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EDDIE HOLT

Deafening silence over deaths of Irish babies

By
Eddie Holt

Published Sunday, August 2, 2009, 10:20 AM
Updated Monday, August 3, 2009, 12:17 PM

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A 2004 memorial which was built at Mount St. Laurence Cemetery, Limerick to honour those who died in the city's Good Shepherd Magdalene Laundry
A 2004 memorial which was built at Mount St. Laurence Cemetery, Limerick to honour those who died in the city's Good Shepherd Magdalene Laundry

I wrote an extended feature less than two weeks ago on known and unknown deaths in industrial and reform schools, Magdalen laundries and mother and baby homes. The story required soul-searching because of its gravitas. I am glad the story has done well for Irish Central but chilled at the silence from Ireland. It is an Irish story, after all.

There are a few possible reasons. Perhaps nobody from Ireland surfed onto Irish Central. That’s extremely unlikely, as the site attracts almost a quarter of all its hits each week from people outside the United States. Ireland, by definition, is high up there. It might be the timing: the forthcoming report on the Dublin Archdiocese is consuming media here. There’s a ‘softening-up’ process preparing the public for shocks.

But maybe it’s “too big” to contemplate: nuns, priests and Brothers, because of their religious convictions, killed babies and infants. It’s monstrous. One piece of feedback, I received was “infants tainted with the shame of illegitimacy did not deserve a commemoration or a Christian burial. Wasn't that the idea? The disgrace of their circumstances trumped all pretence at humanity or Christian compassion”.

In fact, the Sisters of the Sacred Hearts of Jesus and Mary (who ran Bessborough, Sean Ross Abbey and Castlepollard) ought to have loved mothers, babies and infants, twice over. Instead, large numbers are buried, in a manner contrary to the laws of the Church and State in mass graves. Nuns meanwhile, were buried in a separate area with individualised headstones.

I listed the death rates – the infant mortality rate – for children born within marriage and outside marriage. In the 1920s, it was five times as high for children born outside marriage. Ten out of 33 such children died before their first birthday. The equivalent figure was two out of 33 for children born within marriage. In the 1930s, more than four times as many babies and infants born outside marriage died before they reached one year of age.

In 1948, the rate of mortality among babies born inside marriage was 47 per 1,000 live births. The rate for babies born outside marriage was 149 per 1,000 births. These figures were quoted by John Cunningham the former Professor of Obstetrics and Gynaecology at University College Dublin. He said at UCD in March, 1951 that “this area does not necessitate state intervention”. Still, it’s more than three times as high.

There was infanticide, of course. Mothers or other relatives ‘distraught’ by the birth outside marriage – sometimes birth-fathers and fathers of mothers grieving lost ‘respectability’ – undoubtedly killed babies and infants. Such people valued a rule, encouraged by the Catholic Church, to relegate the Fifth Commandment – ‘Thou shalt not kill’ – in favour of Church hatred of babies born outside marriage.

Either the Catholic Church caused deaths or it didn’t. (Excepted, of course, are the Crusades, Spanish Inquisition, aiding of Nazi war criminals, witch-burning, ‘just’ wars, and heaps of sundry careerism. That’s not on offer. Violent times, you know!) There’s an argument to say that in withholding painkillers, stitching and antibiotics they, at least, hastened deaths. Some mothers and babies were sure to die without these essentials. Otherwise, it was the death rate for the 18th century from childbirth.

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Posted by jacersisityourself on Dec 18, 2009, 03:10 PM EST
(...Cont’d) The full truth of Kincora was never allowed to come out, especially when an official but privately established Inquiry Commission was denied access to certain records re Kincora. Nth Ireland’s police force, the RUC, almost exclusively Protestant back then, and Britain’s secrets monitors/spies in MI5 and MI6, apparently stopped the Inquiry Team getting the info and members of the Commission resigned in protest. The Inquiry was killed off then and the full truth never came out. You can ‘Google’ or ‘Bing’ search online for the “Kincora Boys Home” or “Kincora Scandal” for more info if you’re not aware of this horrifying story from the 1970’s and 80’s. It remains a huge cover-up in Irish child abuse stories and exclusively a Protestant one.
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Posted by jacersisityourself on Dec 18, 2009, 03:08 PM EST
CarolynDisco and ceciliag may not be aware of this but Eddie wrote this article last August. Quite a few of us IC comment posters made many comments under his first article‘Suffer Little children..’, posted in July, under his 2nd article, the ‘Deafening...’ one above. These comments are no longer displayed since IrishCentral carried out a wash-out of older comments on its IT storage systems, which is why there were no new comments under this article until those of Carolyn and ceciliag appear. Eddie’s first and second articles on the topic were so one-sided in condemning Catholic abuse schools that I felt obliged to highlight that Protestant schools also abused children. I urged him to research this aspect and particularly the horrible abuse that was suffered by young Protestant boys in Kincora Boys Home in Belfast, Nth Ireland, perpetrated by privileged members of the Nth Ireland and British Establishments, allegedly including a well-known (now deceased) member of Britain’s Royal Family. In response he wrote a later article - ‘Irish kids, Catholic and Protestant, were killed in abuse schools’ - but Eddie did not address the biggest abuse scandal ever re the Kincora Home. I hope his talented investigative journalism gets around to it soon, or someday. (More...)
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Posted by ceciliag on Dec 09, 2009, 12:48 AM EST
Yes, one would think that nuns, being women, would be caring & nurturing to the poor helpless children of Almighty GOD, but evidently not. We know that Hitler patterend the NAZI Party after Jesuits. Perhaps the female guards at Auschwitz patterened themselves after these nuns of the S.H.O.J.& M.
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Posted by CarolynDisco on Dec 09, 2009, 12:26 AM EST
Congratulations to Eddie Holt for highlighting the most important untold story of the whole Irish Catholic world: the deaths, yes the deaths! of countless babies and children. I don't know, but are there options for accountability here? There should be no statute of limitations for murder and manslaughter. Bishops and religious order superiors should be required categorically to submit all documentation to the government for review to identify those buried, and those responsible. NAME THEM. Prosecute if possible, even though that is unlikely. Otherwise, demand financial contributions from dioceses and orders to cover a full investigation of criminality. Compile an archive, publish a comprehensive report. Finally, construct a museum, a memorial, and document repository for the historical record. Just like the Holocaust Museum in Washington, commit to preserve the memory, and have a place where research can be conducted (what are the sources of the shame and guilt? the Catholic church's culpability), with exhibits mounted. The horror is unimaginable; words fail. I share Holt's puzzlement at the lack of response to his first article, and thank him for this effort to awaken the conscience of all. Silence is indeed not an option.






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