Opinion

Tom Kelly: Tuam babies were denied recognition of their very existence

Tom Kelly

Tom Kelly

Tom Kelly is an Irish News columnist with a background in politics and public relations. He is also a former member of the Policing Board.

Flowers laid at the scene of a mass grave, where the remains of almost 800 babies were found, in Tuam, Co Galway.
Flowers laid at the scene of a mass grave, where the remains of almost 800 babies were found, in Tuam, Co Galway. Flowers laid at the scene of a mass grave, where the remains of almost 800 babies were found, in Tuam, Co Galway.

A few years ago my work took in me into contact with a religious order, which operated two orphanages in Northern Ireland.

In preparing for media interviews I questioned two nonagenarian nuns who worked in Derry in the 1940s and 50s. Their superiors had committed to sending young children from their institutions to Australia as part of a UK government policy at that time.

It’s hard to imagine anything worse than the enforced migration of young children, splitting them from their already tenuous links to the communities from which they came.

In explaining, one sister described what Derry was like after the war and in particular she admitted that many of the nuns having entered the convents as teenagers had no experience or training in social work or childcare making them totally unsuited to the role of a carer.

Furthermore she described how in some cases widowed fathers unable to cope emotionally but more likely financially, (as they couldn’t become full time stay at home parents), would abandon an entire family at the door of the convent. TB and diphtheria, which were rife amongst the poor and working class, often became rampant viruses in the confined and overcrowded orphanages. She told of nuns visiting local butchers and bakeries to collect food to supplement the inadequate subsidy provided by the government.

Against this backdrop the prospect of the children in their care having an opportunity to escape poverty and stigmatisation by going to Australia to start new lives seemed actually appealing. The fact that many of those children ended up being treated no better than indentured slaves never entered the equation.

The children were sent to a country that had no real welfare or child protection laws and there was little prospect of monitoring their welfare when inspection visits from Ireland were only on an annual basis and the nuns took the long haul route by boat to Australia. No surprise inspections back then.

In questioning one of the 90-year-old nuns who was both bedridden and blind, I sensed her genuine remorse on discovering the plight of those once under her charge. Rather bizarrely she wrote to many of the children for over 30 years. Whilst she wasn’t the one who made the decision to send the children overseas, that was outside her pay grade, I believed she didn’t disagree with the judgment call made by her superiors.

Often our view of the past is clouded with nostalgic and romantic notions of the good old days, of back to back housing, close-knit communities and everyone pulling together. It’s too easy to forget the poverty, deprivation and the oppression of judgmental and puritanical Victorian values which were very much alive and well in Ireland of the 1950s and 60s.

Whatever the rights and wrongs of the decision to engage in enforced migration it is in some ways at least understandable against the social and economic prospects for the abandoned children of those times. Like many I never understood the stigma attached to being brought up in an orphanage until it was explained to me by an old lady I used to visit, she told me that she had been a ‘foundling’, a term unfamiliar to me. She spoke of how difficult it was to get a job or to even find a husband willing to marry a foundling.

She never met her real mother but saw her frequently in the town. However her mother never acknowledged her. Being a foundling was a stigma she felt burdened with throughout her life.

With the phalanx of social workers, youth leaders and counsellors of today much of this is difficult to comprehend. Unlike today, back then ‘out of wedlock’ pregnancies were more likely to be hushed up.

The kinder alternatives to adoption, mother and baby homes or, worse still, Magdalene laundries, was when childless aunts and uncles took on unwanted babies or when a mother reared a daughter's child as her own. Many people only discovered in later years that those they thought of as their sisters were in fact their mothers.

The revelations last week that confirmed that some 800 babies and children were dumped in a mass unmarked grave is both disturbing and unsettling and not just from a Catholic perspective. Not only were these children not afforded a home, but they were also denied recognition of their very existence. There is no context to justify such acts because they are violations against dignity and decency.

How dark were the souls that authorised such actions?