'My granny delivered the Tuam babies':..

By Michelle Fleming
Daily Mail (UK)
June 8, 2014

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2651871/My-granny-delivered-Tuam-babies-Michelle-Fleming-grew-hearing-stories-abandoned-children.html

Michelle Fleming's granny, Nora Burke, who was a midwife at the Tuam Mother and Child Home

Mystery: The issue of possible mass graves at mother and baby homes across the country has made global headlines since details of 796 babies who died at the home in Tuam (pictured), Co. Galway, were revealed

Location: The babies' remains were left in a mass grave on the grounds of St Mary's in Tuam

'My granny delivered the Tuam babies': Michelle Fleming grew up hearing stories about the 'abandoned children'

What happened at Tuam, at the Mother and Child Home run by the Bon Secours nuns, shocked everyone.

But for me, it feels personal – for my Granny Nora delivered many of those babies.

I grew up hearing stories about these abandoned children, the ‘Home Babies’, with whom my mother Mary and her sister Eleanor played as children.

I think I was about 10 when my mother first told me about the Home Babies. She told me how she was in fifth class at the Mercy Convent when Sister Lawrence attempted to teach the girls the ‘facts of life’.

Puzzled by Sister Lawrence constantly prefacing every statement with ‘when you get married’, she shot up her hand.

'No Sister, that can’t be right,' she said. ‘What about the Home Babies, Sister? Their mammies and daddies aren’t married.’

The flustered nun accused my mother of being disruptive and sinful.

That Sunday, Lawrence and another nun arrived up at my mother’s door.

Mam and Eleanor, then 13, listened at the keyhole as the nuns gave out and my granny defended her daughter.

From then on, I was fascinated and haunted in equal measure by the Home Babies, those forgotten children with no mammies and daddies, locked away in an old house on the outskirts of town.

My granny died before I got the chance to ask her about her experiences.

My own mother died almost 20 years ago, before I got the chance to ask her many things too — not
least what went on in Tuam.

But I often spoke about it with my aunt Eleanor, my mother’s only sister, now a retired primary schoolteacher living in Wexford. This week we spoke again.

She remembers: ‘The home was an imposing grey building behind a 10ft wall and big gates. Every morning, the Home Babies were marched in lines down the Dublin Road to the Mercy National School and back in the evening.

'At the school the worst insult a child could give was to call you a Home Baby. They were completely
shunned. Our friends used to say, "Our mammies told us not to play with the Home Babies. If you play with them, we’re not allowed play with you." Having a child outside of wedlock was considered the worst sin imaginable in those days.'

My granny, Nora Burke, trained as a nurse in London during World War II, before returning to Dublin to train as a midwife in Holles Street.

She met my grandfather, James, a welder, during a visit home. She returned to Tuam to work as the district midwife. When she and James married, Nora continued to work as part-time district midwife

Among her duties was providing relief midwifery cover at the Mother and Child Home – delivering Home Babies.

My aunt remembers: 'Just like their mothers, the Home Babies were shunned by everyone beyond
those walls. Parents told their children not to associate with them. I knew people saw them as dirty.

'The fact is, nobody wanted to know about them — these homes were society's way of getting rid of a problem.

Unmarried mothers and their children were seen as a filthy problem and this was how they solved it – they wanted them hidden, locked away. They had washed their hands of them and the nuns got their shillings to keep them out of sight.

'It wasn't just in Tuam, it was all over Ireland and it came from the top – the Church and the Government were almost one and the same in those days. Everything sexual was viewed as dirty, sinful.'

Eleanor describes the practice of 'churching' – where women were publicly 'cleansed' of the
'sin' of childbirth – to demonstrate how even married women who became pregnant were stigmatised
as tainted.

'In those days, every woman who had a child had to be purified before she could receive Holy Communion again, in a ritual called churching.

'When my friend Maura went to have her baby christened, she told me she had to wait outside at the side door for the priest to march her up to the side altar.

'He made her kneel down as he read out this horrendous stuff about her being unclean and forgiving her for her sins and ridding her of demons. I couldn't understand what she'd done. It traumatised me – I was 16. It was like she had killed somebody. We look at certain religions now and condemn them for how they treat women but we were no better back then.'

Eleanor was shocked to read of the mortality rate at the Tuam home. A county board of health inspection report from 1946 noted some children were 'emaciated, fragile', 'not thriving' and had 'flesh hanging off bones'.

'I don't remember thinking the children looked sick or hungry but perhaps the sick ones were in
the infirmary. Their uniforms never fit them right so they were always dishevelled,' Eleanor remembers.

'They all had short hair and a pudding bowl hair-cut for the girls. I remember going up to play in their dorms and seeing the rows and rows of beds squashed together so tightly you could barely pass between them.

'With TB and measles and gastro-enteritis, I would say disease would spread like wildfire. It must have been a major issue affecting the mortality rate.’

Did my granny ever complain about conditions at the home?

'She had many a row up there. I remember her giving out about the numbers of children in the
wards but you can draw the comparison between what's happening with nurses now working in deplorable conditions.

'What can they do only do their best in the circumstances? Mammy had a choice – to clear
out or do what little she could.'

Eleanor points to the case of Dr James Deeny, Ireland's Chief Medical Officer in 1944. Alarmed by the high mortality rate in Bessborough, a mother and baby home in Cork, Dr Deeny turned up unannounced and discovered babies with severe diarrhoea and skin infections.

He sacked the matron (a nun) and the medical officer and closed down the institution. But he
provoked the ire of Bishop Colohan of Cork, Dean of Cork Mgr Sexton, and Papal Nuncio Archbishop Robinson, all of whom complained about him to taoiseach Eamon de Valera.

'Look at that man and what he came up against,' says Eleanor. 'If he couldn't change it, there was no way a part-time midwife had any hope in hell. Even Dr Deeny couldn't change it.

'The nuns alone can’t be scapegoated. They cleaned up what society considered a sinful mess and were supported by the Church, the State and society in general, who all wanted them locked away.'
 'POT-BELLIED AND EMACIATED':  THE SHOCKING HEALTH REPORT FROM ST MARY'S MOTHER AND BABY HOME

Shocking health inspection reports from St Mary’s Mother and Baby home in Tuam, Co. Galway, show that as many as one-third of infants at the home died in just one year. The reports from the 1940s describe children who are emaciated and born with intellectual disabilities. They are said to be delicate, wasted and fragile. The sole doctor was 80 years old, and there was no isolation unit to separate children with contagious diseases. Below is a transcript of one inspection of the home, undertaken in April 1947.

CHILDREN'S HOME, TUAM

I inspected the Home on the 16th and 17th April 1947. There were then 271 children and 61 mothers resident, making a total of 333. In 1944, the population suggested as desirable by Mr. Humphreys was 243.

Children

1. Day Nursery Babies – 9

Contained 8 wooden cots and 1 pram.
Babies were healthy in appearance, except two: a baby with mis-shapen head and wizened limbs, and a premature infant.

2. Day Nursery Toddlers – 18

Mainly healthy and normal, except:-
(1) [Name redacted], 4 years, epileptic and partially paralysed.
(2) [Name redacted], 3 years, mental defective.
(3) [Name redacted], 1.5 years, mental defective.
(4) Desmond Dolan, 13 months. A miserable, emaciated child
with voracious appetite and no control over bodily functions, probably
mental defective.
(5) [Name redacted], 10 months, described child of itinerants, delicate.
(6) [Name redacted], 5 years, mental defective; has been refused in Cabra M.D. Home owing to lack of accommodation.
(7) [Name redacted], 5 years, atrophied areas – hands growing near shoulders. Arrangements have been made for admission to Orthopaedic Hospital.

3. Day Nursery Sun-room and Balcony. 31 Infants

Of the 31 infants, some 12 may be described as poor babies, emaciated, not thriving. They are:-
(1) [Name redacted], 3 months, wizened limbs.
(2) [Name redacted], 13 months, mother epileptic. Infant gets occasional fits.
(3) [Name redacted], delicate child.
(4) [Name redacted], 3 weeks, emaciated and delicate.
(5) [Name redacted], 2 months. Mother 15 years old.
(6) [Name redacted], about 6 months. Emaciated.
(7) [Name redacted], about 7 months. Delicate and wasted.
(8) [Name redacted], 7 months. Fragile, abscess on hip, boils over body.
(9) [Name redacted], a ‘wasted’ child, now beginning to thrive.
(10) [Name redacted], 3 months. Not thriving, wizened limbs, emaciated.
(11) [Name redacted], 7 months, pot-bellied, emaciated.
(12) [Name redacted], epileptic. Mother also epileptic; a very poor baby.
About 10 of the 31 were wholly breast-fed. The rest were either bottle-fed or partially breast-fed.

4. Day Nursery St. Teresa’s. Infants – 13

There were 13 infants in the nursery, in wooden cots. All under 1 year except two. The infants were mainly healthy and normal, except the following –
(1) [Name redacted], about 9 months; emaciated, flesh hanging loosely on limbs. Mother not normal.
(2) [Name redacted], delicate, beginning to thrive.
(3) [Name redacted], delicate, wasted.

5. Sun Balcony St Patrick’s. Babies – 33

These babies are from 1 to 2 years old. All seem healthy and most are normal except for [Name redacted] – deaf and dumb who is awaiting a vacancy in the Institute for Deaf and Dumb.

6. Play-room Children – 92

These 92 children are from ages 3 to 6 years. The older ones go out to school in the town. They are mainly healthy and normal. The exceptions are:-
(1) [Name redacted], 6 years. He appears to be educable and might not be classed as a mental defective. An effort might be made to have him accepted
in an Industrial School.
(2) [Name redacted], 3.5. Sub-normal in intelligence but may not be mentally defective. She might be examined for mental defect.
(3) [Name redacted], 6 years. Mental defective.
The children over 4 years of age should be boarded out.

7. Play-room Children & toddlers – 59

All seem healthy and normal.
(1) There is an albino child. [Name redacted], about 7 years old who has not been sent to school. He does not appear to be of average intelligence, and is not suitable for boarding out. An effort should be made to place him in an Industrial School. There are two children in need of surgical treatment. Accommodation cannot be obtained for them in the Central Hospital, Galway. They are [Name redacted] and [Name redacted] both about 2.5 years old, one with club foot, the other with two.
For the four mentally defective children previously mentioned, [Name redacted], [Name redacted], [Name redacted], [Name redacted] continued efforts must be made to obtain vacancies in the home at Cabra.