Can you solve the mystery of the baby abandoned in a cinema toilet?

A man has launched a search for the mother who abandoned him in a Birmingham cinema toilet 59 years ago.

Robert Weston was only three weeks old when he was found in a cubicle at the Odeon Cinema on March 26, 1956.

He was expensively dressed in Cherubim label clothing and wrapped in a shawl. His head was resting on a cushion.

Robert has been yearning to solve the mystery of his abandonment all his life. But the 59-year-old retired teacher says that over time, his main focus has changed.

The bundle was named 'Robert Bruce' by the Birmingham Mail, which carried the baby's story in March 1956.

He was given the name by the policeman who handed him over to duty doctor Bruce Parker at Birmingham Children’s Hospital.

The story captured the public’s imagination, but despite numerous press appeals in the Birmingham Mail, police officers never found the mystery mother.

Robert - now a grandfather and a father-of-six who lives in Plymouth - spent the first seven years of his life in a Droitwich children’s home, a period he described as unhappy.

But his luck changed when he was adopted by George and Irene, a couple who ran pubs in Worcestershire.

Robert joined the Royal Navy as a teenager, and then settled in Plymouth, where he taught English.

Irene died when he was 20 and George passed away last year. The death of his adoptive parents sparked Robert's desperate search for his biological mother.

The now defunct Birmingham Evening Despatch carried eye-witness reports of a well-dressed and well-to-do attractive woman loitering suspiciously near the foyer of the cinema.

Being abandoned left scars which hindered Robert’s early years with his new family. He describes George and Irene as wonderful, warm people, but says his childhood was troubled.

But in an attempt to understand what happened to him, Robert recently returned to the very spot where he was left.

The search has been frustrating, and it's a quest that's been hindered by news that any documents which could help would have been destroyed 20 years ago.

But Robert does believe that he's uncovered a partial description.He's been told that a young woman who had auburn hair and wore a red coat was seen at the cinema, clutching a baby.

With the support of his second wife Marie, he is now pinning hopes on advances in DNA testing. He has already approached a DNA bank in London which has uncovered possible links with America and Ireland.

Robert's daughter Emma has helped by creating a Facebook site dedicated to the search.

One post is particularly intriguing: Robert recently made contact with a woman whose mother gave birth in a nunnery.

Anyone with information is urged to contact Robert via Facebook. The page's first image is of the abandoned baby being held at the Children’s Hospital.