A Century-Old Hospital Mix-Up That Switched Jewish and Irish Babies

Alice Collins Plebuch always considered herself an American of Irish descent—her parents came from Irish families that immigrated to the United States. Five years ago, she decided to take a DNA test 'just for fun.' A specialized company sent her a test kit, Alice spit into a small tube and mailed it back to the given address.

Plebuch expected no shocking discoveries: she grew up with six siblings for Irish Catholic parents. However, she hoped the test would help her find more family on her father's side, whose parents died in his childhood, leading him to grow up in an orphanage.

A few weeks after mailing her sample, she received astonishing results. Half of Plebuch's genome pointed to the British Isles—as she expected. But the other half showed genes typical of Ashkenazi Jews. Enraged, she composed an angry email to the testing company, complaining about what she assumed was a grievous error.

Eventually, she calmed down, realizing that a mistake seemed unlikely. It was more plausible that there was something about her family she didn't know. She and her sister took tests together to ensure they were biologically related on both sides—and the answer was affirmative. They were all siblings. None of them was in the wrong family. So what next?

Alice assumed there was no doubt about her mother's Irish identity—she came from a large family, and Alice had many cousins with whom she maintained close relationships. If anyone's ancestry was different than it seemed, it was probably her father, Jim, who passed away in 1999. Jim Collins was born in the Bronx, New York, and his mother died when he was an infant. His father found himself unable to care for his three children and sent them to orphanages, passing away a few years later. As a result, Jim had a very limited connection to his extended family.

Jim as a baby with the Irish family who raised him

Still, how could Jim have been Jewish? His parents undoubtedly came from Ireland, and the Irish identity was very important to Jim, the child who grew up in an orphanage rather than in the embrace of a loving family. Could his parents have been some kind of hidden Jews? What explanation could there be?

After consultations on genealogy forums, Alice decided to ask two cousins, one from her father's side and one from her mother's, to conduct DNA tests. The results clarified the picture: the cousin from her father's side, it turned out to Alice and her siblings, shared no genes with them. In other words, he wasn't their cousin at all. It could now be determined with complete certainty: the Jewish genes came from Jim Collins, Alice's father.

Plebuch was shocked by the results. It was now unequivocally clear that her father's parents were not secret Jews: only her father was Jewish. How could such a thing be? Why was he not the biological son of his parents?

"I lost all my identity," Plebuch told the Washington Post, which reported the story. "I no longer knew who I was—who I really was."

For her sister, Jeri Wiggins, this revelation solved a mystery that had bothered her for years: years of looking at family pictures, including those remaining in Ireland, led her to conclude that their father didn't resemble anyone in his close family. He had dark hair and was shorter than his brothers, and he didn't look like any more distant relatives.

Still, the mystery persisted. How did a Jewish baby end up in an Irish Catholic family? Could it be that he was switched on the way to the orphanage, where he was sent at such a young age? They found a picture of their father as a one-year-old, before he went to live in the orphanage, and sent it to a facial recognition expert along with a picture of adult Jim Collins. It's the same person, the expert said. The ears, the mouth, the chin—all remained the same.

There was only one possible conclusion: if Jim Collins, who grew up in his parents' home, was the same Jim Collins who was sent as a small child to the orphanage, it could only be deduced that he was switched before he reached his parents' home.

And where was he before that? At the Fordham Hospital in the Bronx, where he was born.

In trying to piece together the mystery of her father's true ancestry, Alice began sending messages to everyone in the genetic database of the 23andMe company with whom she received a notice of genetic connection. Overall, she sent about a thousand such inquiries. Some ignored her request, but many agreed to collaborate, curious about the woman who turned out to be a distant relative. None of them, however, turned out to be close family. The enigma of Jim Collins's ancestral family remained unsolved.

The breakthrough finally came from an unexpected direction. One day, she emailed Pete Nolan, whom she always thought was her cousin until the DNA test revealed otherwise. Before sending the email, she decided to check his account on the 23andMe site to update him if any new found relatives had been discovered through genetic testing. Indeed, a new name appeared, a stranger named Jessica Benson. Plebuch contacted her and suggested she compare her genome to Nolan's. The result: they were first cousins. Benson wrote to Plebuch: "I was actually expecting to find Ashkenazi Jewish genes, not Irish ones. I don't understand how it's suddenly discovered I'm Irish."

Plebuch quickly wrote back. "My father was born at Fordham Hospital on September 23, 1913. Was anyone in your family born on that date?"

Yes, Jessica replied. Her grandfather, Philip Benson.

Philip, the Irishman, with his 'Jewish' father

Checking the hospital records revealed that indeed, both babies were born close to each other at the same hospital. Someone at the hospital made a serious mistake, and a Jewish child went home with poor Irish parents while an Irish child went home with wealthy Jewish parents. At that time, it's important to remember, it was not customary to put identification bracelets on the babies, and their identification was made based on the memory of the nurses or mothers.

Alice Plebuch contacted Pam Benson, Philip's daughter, who was stunned to hear the story. Indeed, she says her father never resembled his family, being very tall and fair. In fact, her mother's parents, the Abouelafia family, refused to believe he was Jewish until he brought them his birth certificate. What he didn't know, of course, was that the certificate was incorrect.

Plebuch and her siblings, as well as Philip Benson's descendants, were exposed to a new extended family they didn't know. Within both families, however, there is pondering about what Jim Collins and Philip Benson would have said had they been alive to hear this story. One felt so Irish, the other was connected to his Jewish identity. Yet, the former was born Jewish, and the latter was born a gentile. Without the wonders of modern genetic testing, their true identities, and that of their descendants, would have remained unknown forever.