https://www.echolive.ie/corknews/arid-41444416.html?fbclid=IwY2xjawEW-Y9leHRuA2FlbQIxMQABHXOQavGRlfxlFrmM3nBo2OPoqSH9uPVsanttVSGzERRurT4F7QWg4TMC4Q_aem_eXpxhvBbEqD4BecN0yFRcgBessborough survivor: ‘What was it for, why were we punished?’
A survivor of the Bessborough mother and baby institution has spoken about the death, more than 60 years ago, of her baby, and said she blames the Catholic Church for putting ‘hatred’ toward single mothers into the minds of Irish people. Donal O’Keeffe hears her story
Between 1922 and 1998, the Congregation of the Sacred Hearts of Jesus and Mary ran Bessborough as a mother and baby institution, and during that time 9,768 mothers and 8,938 babies were admitted. According to the final report of the Mother and Baby Homes Commission of Investigation, some 923 children died at Bessborough or after being transferred from there. Burial records exist for only 64 of the children who died in the care of the Bessborough institution or after transfer from it, meaning that the records and remains of 859 children are missing. In 1960, Madeleine Walsh, a pregnant 18-year-old from Co Tipperary living and working in London, was sent back to Ireland, to Bessborough, by a Catholic group called The Crusade of Rescue. While she was in labour, the nuns gave Ms Walsh an injection, and she later developed a large abscess where she had received the injection. Her baby William was born healthy, but when he was three days old, he became suddenly extremely ill and was taken from his mother, who also became very sick. When William was eventually brought to St Finbarr’s Hospital, it was too late to save him and he died, six weeks old. His death certificate says he died of septicaemia. Still desperately ill, Ms Walsh was told William had already been buried. Three decades later, visiting Bessborough, Ms Walsh was told he had been buried in the empty quadrant of the nuns’ graveyard by the Bessborough folly. In 2019, almost 60 years after William died, the fifth interim report of the State commission on mother and baby homes was published. It was scathing in its criticism of the Sisters of the Sacred Hearts of Jesus and Mary at Bessborough, describing the information the nuns had given the commission as “speculative, inaccurate, and misleading”. The report also contained distressing details clearly identifying William and showing that he had, in fact, been buried, over half a century earlier, in a pauper’s grave in the overgrown Famine graveyard on Carr’s Hill. Ms Walsh spoke at last month’s 10th annual commemoration at Bessborough, an event organised by her daughter, Carmel Cantwell. The event was MC’d by PJ Coogan, with music by Myles Gaffney. Ms Walsh described the institution as “a place of complete horror” when she was brought there in 1960. “I was stripped, with two nuns looking on, observing what I was taking off, taking every single [thing], even little studded earrings you could hardly see were taken from me, everything. My shoes, everything.”
She was made to wear a canvas dress and clogs, and she and another girl were put to work in the labour ward. “I wasn’t aware of the facts of life, I didn’t even know where a baby came from, and yet we were put in charge of the labour ward.”
She said there was very little they could do to help each “beautiful Irish girl, frightened out of her life”.
Her voice faltering, Ms Walsh said she had been coming to the Bessborough folly for years, visiting what she had been led to believe was William’s grave, “talking to him, apologising to him”, before learning he was somewhere on Carr’s Hill.
She said the Mother and Baby Institutions Payment Scheme Act 2023, which excludes those who were in an institution for less than six months, was “an insult” even to those eligible. Around 68,000 people, mothers and babies, are believed to have gone through the religious-run system for unmarried mothers but only 34,000 survivors will be eligible for redress. Reflecting on her time in Bessborough, and remembering all the other girls and women who were put in such institutions, Ms Walsh said so many mothers had been incarcerated, their babies taken from them, and so many babies had died, like her baby William. “I wonder, what was it for? Why were we punished? What did we do wrong?” she asked.
“We could have looked after our babies, fed our babies, loved our babies, if we had been given the facilities, but no, everybody hated [us]. It was the church who got onto the parishioners, to put this hatred into their minds about single mothers.”
Afterward, in a thoughtful address, the former lord mayor of Cork, independent councillor Kieran McCarthy, spoke about the many stories of Cork’s history, and of Blackrock, the stories he said which had the power to stop people in their tracks. However, Mr McCarthy said, when the story came to that of Bessborough House, the reader would learn of the 19th-century folly, and the Pike family and their steamship industry, “and then you turn the page over, and for our story today, the ink disappears”.
Cork had done a lot, he suggested, to forget about Bessborough and the lives blighted by the institution.
PLANNING
“This gathering is a beacon or a lighthouse to not only tell the stories of what happened here, to tell the human experiences of what happened, but also lead the calls to break the selectiveness of Cork and Irish history and completing the multitude of memory banks that are only partly explored and to learn from all of that.” Mr McCarthy said that he believed that the grounds of Bessborough needed to become “a large-scale memory site or park”.
He added that, “when the planning process is finished”, he believed that Cork City Council, “with the help of central Government [would] work with the developer to see what can be done to either directly purchase or CPO (compulsory purchase order) the lands for commemoration purposes”.
Early last year, MWB Two, the developers behind a proposed 92-unit residential development at Bessborough in Blackrock, lodged an appeal with An Bord Pleanála in a bid to overturn Cork City Council’s decision to refuse planning permission. A decision is overdue on that appeal. A separate decision from An Bord Pleanála on three separate developments, in total 467 apartments, at Bessborough, outstanding since 2021, is also overdue. Sinn Féin councillor Michelle Gould said creating a memorial park would be “so fitting”. "The call by everyone at the commemoration was that there should be no planning permission, there should be nothing built here, it should be a memorial park,” she said.
“I think all parties and none should come together now, An Bord Pleanála should refuse planning permission, and Cork City Council, with the help of central Government, should CPO it, and the first thing that should be done is that the grounds be scanned for human remains.”
