Podcast tells gripping story of Esther’s journey to find her birth mother - Gary Clapton

In April Spotify released an eight-episode podcast entitled ‘Looking for Esther’ and it tells the story of Esther Robertson, who was born in 1961 and is the daughter of a white Edinburgh woman and a black American serviceman who was stationed in Kirknewton.

Esther was named Catherine Ann Lindenberg by her mother Ann who had met Esther’s father – Bob Hubbard – at the Palais dance hall in Edinburgh’s Fountainbridge. Ann had been forced to conceal their relationship for fear of stigma and was sent to a Church of Scotland-run mother and baby home when she became pregnant.

Esther was adopted by the Robertson family who had already adopted another black girl – Esther’s sister Ruth – and they wanted, as Esther puts it, a “playmate and companion” for her. Esther’s adoption by the Robertsons who were in their 50s and had five children of their own, did not work out and at the age of three Esther was placed with a second family in Beith, Ayrshire who gave her the name of Doreen. However, Esther’s first adoptive family, the Robertsons, decided that they wanted her back and she returned to spend her childhood with them.

Growing up black in Scotland was “challenging” and although Esther faced little in the way of racism, the most difficult aspects of being black came at home: “The Robertsons didn’t get any instruction manual on how to raise a black child. There was no promotion of the black part of me. I was kind of on my own through that.”

Dr Gary Clapton, reader in social work and programme director for BSc (Hons) in social work, Edinburgh University.

Esther’s podcast is gripping and takes the listener through her career moves including studying acting at Queen Margaret College in Edinburgh, her cancer diagnosis that prompted her search for her origins and the slow process of putting together the pieces of her backstory (she found out her birth name when she was in her early 20s).

“I had a bag full of old social work notes that I’d been given when I was in my early twenties and pretty much nothing else. I didn’t even have any pictures of me as a baby and I still don’t,” said Esther.

The various features of Esther’s search for her mother Ann will be familiar to readers of this column: the digging around in the births, marriages and deaths records, the social work and care home records, the anxiously awaited replies to letters, Facebook searching. Esther speaks of making contact with people from her adoptive families and an uncle on her mother’s side. However, uncle Eddie can’t help in the search for Esther’s mother.

When Esther finds her mother, Ann is being cared for in a home in Cambridgeshire. A letter is sent. In the podcast Esther asks: “Have her carers told her anything? Is she going to acknowledge me?” I’ll not go any further, you’ll have to listen to this Spotify podcast yourself. Find it here:

https://open.spotify.com/show/3yXImF7tPEYj9SxPHPIfyg?si=1cb49e05938c40ed&nd=1

Ps. Little is known about Bob Hubbard, Esther’s father, the airman based at RAF Kirknewton in West Lothian 1960-1961. One of the podcast episodes concludes with a ‘shout-out’ to the world for help in contacting him. Another story, another series?

Gary Clapton, Honorary Fellow, School of Social and Political Science, University of Edinburgh