A DNA test led two women to discover that they were switched at birth 50 years ago.
Two women in England have just learned they went home with the wrong families after being born in the same hospital in 1967—making it the first confirmed case of a baby switch by the U.K.’s National Health Service (NHS).
The discovery began in 2021 when Tony, after receiving a DNA home-testing kit for Christmas, learned he had a sister—but not the one he’d grown up with, the BBC reports.
His test results pointed to a woman, known by the pseudonym Claire, as his sibling. Reaching out for clarification, Tony connected with Claire, who had taken her own DNA test two years earlier.
Her results had already raised questions, showing no link to her parents’ birthplace and revealing a genetic tie to a family member she had never met.
As Claire and Tony exchanged messages, they pieced together a startling realization: Tony’s sister, Jessica, and Claire were born at the same hospital at the same time around 55 years ago. The more they compared notes, the more convinced they became that a mix-up had occurred—that they had, in fact, been switched at birth.
Claire shared with the broadcaster that she decided to meet the family she suspected might be her own, saying, “I just wanted to see them, meet them, talk to them, and embrace them.”
When she eventually drove to Tony and his mother Joan’s home—a village she coincidentally passed through often on her commute—the pieces of the puzzle finally started to fit. She recalled, “I looked at [Joan] and I said, ’Oh my God, I’ve got your eyes! We have the same eyes. Oh my God, I look like someone!’”
“It just felt right,” Joan told the outlet. “I thought, ‘She looked just like I did in my younger days.’ ”
Claire also discovered she was actually a day older than she’d always believed, born just a few hours earlier than her official records indicated. “My birth certificate is wrong, my passport, my driving license—everything is wrong,” she revealed.
Following a freedom of information request from the BBC, the NHS initially stated it had no recorded incidents of babies being sent home with the wrong parents.
But after Claire met with Joan, Tony contacted the NHS trust responsible for the hospital where the women were born. NHS Resolution acknowledged the switch as an “appalling error,” accepted legal liability, and noted that compensation discussions were ongoing due to the “unique and complex” circumstances of the case.