame on the family she would have me declared an unfit mother and would take my sons away from me.

“I felt it was a choice between two sons I knew and loved and a baby I hadn’t got to know and who I hoped someone else could adopt and love... I was very naive.”

But Angie told of the horror she felt when she read the headlines about the Dustbin Baby a few days later in papers, including the Daily Mirror.

She said: I just hoped she’d be found quickly and looked after. But it looked as if I’d deliberately left her to be put out with the rubbish.

"There was no way I could come forward without my parents finding out.

"I cried many tears, but had to keep this a huge secret and carry on as if nothing had happened.”

Michelle was adopted by policeman Les Fuller and wife Daphne, a district nurse.

They had three children and lived in Walton-on-Thames, Surrey.

Speaking of the moment she ­discovered the truth, mum-of-two Michelle said: “I was stunned. My heart went out to the Dustbin Baby.

"But I also felt sympathy for the mum who left me, knowing she must have been desperate. I was the lucky one as I’d been adopted by a wonderful family.

"But I knew my birth mum would most likely be guilt-ridden and ­traumatised.”

Despite an appeal in the Mirror four years ago, Michelle still could not find Angie.

But she did trace dad John, who knew nothing of her ­existence.

He died from cancer last July, aged 84.

Michelle said: “I was devastated. But I was grateful to have known him and for all the love he gave me after I crashed into his life.”

Then in February, Angie – who had remarried and had a son, Martin, with late husband Reg – finally saw Michelle’s new online appeals.

She said: “I was so excited. I always feared she would not want to know me. Now, reading she did not resent me and wanted to meet, was overwhelming.

“I was shaking with emotion as I wrote her an email, attaching a photo of me.”

Michelle added: “As I looked at the photo and saw a kindly, elderly lady with thick, curly white hair, she seemed very familiar.

"There was no doubt this was my birth mother.”

Michelle rang Angie that day and they talked for two hours.

But Angie had a small matter to deal with – she had never told sons Tim, 50, Chris, 49, and Martin, 40, about her.

She said: “It’s one thing telling them they have a sister, but quite something else to confess I had abandoned her.”

But the trio were ­understanding and equally as delighted to meet Michelle.

Although there was no doubt in either Angie or her daughter’s minds about their blood ties, they both had a DNA test to confirm it.

After weeks of swapping emails and calls, Michelle took sons Oliver, 15, and 12-year-old Conor to Martin’s cottage in Kent a fortnight ago to meet her mum and her brothers.

Angie said: “I don’t want to upset her adoptive family by muscling in.

"They gave her a much better life than I could have done. I will always be grateful to them for loving her so much.”

Michelle added: “I’ll always be known as Dustbin Baby but I know Angie never wanted to throw me away.”