There is a distinct difference in the attitudes of the Inspectors compared to those of the Catholic civil servants who compiled the main report. The Inspectors consistently demonstrated compassion and understanding of the children’s situations, as far back as 1915 in FitzGerald-Kenney’s case: ‘[Boarding-out is] infinitely superior to the unfortunate system which condemns young and innocent children to the Workhouse as their home … The system of hiring-out is still an unsatisfactory one, and very low wages continue to be paid.’6
The transition to Irish independence must have been a profoundly disturbing time for the Inspectors, with an uneasy standoff between the old guard of senior civil servants and the new nationalist regime that assumed power after the Anglo-Irish Treaty was signed in 1921. This tension is discernible in the LGRs from 1922 to 1945.
In 1924 the new Department of Education noted that there were more children in industrial schools in the Irish Free State than in all the United Kingdom. Catholic Ireland continued to judge and punish single mothers and their babies, with Local Authorities, County Councils, the National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children’s Inspectors, the new police force, An Garda Síochána, and the courts committing an average of 1,000 children a year to the industrial schools, while women were poured into the Magdalene Laundries via the courts or other unofficial means.
It is clear from the LGRs that it was considerably more expensive to keep children in institutions than it was to place them in properly inspected foster homes, but the State continued to push women and children into institutions. The Children’s Act of 1929 clearly demonstrates a decisive choice the Irish State made only seven years after independence, significantly expanding the reasons children could be sent to industrial schools and streamlining the process of committing them. Britain closed its last industrial school in 1933 while Irish industrial schools and Magdalene Laundries flourished, and new Mother and Baby Homes continued to open.
There has been considerable confusion and misunderstanding about the statistics used in the LGRs. For example, the old workhouses were rebranded as ‘County Homes’. Commentators and academics have understood the references to ‘Poor Law Institutions’ to always mean ‘County Homes’. In fact, the figures given for ‘Poor Law Institutions’ always included the public Mother and Baby Homes (Pelletstown, Kilrush and Tuam) and sometimes included private Mother and Baby Homes known as ‘extern institutions’, which were subcontracted by the government (Bessboro, Sean Ross Abbey and Castlepollard). The LGRs are simply unclear at times and the figures used also changed in definition. The civil servants who compiled the reports either presumed people would understand, or they were deliberately obscuring the truth. Some basic errors in the reports also lead to the conclusion that many civil servants were lazy or incompetent, or both.
As a general guide, approximately 900–1,100 single mothers were in the various institutions at any one time during the 1920s and 1930s. These include the Workhouses/County Homes, a small number in the County Hospitals during their confinement, and the public and private Mother and Baby Homes. Overall there were approximately 1,500 illegitimate babies born in 1922, rising to over 2,000 by the early 1930s before decreasing to 1,700 at the start of the Second World War. During the war, that figure increased to over 2,600 in 1945, and we will examine the reasons in later chapters. The Protestant Bethany Mother and Baby Home is absent from all the LGRs, reflecting the State’s attitude that Bethany simply didn’t exist.
It must also be remembered that the facts stated in the LGRs reveal only a snapshot of a particular moment in time. Taking the figures on 31 March 1940 for Pelletstown, there were 135 mothers in the home on that date. However, 243 had been admitted during the previous year while 273 were discharged.
CHAPTER TWO
Building High Walls:
The First Mother and
Baby Home and
Other Institutions
Rather than survey each individual home and adoption society over their lifetimes, this book explains their foundations and returns to examine their daily conditions, funding and notable incidents in particular homes. The early years of Pelletstown are examined in greater detail as it was the first of the Mother and Baby Homes and set the template for many of the homes that followed.
Rotunda Girls Aid Society
Dr Sir Arthur Macan was Master of the Rotunda Maternity Hospital in Dublin from 1882 to 1889 and is chiefly remembered for performing the hospital’s first caesarean section.1 His wife Mary Macan (née Wanklyn) from Surrey in England was an active reformer and philanthropist like her husband, and she founded the ‘Rotunda Girls Aid Society’ (RGAS) in the Catholic parish of St. Mary’s Pro Cathedral in Dublin in 1881.
The RGAS was one of hundreds of ‘rescue societies’ set up during the nineteenth century and survived because no other group could provide its specific services. In its annual report for 1887/88, the society noted the death of its founder by remarking that Mrs Macan had ‘saved many from shame, sin and sorrow’.2 RGAS was based in 82 Marlborough Street, which is the presbytery beside the Pro Cathedral in Dublin, and in other offices in the same area over its lifetime. It quickly evolved into an organisation run by Catholic laywomen almost exclusively for Catholics, although these women provided their services regardless of religion. While they offered practical help and advice to girls to rebuild their lives, this was only after the girls had given up their children. The primary mission of RGAS was to help find respectable homes for children and then inspect the homes to safeguard the welfare of the babies and children in their care. RGAS helped reunite women with their children if their circumstances had changed enough to ensure they could care for their own children without assistance. Usually the women had married and their new husbands were willing to ‘take on’ their children. The Poor Law of 1899 legislated for adoption by resolution and the RGAS used it when sourcing families who sought to adopt children rather than take cash for boarding them out.
The early decades of RGAS reflected a contradiction of contemporary Victorian and Catholic judgement and yet also contained elements of the emerging Women’s Liberation movement and some genuine Christian sentiment. Like many of the rescue societies, their hearts were essentially in the right place, but the climate of the times also influenced their personal attitudes and behaviour. The girls RGAS aided were reminded of their shame on a regular basis but men were equally castigated for their failure to accept responsibility. In later years RGAS became more judgemental and secretive. From its outset, and despite its name, the society had a large catchment area not confined to the Rotunda Hospital. Up to the 1950s, RGAS placed babies in dozens of small nursing homes in north-inner-city Dublin, and with residents of the surrounding genteel suburbs of Drumcondra. After the 1952 Adoption Act, RGAS found and matched married couples who wanted to adopt babies.
RGAS was sued in the late 1990s by two informally adopted women who demanded their personal files and details. RGAS refused, as it was legally required to do, and the case went all the way to the Supreme Court. Towards the end of its existence, RGAS stopped facilitating adoptions and concentrated solely on tracing and reuniting natural mothers and their adult children, although the adoption community’s memories of dealing with RGAS are decidedly mixed. The society closed quietly and handed over its records and files to the Health Service Executive (HSE) in 2009 after protracted negotiations to protect itself from potential legal actions.
Pelletstown Mother and Baby Home (aka St. Patrick’s)
The first and biggest of Ireland’s Mother and Baby Homes was Pelletstown (also known as St. Patrick’s) auxiliary workhouse, situated on the north-west outskirts of Dublin at 381 Navan Road. It was an ‘auxiliary’ unit of the South Dublin Union’s workhouse complex based in James’ Street and operated by the Dublin Board of Guardians. The network of workhouses and Boards of Guardians around Ireland sent the children