The Rise of the Sacred Heart Nuns
Of all the religious orders that ran Mother and Baby Homes in Ireland, the Sacred Hearts are by far the most important. Their three homes were the second-, third- and fourth-largest of the nine that existed. Around half the women and girls who went to a Mother and Baby Home in Ireland went to a Sacred Heart home.
The order that became the Congregation of the Sisters of the Sacred Hearts of Jesus and Mary was founded in 1866 by a French priest, Father Peter Victor Braun, while he was on assignment to Paris, and the original order was named the ‘Servants of the Sacred Heart’. They spread rapidly across Europe, being part of the reaction by the Catholic Church to the revisionism of the reformed Protestant Churches sweeping the continent and Britain in the second part of the nineteenth century. The English Province of the order was founded accidentally when the nuns fled France after the outbreak of the Franco-Prussian war in 1870, initiating their later breaking away from their original Mother House. The order rapidly grew in size, power and influence and by the 1890s Irish nuns dominated the English branch, notably Sisters Winefride (originally Bridget) Tyrrell from Monasterevin, Co. Kildare, and Sylvester Halpin (originally Mary Jane Halfpenny) from Lobinstown, Co. Meath. Another young Irish girl, Mary Daly from Skeyne, Co. Westmeath, joined the original order in France aged just 15. She was later transferred to England and rose to become head of the new order in 1927.
The Servants of the Sacred Heart accepted the invitation of the Diocese of Westminster to take over their new Mother and Baby Home, and they re-named it St. Pelagia’s. It is interesting to note that, although there is some confusion historically, there were essentially two Pelagias; one was a young maiden (virgin) who committed suicide rather than agree to a forced marriage, and the other was a reformed prostitute and actress who converted to Christianity.
The single mothers in the new home remained there for a year after their babies were born and were taught domestic skills such as dressmaking and cooking until they were discharged. ‘Domestic skills’ was a euphemism for hard work around the home or some enterprise such as making religious regalia for commercial sale. Aged one year old, when their mothers were discharged, the children were sent to a Sacred Hearts’ nursery in Chadwell in east London. The children were then placed with local Catholic families for periods of anything from several weeks to several years. These families were paid for their care. From there the children were sent to so-called orphanages, which usually meant a Catholic industrial school or similar institution. The mothers who had been discharged were expected to pay for their baby’s nursing out. This payment came to be known as ‘parental monies’.
In 1897, the Sacred Hearts opened a second Mother and Baby Home in Kelton, Liverpool, when Monsignor James Nugent invited them to run a large manor house he had rented for the purpose. Following the example of the Magdalene Laundries dotted around Britain, this home took in commercial laundry from the ships in Liverpool’s busy port to be hand-washed by the residents, thus ensuring the nuns a steady income from an unpaid and captive workforce of pregnant girls and single mothers.
Because of their rapid growth and success during the 1890s, the English Sacred Hearts were restless and eager to be freed from their Mother House in France and they finally broke away in 1902. Three years later, on 5 March 1905, the new order was formally recognised by the Holy See in Rome as ‘The Congregation of the Sisters of the Sacred Hearts of Jesus and Mary.’ It is important to note that a ‘congregation’ is a second-class designation and considered inferior to an ‘order’. Winifride Tyrrell became the first Mother Superior General and was succeeded by Sylvester Halpin in 1908. The Sacred Heart nuns later opened two other Mother and Baby Homes in Britain, one in Scotland and their last in 1944 in Brettargholt, Kendal, in the Lake District. They arrived in Ireland in 1922.
There is one last piece of important legislation to consider before the previous century ended – the 1899 Poor Law Act. Although it is widely believed in the adoption community that the Adoption Act 1952 was the first piece of adoption legislation in Ireland, it was, in fact, the first piece of standalone adoption legislation. A section of the 1899 Poor Law Act legalised adoption by resolution. Generally, it was used in two ways; firstly, to adopt newborn babies and very young children and secondly, to adopt former foster children into the family once they had turned 16 years old. Weekly payments for fostering a child ceased on that date.
By 1900, industrial and reformatory schools had developed a negative reputation because the former inmates had none of the social skills necessary to function in civil society. Their health was destroyed by their regimented existence and poor diet. Britain reluctantly accepted that caring for children in large institutions was a failed social experiment and began to phase out the institutions that had shattered tens of thousands of lives.
In the early twentieth century, the rest of the English-speaking world, particularly in the United States, followed the British lead and began to phase out large-scale institutional care. Ireland was the exception. The Irish Catholic Church had fought long and hard to own and/or control all the different types of institutions spreading across the country and were not about to give them up. The Church fiercely resisted the new British policy, and following independence in 1922, moved swiftly to consolidate its control and ownership of the institutions.
Local Government Reports
In 1922, practically all welfare and public health matters were the sole responsibility of local authorities and, from the time that these forerunners of local county councils came into existence in 1872, a new government department headed by a cabinet minister issued an annual report. These Local Government Reports (LGRs) are a primary source for researchers into the Mother and Baby Homes up to 1945.
Section IV of the LGRs was entitled ‘Public Assistance’ and dealt with what would now be considered social welfare and some health-related matters. That section contained an annual report on ‘Unmarried Mothers’ and related issues, which varied from year to year, such as infant mortality rates and explanations and interpretations of new legislation. Some years contained facts and figures, others did not. By the mid-1930s, the sections dealing with ‘Unmarried Mothers’ began to shrink and, by the final year in 1945, amounted to just a couple of brief paragraphs with no useful or illuminating information.
Although the main-section narratives of the LGRs were written by anonymous civil servants, at least one and often two special reports were written every year by the ‘National Inspectors of Boarded-Out Children’: Aneenee Fitzgerald-Kenney and Alice Litster. Having served under the Senior Inspector, Fitzgerald-Kenney was the more senior; Marie Dickie had served since her appointment in 1903 and as a National Inspector from at least 1910. Litster was later also appointed National Inspector. Products of the sensitive and enlightened approach to childcare originating in Britain, their reports were mainly narrative, and significant parts were printed verbatim in the 1927/1928 LGR in the main section. The following year, their reports were relegated to the Appendices section and in smaller print than the main section.
Fitzgerald-Kenney’s and Litster’s Protestant backgrounds are vital to a full understanding of the ideological and religious battle waged in the sub text of the reports year on year. Anyone interested in the treatment of single mothers in Ireland during the 1920s and 1930s should read these reports, including Fitzgerald-Kenney’s and Litster’s individual reports in the Appendices from 1928. The complete narrative offers a fascinating insight into the Inspectors’ philosophy about single mothers and their babies. Their views on the care of children are clear and progressive, unlike the woefully out-of-date ramblings of the Catholic Irish civil servants.
While the language in the reports is very dated and would be considered offensive by today’s standards, the fundamental compassion shown by Fitzgerald-Kenney and Litster is clearly evident. They followed international best practice throughout the 1920s, 1930s and 1940s, and regularly cited League of Nations research and recommendations.