An Unexpected Visit

The heart of Ireland keeps opening in unexpected ways. Today, for example, I was napping when Owen, my AirB&B host, knocked on my door. He said they had a friend visiting who I might want to talk with for a few minutes. He said she’d worked at the Bessborough Mother and Baby Home in Blackrock just outside Cork city.

When I sat down and started visiting with her, it was like opening the floodgates. I had my notebook in my lap, but she talked fast and really didn’t stop. She was eager to tell someone her story.

Bessborough Mother & Baby Home

Bessborough was not a laundry. It was, like all the other Mother and Baby homes in Ireland, a home for pregnant girls who had nowhere else to go. This school teacher, we’ll call her Cathy, taught Home Economics to the girls in the home for two or three summers back in the 80's. Her mother worked in the home and got her the job. This was after the worst years, which she says were in the 1950's, but while the home was still operating.

She remembers the big black gates at the entrance. She said some girls would just be left outside the gates by their families. Cathy had to go in through a service entrance in the back, which opened into a walled garden. This was the only place “outside” the girls could go, unless they were taking a taxi to an appointment at St. Finbarr’s Hospital. She remembers that upstairs in the home, there were archives of records (most of the orders involved in the M/B homes and the laundries have still refused to turn over any records).

Cathy said the girls ranged in age from 13 or 14 to in their 20’s. Their families didn’t want to have anything to do with them. She makes a point of telling me they came from all social classes, poor and well-to-do alike. 

She remembers heavily pregnant girls out helping to tarmacadam (coating made of crushed stone—macadam, tar, and sand) the home’s long drive, and she remembers the girls doing hard manual labor in the home’s own laundry, working with steam, heavy wet bedsheets, and giant ringers. 

Cathy said “everyone knows” that many babies were sold to Catholic families, mostly in America, and most girls’ families didn’t want the girls back, even after the babies were gone.

Babies in the yard - no moms allowed.

She brought up the fact that around 900 babies died at the home, though only 64 graves have been found. The Sisters of the Sacred Hearts of Jesus and Mary, who ran the home, told an investigative commission they “don’t know” where the rest of the babies are buried. Most people assume the babies are buried somewhere on the Bessborough grounds, but they can’t dig up all of the home and convent’s original 200 acres. Here's more on the Commission and the M/B homes in general:

https://www.irishtimes.com/news/ireland/irish-news/mother-and-baby-homes-commission-s-findings-on-five-sites-1.3863898

https://www.irishcentral.com/news/staff-testified-to-horrific-conditions-in-unmarried-mother-homes

One of the most chilling things Cathy said, and she was definitely NOT attempting an excuse, was this: “The Church solved Ireland’s problem, didn’t it.” The Church housed and hid the people Ireland didn’t want to see – pregnant girls, lawbreakers, intellectually challenged folks, truants, etc. She said, “Out of sight, out of mind, absolutely.” That expression keeps popping up.

When I told her I’d be writing poems and not a history, she said, “Aw, you’ve got to go to Bessborough, then, even if you can only stand at that black gate. You’ll get so much inspiration.”

Here’s why I say this is Ireland’s heart opening up: this woman’s own aunt was a nun in one of Dublin’s laundries, and Owen’s sister is a Good Shepherd nun who retired after 55 years in service (she’s still a nun—you don’t “retire” from that, I guess). Owen’s dining room is lined with First Holy Communion pictures of his five kids and a few of his eleven grandkids. It seems Irish people are increasingly trying to juggle two conflicting forces: they’re slowly lifting the veil on this part of their history, admitting it all happened, and they’re still trying to hang onto their faith and believe that at least some of the priests and nuns were (and still are) doing the best they could. This conflict is brutal and beautiful to witness, even just this minuscule peek I’ve had.

And lest we get too high on our high horses—remember that there were 28 “laundries” in the United States, too. I haven’t even STARTED looking into those, or into the possibility of M/B homes and industrial schools in the U.S. And they were in Canada, England, and Australia. It wasn’t/isn’t Ireland’s “problem”; it’s ours.