Cork City: "Habitual" Child Death Rate In Bessborough Mother + Baby Home Was 68% : *UPDATED

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By Conall Ó Fátharta
Irish Examiner Reporter

Infant death rates at the Bessborough mother-and-baby home in Cork soared to almost 70% in the early 1940s.

The revelations come just two months after the Government announced a statutory commission to investigate practices, deaths, illegal adoptions and vaccine trials at the country’s mother-and-baby homes.

* www.irishtimes.com/culture/heritage/mother-and-baby-homes-were-symptoms-of-a-traumatised-society-after-civil-war-1.1908597

Previous research done by adoption campaigners indicated a death rate of around 50% and above at Bessborough throughout the late 1930s and 1940s.

However, material uncovered by the Irish Examiner in the Cork City archives shows an official investigation carried out by the Cork County Medical Officer in 1943, on foot of inquiries from a Department of Local Government inspector, confirmed a death rate of 68% at the home.

Concern about the “habitual” high infant mortality rate at the home was so grave that the Cork County Medical Officer Robert Condy, prepared two separate reports about Bessborough for the Cork County Manager in 1943 and 1944.

The first confirms most of the children were listed as dying from “debility”, some from gastroenteritis, and “a small number” due to prematurity. It also speculates that the lack of adequate nursing qualifications by staff may have been a reason for the large number of children dying there.

“The Sister in charge of this home has no nursing qualifications and no hospital training in infants and children apart from two months in Temple Street Hospital, Dublin,” Dr Condy wrote.

“This may or may not be a cause but I suppose a qualified Nurse and specially qualified in infant feeding should be appointed for 6-12 months. The figures could then be compared with the previous term.”

A second report prepared in January 1944 by Dr Condy examines the qualifications of the staff.

It points out that only two of the four staff members in the maternity section of the home were State- registered nurses, with none having qualifications in treating children.

“There is therefore only one Nurse in this section who possesses the CMB [Central Midwives Board] Certificate, and no member of the Nursing staff has undergone any special training in infant hygiene and dietetics,” Dr Condy wrote.

In the infant home, a similar lack of qualifications was present in the three nuns running the section.

Dr Condy also took issue with the nuns boarding out children to foster parents from as early an age as just six weeks old.

“I am informed that the age at which infants are discharged from this section for boarding-out, averages around one year but infants have been boarded out at as early an age as six weeks,” wrote Dr Condy. “It would seem undesirable that infants should be separated from their mothers at such an early period.”

Both reports from 1943 and 1944 confirm that the State was aware that a “habitual” high child death rate was occurring at Bessborough.

These reports also seem predate those of State chief medical officer, James Deeny, who inspected the institution in the mid- to late 1940s and closed it down briefly due to his concerns about the level of child death there.

“The deaths had been going on for years. They had done nothing about it, had accepted the situation and were quite complacent about it,” Dr Deeny wrote in his 1989 memoir.

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*There is no reason for us to believe that the mother-and-baby homes investigation will change anything, even if the State apologises, writes Susan Lohan

YESTERDAY, on foot of journalist Conall Ó Fátharta’s discovery of the historic mortality rate for ‘illegitimate’ children of 68% children in Cork’s Bessborough mother-and-baby home, my colleague Claire McGettrick asked if the State would ever do right by all those it had failed since it’s inception?

To recap, that includes the tens of thousands of children who had the misfortune of being born into denigrating poverty, whose parents lacked the financial means to clothe, feed, or educate them adequately, and who, as a result, the State sentenced to a childhood in cruel, punitive industrial schools, where sadism and torture were the order of the day.

It includes the young women who were deemed guilty of being sexually abused or attracting too much male attention; also those to failed to follow the rule of only having sex within marriage and avoiding pre-marital pregnancy. Of particular note are those girls from the industrial schools who were identified either as being biddable and hard-working or as hard to control, who were destined for a life of revolving doors between the schools, the Magdalene laundries, the county homes, and the so-called mother-and-baby homes, whose raison d’etre was to separate mothers from their children as a punishment for their egregious crimes. The worst fate of all befell those women whose spirits were so broken as a result of the crimes carried out against them that they were committed to medieval “mental asylums”, from which no such woman ever escaped.

Such industrial-scale denigration was not limited to the poor and illiterate. The claws of misogynists were also found in our treatment of all child-bearing women. From the butchering of women through symphysiotomies, unnecessary hysterectomies, enforced vaginal deliveries, contaminated blood transfusions, denial of contraceptives — the list goes on.

THE apologists from within the cabal of vested interests groups would have us believe that this series of unfortunate events are merely historical anomalies and that everyone knows better now and such crimes would never occur today — ergo in Ireland, we wish to dispense with restorative justice when the culprit is ourselves.

The astounding death rates at Bessborough discovered in local authority archives by Conall Ó Fátharta are only half of the picture: Of greater value to observers today is to note, on one hand, the genuine concern of individual public servants who sought to flag the death toll with their political masters and, on the other hand, to note the deafening silence after a once-off missive was issued to redirect the women and girls to the county home until matters could be resolved. We know from the memoirs of the State’s chief medical officer in the late 1940s, James Deeny, that no such resolution occurred and he reclosed the Bessborough home once again in the mid to late 1940s.

We might have hoped that the long predicted investigation into all matters surrounding the State’s treatment of unmarried mothers and their children announced by an internationally embarrassed and short-tenured Children’s Minister Charlie Flanagan in June this year, would finally have resolved the myriad of questions we might have asked. Our hopes were quickly dashed when we realised that Mr Flanagan was a passing good guy, empowered to promise the sun, moon, and stars, while he readied his briefcase for the more important foreign affairs portfolio.

Those of us who follow the appointments of ministers for children closely were frankly aghast that Enda Kenny saw fit to appoint James Reilly as the third minister for children in under seven weeks. We know that Dr Reilly has ‘skin in the game’. While covering for his absent colleague Frances Fitzgerald in June 2011, he told Socialist Party TD Clare Daly that the scale of illegal birth registrations and illegal adoptions facilitated by mother-and-baby homes was “unknown”.

He added that “the issue of historical documentation” was a matter for “these private institutions” and his understanding was that, where such documentation existed, “the nature and secretiveness of the process means that any correlation of data is extremely difficult”. Hardly the response of a man you would want drafting the serious areas for investigation.

I am not talking about a little irregular paperwork here. The questions to which we as a nation need answers include but are not limited to why, in this State/Church oligarchy, it was decided that mainly unmarried women and girls could be detained without leave? Why were these women and girls subjected to cruel and degrading treatment? Why were the ‘illegitimate’ children of these unmarried mothers allowed to die at rates almost 10 times greater than the general population of ‘legitimate’ children? Why were the children allowed to be sold for profit to the US? Why were any surviving children and all of their off-spring denied all knowledge of their birth-rights and origins? Why were these children allowed to be routinely used as guinea pigs in illegal vaccine trials?

What profit did the religious orders make from this cruel industry? Why (as the untiring Catherine Corless asked in Tuam) were these children so disposable that. three months after the international outrage broke around mass graves dotted around the country, no one in the State machinery can say were these children are buried? Finally, will we ever discover who was responsible for all of this barbarity?

To return to Ms McGettrick’s question, will the State finally do the right thing by the tens of thousands of its most vulnerable citizens it has debased and trampled into oblivion? I believe it will not.

I believe the incredibly narrow Interdepartmental Report, which will form the basis for the terms of reference for the Commission of investigation into the homes, already reveals this Government’s intention to underplay the State’s role in these killing homes and that those instructions were issued ahead of the Dáil holiday recess.

We can expect further crocodile tears from Mr Kenny or whoever is occupying the role of Taoiseach when the inevitable State apology is made, but nothing will have changed; we as a nation will have merely moved onto a new prey, a new group of society that we can debase and despise.

Susan Lohan is co-founder of Adoption Rights Alliance.

adoptionrightsalliance.com 

Links to related articles:

www.irishexaminer.com/ireland/68-of-babies-in-bessborough-home-died-283446.html 

Dublin: Deplorable Infant Death Rate At Navan Road Mother + Baby Home Revealed

More than 660 infants and children died in Pelletstownmother and baby home in Dublin during a seven-year period up to the end of March 1930, State records show.

www.irishtimes.com/news/social-affairs/extent-of-child-deaths-in-dublin-homerevealed-1.1840247?page=2 

The reports also contain figures compiled by the Registrar General that show the mortality rate among “illegitimate” infants in 1925 and 1926 was five times that of infants born within marriage, something the departmental reports acknowledge as a “deplorable loss of life”.

Department of Local Government and Public Health reports show there were 662 deaths in the institution on the Navan Road between April 1st, 1923 and March 31st, 1930.

Four mothers died at Bessborough in the seven-year period up to the end of March, 1940, while seven died at Sean Ross Abbey in the same time period. In Manor House, eight mothers died in the six years to the end of March 1941. Details of the number of mothers who perished in other years are not available.

The department of local government and public health was aware the death rate among children born to unmarried mothers was unacceptably high. In its report for 1927, the department refers to figures compiled by the registrar general for 1925 and 1926 showing the mortality rate among what it called “illegitimate” infants was five times the rate of those born within marriage. A third of those who died failed to reach their first birthday.

This was acknowledged in the reports as a “deplorable” loss of life.

“It is recognised that illegitimate infants are handicapped by constitutional and environmental disadvantages, which tend to have a heavy incidence of infant mortality, but even when allowance has been made for these adverse factors, the death-rate of such infants is still disproportionately high in view of the experience in other countries,” the report says.

Due to the sporadic nature of the data in the departmental reports and the scant information they provide on the private mother and baby homes that were also in operation at the time, it is likely that the true number of deaths of women and their children will only come to light once the Commission of Investigation into Mother and Baby Homes, announced by the Government this month, completes its work.

One important unknown not covered in the reports is the number of children born to unmarried mothers who died in county homes.

Dublin: General Register's Report Shows Deaths Among Illegitimate Children Five Times Above The Normal: *UPDATED

Leinster House in 1933

The treatment and death of children born to unmarried mothers across Ireland was being debated in the Dáil as far back as the 1920s and 1930s.

* “266. It would seem from the evidence given before us that in the City of Dublin there are a number of poor class maternity homes from which children are placed out to nurse.

“We are of opinion that all private maternity homes should be licensed annually by the local authority and that no licence be granted unless the home is properly and suitably [1214] equipped for the purpose, and that it was in charge of a respectable person trained in maternity care and nursing.

“267. From the Registrar-General's Report for 1924, it appears that one in every three illegitimate children born alive in 1924 died within one year of its birth, and that the mortality amongst these children is about five times as great as in other cases.

“268. It is high for many reasons, but there is one to which we wish specially to refer. The illegitimate child being proof of the mother's shame is, in most cases, sought to be hidden at all costs. What frequently happens is that the mother, or the mother's family, at the time the mother leaves the hospital or home, make arrangements with someone to take the child, either paying a lump sum down or undertaking to pay something from time to time.

“These arrangements are often made or connived at by those who carry on the poorer class of 

maternity homes, and the results to the child can be read in the mortality rates.

“If a lump sum is paid or if the periodical payment lapse, the child becomes an encumbrance on the foster mother, who has no interest in keeping it alive.”

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There were calls for investigations into the treatment of these children.

A General Register's report for 1924 contained the information that "one in every three illegitimate children born alive in 1924 died within one year of its birth, and that the mortality amongst these children was about five times as great as in other cases".

RELATED AUDIO & VIDEO

• Watch: Dáil records from 1920s and 30s show concern about high death rate of children at maternity homes

Ten years later, a bill was debated in the Dáil to register all maternity homes.

Referring to "illegitimate" children, the bill stated: "From the abnormally high death rate amongst this class of children one must come to the conclusion that they are not looked after with the same care and attention as that given to ordinary children."

Three years later in 1927 the issue was raised again by a senator, Dr Robert Rowlette.

"In the year 1934-5 ... the mortality rate among illegitimate children was something like 26% ... while the general mortality all over the country was 7% per cent. That is a shocking position in a Christian country."

The debates do not mention any particular maternity or baby homes, but indicate that many of them were in Dublin.

One contributor to a Dáil debate claims that mothers of children born outside marriage trying to hide their shame came from the country to Dublin and either left the babies in maternity homes or handed them over to paid foster mothers.

It was stated that: "If a lump sum is paid or if the periodical payments lapse, the child becomes an encumbrance on the foster mother, who has no interest in keeping it alive."

Tuam, Co Galway: Ghosts Of Past Decades Awakened By Discovery Of Children's Mass Grave: *UPDATED

As new mass grave details emerge of at least five thousand patients from St Ita's Psychiatric Hospital at Portrane, N. County Dublin- who were buried in a mass unmarked grave between 1908 and 1989, more horrific details may shortly surface regarding tens-of-thousands of people who were disposed of in a similar manner since before the foundation of the Irish Republic and continued until recent times.

Photo: The Mass Grave (St Ita's Psychiatric Hospital Cemetery) At Portrane, N. Co Dublin. Where 5,000 Patients From St Ita's Hospital Were Buried In Unmarked Graves Between 1908 - 1989.

The religious order behind three of Ireland’s largest and most notorious mother-and-baby homes is unable to confirm how many children were buried on the sites or if they were all buried in coffins.

The Sacred Heart Sisters, which operated three mother-and-baby homes in Bessborough in Cork, Castlepollard in Westmeath and Sean Ross Abbey in Tipperary, said it would “require some time to provide a definitive answer to the query”.

The religious order could not offer any details as to the number of children buried on the grounds of the homes.

They did say, however, “the only children buried on each of the sites were those children whose families weren’t in a position to take them home”.

LINK: www.irishtimes.com/news/social-affairs/tuam-mother-and-baby-home-the-trouble-with-the-septic-tank-story-1.1823393 

The Order was also unable to say whether each child was individually buried in a coffin. But the Order as it was “left to deal with the burials of the children”, they would have been buried in either coffins or shrouds.

“Again it will require some time to provide a definitive answer to the question. At this time, it is probably impossible at this stage to confirm or otherwise whether the children were buried in shrouds or coffins. In light of the fact that the Congregation was left to deal with the burials of the children, we would imagine that the children were interred in shrouds or coffins,” said a statement.

Infant graveyard in Sean Ross Abbey, Roscrea.

The Order was also unable to clarify whether or not all the children were baptised but said that “all children were given burials where their families were not in a position to take them home”.

The Irish Examiner revealed on Wednesday that death rates at the three homes ranged between 30%-50% of children born there between 1930 and 1945.

The Sacred Heart Sisters said all deaths which occurred at the homes had been notified to the relevant authorities and the Congregation was not, at any stage, in receipt of complaints in this regard.

It is estimated some 25,000 unmarried mothers passed through Bessborough, Castlepollard and Seán Ross Abbey.

Despite repeated calls by adoption campaigners, no full audit of adoption records held by the HSE or religious adoption agencies has ever been carried out.

In February, then children’s minister Frances Fitzgerald confirmed no such audit was planned.

Susan Lohan of the Adoption Rights Alliance hit out at the Order’s lack of information as to the numbers of children buried at the three sites.

“It’s amazing that the Order is so certain that all the women were informed that their children had died, but yet can’t answer any questions as to how many children were buried in these plots.

“Claims mothers were informed are also directly at odds with testimonials from women who went through these homes,” she said.

Ms Lohan said the nuns need to provide answers to these questions as they were effectively in loco parentis once women gave birth.

Cold case

On Thursday, the Irish Examiner reported on Tipperary woman Mary (not her real name) whose baby died while she was in Bessborough in 1960.

Through two nuns squabbling, Mary learned a dirty needle had been used on her during her labour and it was a further 31 years before the Sacred Heart nuns admitted to Mary her baby boy had died of septicaemia.

She recently spoke about how she didn’t even know there was a cemetery in Bessborough for the babies who died there until 1998. When she tried to lay a simple mark on his grave, she wasn’t allowed.

“I wasn’t aware until 16 years ago that there was a cemetery at Bessborough. Until one day, out of desperation, I knocked at the door of Bessborough, to enquire where my baby was buried. I was taken to this overgrown, what looked like a dump, small plot of land. I was not allowed to go in myself but the nun stood on the spot where she said that is where my baby is buried. I waited outside of the wall. When I asked if it was possible to place a mark over his grave, I was told that I could not under any circumstances.”

*UPDATE:  A SURVIVOR of the Tuam Mothers and Babies home described it as akin to a “rabbit colony” with hundreds of children living in an environment with overflowing toilets and little care.

J.P Rodgers was born in the home in 1947. Just 13 months after his birth he was separated from his mother who was moved to the Magdalene Laundry in Galway city while he remained in the home until he was fostered at the age of five. It wouldn’t be very fond memories I have of it,” he said.

HARSH:

Speaking of the large numbers of children growing up in the harshest of conditions, Mr Rodgers said it was nothing short of a miracle that he survived.
“I can’t say for sure but in my mind’s eye there were probably about 200 children. The place was just alive with children. I remember being in the playground,

standing there alone, maybe not very well as I do remember a period where I was very, very ill. Thankfully I came out of it but I was probably no different from anybody else in the place,” he added. Speaking about the conditions growing up, Mr Rodgers recollects clearly the shed with sinks to wash at and open air toilets.

“There were two or three of them and more often than not those toilets were full to the brim and that was the reality. I think I was saved by fortune, good luck,” he said.

“I suppose where you have 200 children it was like a rabbit colony, I couldn’t describe it as anything else because you’re talking about the early 1950s, tuberculosis was rampant in Ireland so kids would have been very ill, coughing constantly, malnourished, coming from all classes of society, from broken homes,

from unmarried mothers,” he said. Despite experiencing the stark conditions at the home first hand, Mr Rodgers was still shocked to learn of the extent of the deaths there.

“When the news broke I was horrified, I was shocked. It took a while to deal with it because it was like a re-awakening of the ghost of my past and I thought there, but for the grace of God go I. - Chucked into a septic tank, with no record of who you were, where you came from or your family connections. The man who unearthed the remains of hundred of babies when he was just 12 years old said he will never forget the sight as long as he lives.

Frannie Hopkins was playing with a friend at the Tuam site back in 1975 when the pair noticed that one of the slabs covering an old septic tank had come loose.

It’s now believed that the bodies of almost 796 babies were dumped there after dying at a nearby mother and baby home run by nuns. The babies are thought to have died from neglect and malnutrition.

“At the time we found a concrete slab over what I described at the time as a tank I now see it was a tomb,” Mr Hopkins told The Hearld “I think it’s a wonderful thing the committee have done, they have exposed Ireland’s dirty linen yet again,” he added.

He now wants to see the grave site properly recognised to allow families of those buried their remember their lost ones in dignity, adding: “They need to consecrate that ground for all the children.”

“We removed the lid and we found that it was full of skeletons, they appeared to be that of children. They were tiny skeletons, there just seemed to be an awful lot for one small little grave.

“Being kids we ran off and the next thing all the kids in the neighbourhood were there. A few days later our parents told us not to go there, that the priest had been there and had said mass and prayers and that the grave had been covered up again,” he said.

Mr Hopkins said he visited the grave site repeatedly over the years, but never knew the true extent of the tragedy until Catherine Corless’ research emerged.

“It was only later that I found out the numbers that were being spoken about and the enormity and the severity of the situation has come out now. 
We just knew it was a large number of remains for a small grave, it did seem a large number at the time but no way 
in comparison to the numbers being spoken of now,” he 
added.

FLOWERS:

Meanwhile, locals who lived near the site paid special tribute to local man Padraic Dooley who cared for the tiny graveyard for 40 years. Sadly Mr Dooley passed

away just two weeks ago before the grave site could be properly recognised. “He would always keep flowers there. It’s a pity he can’t 
see this now,” said one local man.

Among the causes of death given for the children, who ranged in age from two days to nine years, were measles, abscess of the scalp and even laryngitis.

However, locals and the committee behind the discovery now hope that the babies can be properly remembered without being moved.

“We want to see a plaque up and the grave finished but we don’t want to see them dug up. We just want to recognise them,” said committee member John Lowe.

“We don’t want to see them exhumed. The Bishop said that would be an option, but we won’t have that. They are long enough there. We don’t want them moved.”

As calls for a government inquiry grow, Minister for Children Charlie Flanagan accepted that Tuam was not unique in Ireland as a Mother and Baby Home.

“We will properly review these issues and we will not confine this review to Tuam,” he said.

Taoiseach Enda Kenny said he had asked the Minister to draw senior officials from across departments to review whether this was an isolated incident or a countrywide issue.

Minister for Public Expenditure and Reform Brendan 
Howlin said all necessary inquiries would take place, including a criminal one if it was deemed appropriate by the authorities.

A statement on behalf of the Sisters of Bon Secours said they were “shocked and deeply saddened” by the recent 
reports about St Mary’s Mother and Baby

Home and stressed they would engage with the committee and local community “as constructively as they can”.
*Once again, it has taken international press headlines to make the Government address a dirty little secret the State has been aware of decades.

The horrific discovery of hundreds of children buried in a septic tank at a former home for unmarried mothers in Tuam in Galway merely lit the fuse on a scandal that was hiding in plain sight.

We have heard Government and opposition TDs alike express their horror at these “shocking revelations” and the need to fully investigate the circumstances surrounding the Tuam discovery.

Taoiseach Enda Kenny said he wanted to know if there are any other baby graves at mother-and-baby homes in other parts of the country.

Had politicians not heard of ‘angel plots’ dotted around the country? Had they not heard of mother-and-baby homes and the unspeakable abuses that occurred in them?

The fact is that infants are buried on the grounds of mother-and-baby homes all around the country. Adopted people and natural parents gather for dignified memorial services at ‘angel plots’ in places such as Bessborough in Cork, Castlepollard in Westmeath, and Sean Ross Abbey in Tipperary every year.

Nobody cared in government then.

Nobody in Government cared when 219 unmarked graves of children from the Bethany Homes in Mount Jerome were found.

Mother-and-baby homes were excluded from the Redress Scheme in 2005 as there was “no evidence of systematic or widespread abuse of children in those institutions”.

Tuam is not an incident in isolation, nor is it unusual. Nor is the frighteningly high death rates of children in mother-and-baby homes, or their burial in mass graves. On the death certificates of some of these children, it’s clear that many died of preventable illnesses.

Another word is also prevalent — Marasmus. In layman’s terms — malnutrition.

As this newspaper revealed on Wednesday, the death rates for children in the Sean Ross Abbey home fell below 20% only once between 1930 and 1945, reaching a peak of 42% in 1942, when 73 out of 170 children born there died.

In Bessborough, in that same year, 53 out of 106 children born died — a death rate of 50%. The following year the figure was even higher, with 60 out of 106 children dying.

Was the State aware of this? Absolutely.

In the 1950s, the chief medical officer, Dr James Deeny, shut down Bessborough and later wrote in his memoir in the 1980s: “The deaths had been going on for years. They had done nothing about it, had accepted the situation and were quite complacent about it.”

The reason is simple. A so-called ‘illegitimate’ child’s life was worth less than a ‘legitimate’ child. The statistics bear it out. Take any year from the 1920s right up to the late 1940s and the death rate for ‘illegitimate’ infants was between three and five times that of ‘legitimate’ children.

Places such as Tuam, Castlepollard, and Bessborough are not the only mother-and-baby homes. There were others — St Patrick’s Home on the Navan Rd in Dublin, St Patrick’s Guild and Temple Hill in Dublin, Ard Mhuire and St Clare’s in Meath, to name just a few.

Like in the Magdalene laundries, women report having been subjected to emotional and physical abuse and having to undertake manual labour while heavily pregnant.

There is evidence that some mother-and-baby homes were established under the auspices of the State, while others received capitation grants towards their running costs. There was also an inspection role for the State in respect of some homes.

For those children who survived, adoption was the only choice. In many cases, these children were adopted illegally and, in some cases, for money. Births were falsified and illegal adoptions facilitated arranged by religious orders. Many other children were subjected to vaccine trials without the consent of their mothers.

Again, this is all known to the State. This Government, like every government before it, has done nothing in terms of granting adopted people and natural mothers the most basic rights.

The Adoption Act of 2010 was introduced to facilitate intercountry adoption. Adopted people and natural mothers were left out in the cold, still without a legal right to a birth certificate or basic medical information.

Former children’s minister Frances Fitzgerald promised tracing and information legislation in 2011. We are still waiting to see a heads of bill. In the Dáil, Ms Fitzgerald categorically said every adoption carried out by the State has been legal.

“All adoptions which the Irish State has been involved in since 1952 have been in line with this [Adoption Act 1952] and subsequent adoption legislation,” she said.

Ms Fitzgerald made the claim despite the fact that no full audit of adoption records held by the HSE or religious adoption agencies has ever been carried out. She confirmed that no such audit is planned.

She also stated that illegal adoptions referred only to illegal birth registrations, which meant the State was not involved as no formal adoption took place.

This is despite the fact that numerous documented cases exist where formal adoption orders were made where the parents of the children were married, in the absence of the consent of the natural mother and where documents were falsified.

Such an audit would be one step in exposing the scale of the mother-and-baby home and illegal adoption scandal.

In 1974, then justice minister Paddy Cooney clearly outlined a forced adoption policy stating that “adoption is better for the illegitimate baby than to be cared for by its mother”.

The solution here is quite simple and an inter-departmental inquiry is not it. Departments at the centre of these issues cannot be allowed to investigate themselves.

A full, entirely independent inquiry into the operation of all mother-and-baby homes, the deaths which occurred there and the scale of illegal and forced adoptions is needed.

It’s also time that the women who went through these institutions and lost their children to death or forced adoption came out of the shadows and demanded justice.

‘If you looked half-way decent, they could get paid for you’

The Tuam mother-and-baby home was rampant with infections, according to a Co Galway man who was born and lived there for five years.

“You picked up everything there. You could be a healthy baby or child and you could get God knows what, tuberculosis the lot,” said John Rodgers.

“I got something in there. I was sick in bed for a year; to this day, I don’t know what it was.”

John says he also remembers children regularly “disappearing” from the home. He didn’t know if they were suddenly fostered out, adopted or had died. He said he had no idea until recently that up to 800 dead babies and children had been “flung in a septic tank” near the home.

He has always considered himself as “one of the lucky ones”, as he was adopted by a kind Irish family.

“It was a lottery there,” he said. “If you looked half-way decent they could get paid for you and you’d be shipped to America or adopted in Ireland. If you were less valuable, scrawny, you could be less fortunate.”

John was adopted by a “good family” in north Galway and eventually emigrated to the UK, where he worked in construction. His mother, from whom he was forcibly separated, was less lucky and was sent to a Magdalene laundry in Galway.

In 2006, he wrote a book, For the Love of my Mother, about “the trauma she went through in the laundry”. He found it hard to get it published but eventually found a publisher in London and landed a six-figure advance.

“Every day after I was born was agony for her, as she knew that at any time, we could be separated,” he said.

His mother eventually escaped from the laundry by scaling its wall with two friends.

When he was 34, John was reunited with his mother, a day he describes as “the greatest of my life”. She had cut off a lock of his hair on the day he was taken from her and kept it in a locket all those years.

“She was so ashamed of her past and didn’t want to talk about it at all,” he said. “But it was so unjust, all these women and children suffering in these homes and in laundries and nothing was done to the men, the fathers of the children.”

Yesterday, John went to the site of the mass grave. “There was such an eerie feeling about the place. I walked around and just felt so unbearably sad that flinging children in a septic tank was the best we could do.”

Anyone who wishes to help the gravestone project can donate to the Children’s Home Graveyard at St Jarlaths Credit Union, account number 12747355, sort code 903971.