Monthly Archives: June 2021

Debunked

Post-Truth Era Afflicts Irish Universities

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The Post-Truth Era hit Ireland earlier than most other nations. Women’s studies at the universities provided a fertile breeding ground for false histories. In no time, the notion of the ‘misogynistic nation’ took hold and grew into a full-blown conspiracy theory. One article in particular from NUI, Galway published in 2016, provides us with the exemplar of the post-truth affliction within Irish academia as it contains nearly all the spoofs which masquerade as genuine Irish history. Troublingly, these spoofs appear to be taught to students at university, thus ensuring that new generations of history teachers will pass on such spoof, thus providing more evidence that the universities claim to be able to teach critical thinking skills continues to be rendered bogus.

Most Irish universities are busting their gut to rise in the university world rankings but try as they might, NUI, Galway’s ranking has plummeted again this year. It would plummet further down the order if the veracity of its output was included in the ranking’s assessment process. However, NUI, Galway is not the only university to be affected by post-truth menace and for students affected by poor standards, should be entitled to a return of their fees.

In the fifth chapter of the book the writings and claims of various academics are compared to the historical evidence. Here is an extract from that particular NUI, Galway article. Judge for yourself if the pursuit of objective truth is currently beyond the capability of most Irish academics.

 

Abuse – The Catholic cure for Poverty

I could present no more exceptional exemplar of all the maladies that infringe upon quality history writing than within the one article entitled, ‘The Catholic cure for Poverty’ written by Dr Sarah-Anne Buckley working as a history lecturer at Galway University[1]. A classic of the genre, where a highly partisan interpretation of historical events is used to promote a current agenda. To her credit, Buckley manages to wrap several agendas into one invective piece, killing many birds with as many stones to hand. The article is a left-wing supremacist attack on what she sees as the right-wing establishment; her artillery cannons are loaded with ‘straw man’ shrapnel, aiming the barrage at the Catholics, the Irish political classes and the Irish people. Named after the huffing and puffing, big bad wolf in the Three Little Pigs story, a straw man attack is where the views, actions and arguments of the opposing side are misrepresented, and these misrepresentations are then attacked. It is a recognised informal logical fallacy that aims to discredit and humiliate the opposition using tactics ranging from the exaggeration of small facts to complete fabrication of falsehoods; it is regarded as dishonesty, which serves to undermine rational debate.

That is a definition, and I am not accusing Buckley dishonesty, she is not the first author to fail to put the mother and baby homes story in its correct historical context and is merely repeating the fallacies of other writers without checking their veracity. While her agenda clearly shows elements of Marxist socialist, feminist and anti-Catholic tendencies, she lets the sisterhood down by failing to credit the various women’s movements for their input and considerable influence on the moral and social hygiene movements of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Failure to recognise women’s achievements is an all-too-common feature of extreme feminism, which prefers to resort to false historical self-victimisation to both support their raison d’etre and promote self-notoriety. All built on a ton and a half of falsehoods. In this section, I will get through some of the claims made in Buckley’s article and I will do the job of a historian and place these claimed events and arguments in their historical context. I am sure that I will be attacked, and stand accused of promoting my own agenda, but at least I fully inform my readers of all the issues surrounding these historical events, even if they oppose whatever agenda I may stand accused of promoting. Readers of history are entitled to be permitted to formulate an informed opinion rather than have it manipulated through cherry-picking small bits of information, filtered through present-day understandings and misunderstandings. Accordingly, I have gone back to the original documents, which historians refer to as primary sources, have included the relevant extracts below so that my readers can judge for themselves whether or not the history is based thereupon has been subjected to impartial interpretation.

As one author builds the mistakes of another, adding embellishment on top embellishment without dissent, myths grow into those of epic proportions that incrementally creep further away from the grain of truth towards having no basis in reality, thus becoming complete conjectures.

Carrigan Report Myths

One of the common myths that have emerged in recent years goes under the title ‘the suppression of the Carrigan Report’. In reality, the Carrigan report’s findings were not suppressed and incorporated into law through the Public Dance Halls Act 1935 and the Criminal Law (Amendment) Bill, which raised the age of consent and banned contraception. If Dr Buckley read the report, it states that it was never intended to be made public. The myth arises because of a memo sent to the cabinet on October 27th, 1932 from the Minister of Justice, James Geoghegan TD, which was severely critical of the report and insisting that it was too one-sided. He was right, the report was one-sided, even for the mentality of the 1920s, blaming motorcars, cinema and dance halls for the rise in illegitimate births. Highly selective extracts from the report have over recent decades, provided the propagandists with fertile soil from which to propagate all sorts of fallacies. Even where the report provides no soil, the fallacies still manage to grow but in keeping with the laws of nature, can only grow with the application of more manure.

Buckley writes, ‘the Carrigan Report revealed abuse was rampant in Irish institutions.’[2] Nowhere in the Carrigan Report does it say any such thing. It is a blatant falsehood or a mistake of monumental proportions due to her qualifications in academic history. We all can make mistakes and a single elementary failure to look up a document, which she herself has hyperlinked in her article, might be forgivable but for the plethora of other historical falsehoods and misinformation peppered throughout her invective article. [3]  Published several years ago in May 2016, the article has remained uncorrected since then, and no erratum has been prefaced to the online article to date. It reveals that Dr Buckley remains unaware of the mistakes and that the article has not been subject to competent peer review until now.

Dr Buckley mistakenly claims that the Carrigan committee’s report dates from 1935, in reality, it delivered its findings on August 20th, 1931, and its report was circulated to members of the Cabinet on December 2nd, 1931. The report offers an essential insight into the mentality and the concerns of the élite and middle classes regarding the specific problem of protecting girls and women in 1920s, not just in Ireland but also worldwide as evinced through this statement contained within the report.

The Secretariat of the League of Nations, at the instance of the Department of External Affairs, supplied us with official publications and a summary of the legislation in different countries on subjects pertinent to our investigation. The Secretariat also prepared for us a special Memorandum, drawn up by one of its members, Dr Max Habicht, comparing the provisions of Stead’s Act [the Criminal Law Amendment Act, 1885][4] with existing international conventions having for their purpose the protection of women and children.[5]

Note: the primary purpose for establishing the Carrigan Commission was ‘the protection of women and children’. Note also, a fundamental of clurichaun syndrome requires that Ireland be treated in isolation from all other countries, thereby falsely promoting the notion that Irish find solutions to Irish problems without reference to the international context. Moreover, when comparisons are made, they tend to be with Britain rather than another country similar to Ireland, which faced similar social problems. In the period under study, Britain was the richest country in the world and Ireland one of the poorest with just over half the GDP per capita of Britain. In light of such, hardly any comparison to Britain concerning efforts in mitigation of poverty is valid. Research validity requires academics to be able to work outside the Anglophone, and that seems to be well beyond the capability of most social historians and sociologists working Irish academia. Note again, however, in the above extract; the committee was concerned to look at what is now called best practice in other countries for the protection of women and children. However, Buckley states that ‘the Carrigan committee was tasked with investigating the ‘moral state’ of the country.’[6] The Carrigan report again, begs to differ.

Under the terms of our Reference we had to consider the secular aspect of social morality which it is the concern of the State to conserve and safeguard for the protection and well-being of its citizens. We looked upon it as our duty in the first place to collect sufficient information from such authentic sources as would enable us to determine whether the standard of social morality is at present exposed to evils, which the existing laws of the Saorstát [Free State], for the suppression and prevention of public vice, are inadequate to check and should they be in our opinion inadequate, to proceed, in the next place, to consider how best they can be made effectual and to recommend [changes to the law] [7]

Interpreting ‘social morality’ as the ‘morality of the country’ is an easy mistake to make, but anyone who reads the report will see that it was primarily concerned with the protection of women and girls from sexual predators, to analyse the dangers faced and recommend action. The report was not in the modern sense moralising nor accusing women of immoral behaviour. If anything, the report authors can be accused of it is philogyny (opposite of misogyny) and misandry (prejudice against men). Only one small section of the report mentions the need to protect boys who were as we know today just as much if not more in danger than girls from sexual predators.

Buckley’s claim that ‘the Carrigan Report revealed abuse was rampant in Irish institutions’ is not only not supported by any statement in the report but is directly contradicted. The report is full of praise for intuitions like industrial schools and even calls for the establishment of penal borstal intuitions, which were already imposed on boys, to be extended to girls.

For girl offenders between 16 and 21 years of age we recommend the adoption of the proposals favoured by the majority of the witnesses, who were examined by us on the subject. They appeared to us sound and practical and can be given legal effect without difficulty by the application, with suitable adaptations, of Part 1. (Reformation of Young Offenders) of the Prevention of Crime Act, 1908, under which the Borstal system was established, which on the whole has proved satisfactory for dealing with male offenders between these ages.

At present, in the numerous cases of girl offenders, which would be most judiciously disposed of by sentences of detention under the Borstal system, if it were available… [8]

As for the ‘Catholic cure for poverty,’ the cure is striking secular in the Carrigan Report:

In explanation of the numerous cases of outrages upon young females, the Commissioner pointed to the fact to which attention was directed by other witnesses, that in this country the children of the poorer classes are less protected than in Great Britain. In Dublin the necessity in the case of many families living in tenements, for the parents, both father and mother, to leave the children to look after themselves in the day time while they themselves went out to earn their livelihood, was a constant source of danger. In rural districts girls of 14 years are sent out to service, which deprives them of the protection they had with their parents.[9]

The report expressly states that children are left on their own or forced to work as servants, depriving them of parental protection due to poverty. The mother and baby homes commission confirmed that most of the women in the homes were previously employed as domestic servants. The landlord classes (both Irish and Anglo Irish) have been abusing young girls and boys for centuries, but it seems to have escaped the attention of Buckley et al. Also escaping attention is the role which women, and in particular women doctors played in analysing the problem of unmarried mothers and how to protect them and children from venereal disease. The Carrigan Commission was keen to seek out the opinion of knowledgeable women and report it accordingly.

The period of 16 to 19 years of age is regarded as the dangerous age for girls, being the period when they are most susceptible emotionally and least capable of self-control. In a pamphlet issued by the [British ] National social Purity Crusade, of which the author is Miss Helen Wilson, a prominent member of the Association for Moral and social Hygiene and an advocate for raising the age of protection for girls in England to 18 years, at least, figures are given showing that in the examined cases of 401 women, who were professional prostitutes, 231 had first lapsed between 16 and 19 years of age and of 317 similar cases 194 had become prostitutes between these years. The Poor Law Commission of 1927 reported (clause 259) that mothers of firstborn illegitimate children, who seek relief in this country, are commonly between 17 and 21 years of age and it recommended that the age of consent should be raised to at least 18, if not 19 years.

We concur and would add that the necessity for the better protection of girls has become more acute since the Report of the Poor Law Commission was published. We accordingly recommend that it shall be an offence to have carnal knowledge of a girl under 18 years of age.[10]

Language and the connotations associated with certain words has changed over the decades, and if such a passage were written in the same language as today, it would be sternly rebuked, and the authors would have probably gotten George Hooked. The snowflake generation is particularly sensitive to certain words’ connotations as they have grown up in an environment of political correctness and sometimes, to borrow a tired old expression, political correctness gone mad. However, snowflaky connotations are anachronisms and can have no place in history, but this ignorance has many harmful consequences. A case in point was that of the elderly Irish radio presenter, George Hook, who, perhaps ham-fistedly but with avuncular intent, proffered advice to women about not putting themselves in danger of sexual attack. He was hysterically accused of victim-blaming and ended up being hounded out of his job. Many of us, men included, have developed strategies to avoid situations, potentially putting us in danger. There are certain streets, specific venues that I would not visit alone or even venture near, late at night. I would also advise my daughters and wife on avoiding putting themselves in danger and any stranger I think might be in danger. Not only that, I would do the same for my son and my male friends too, but I will also put their safety before the hypersensitivities of the snowflakes and make no apologies for doing so.

Interpreting historical documents like the Carrigan Report is where the role of the historian assumes its primary importance, translating such documents into today’s parlance so that they can be easily understood by the people of the present, including the snowflakes. The commission was not casting a slur on girls of 16 to 19 years of age it is an observation written in the archaic language of the 1920s where the connotations on such words as illegitimate, ignorant, morality, purity did not carry the attached extra emotional meanings of today. The next extract is illustrative of that when it refers to ‘ignorant girls’. Ignorance would be replaced with the phrase innocent and naïve in similar reports of today, and that was what was meant, not thick or stupid.

Reason : The evidence satisfied us that the uncontrolled freedom the promiscuous entertainments in which town and country girls are now in the habit of participating, such as Dance Halls, Picture Houses and ‘joy’ drives in motor vehicles, are designedly resorted to ‘and availed of by male prowlers’ as they were described, to bring ignorant ‘girls to ruin’; and to render them easier prey, intoxicants, as well as drugged drinks, not infrequently are given to them.[11]

Without knowledge of the past, any person attempting to read through historical documents can easily make mistakes by doing what comes naturally, filtering information through the prism of current understandings.

The contributors to the Carrigan Report and others in similar reports during the Free State period did not see poverty as a moral failing as Dr Buckley implies, nor were they advocating a Catholic cure for poverty. Such an allegation is untrue especially because the Anglican Church also stands accused of ‘slaughtering’ poor babies. Accordingly, would Buckley’s article not be better retitled, the Christian cure for poverty?

Extract from: Jordan, Eugene. The Irish Attack on Christianity – The Case for the Defence. Tafannóir Press, 2021. Available here

Endnotes

[1]   Buckley, The Catholic Cure for Poverty.
[2] Ibid.
[3]   A hyper-link is highlighted text within an electronic document when clicked brings readers to another (linked) web-page.
[4]   Book (eISB), Criminal Law Amendment Act, 1885 An Act to make further provision for the Protection of Women and Girls, the suppression of brothels, and other purposes. [14th August 1885.].
[5]   Knitter, ‘Days In The Life’.
[6]   Buckley, The Catholic Cure for Poverty.
[7]   Knitter, ‘Days In The Life’.
[8] Ibid.
[9] Ibid.
[10] Ibid.
[11] Ibid.

References

Book (eISB), electronic Irish Statute. Criminal Law Amendment Act, 1885 An Act to make further provision for the Protection of Women and Girls, the suppression of brothels, and other purposes. [14th August 1885.]. Accessed 19 December 2019. http://www.irishstatutebook.ie/eli/1885/act/69/enacted/en/print.

Buckley, Sarah-Anne. The Catholic Cure for Poverty. Jacobin, 2016. https://www.jacobinmag.com/2016/05/catholic-church-ireland-magdalene-laundries-mother-baby-homes

Knitter, The. ‘Days In The Life: The Full Carrigan Report’. Days In The Life (blog), 24 June 2005. http://the-knitter.blogspot.com/2005/06/full-carrigan-report_24.html.

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A Debt of Gratitude Owed to Our Great Women

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Florence Nightingale wanted to learn her nursing craft from the best nurses in the world, the nuns at St Vincent’s Hospital Dublin. Dubliners have enjoyed world-class healthcare provided by the Sisters of Charity, a remarkable achievement by a group of women, yet Irish feminists excoriate these great women.

Nightingale’s famous mission to the Crimea was the result of a report about the dirty, dingy, rat-infested hospital conditions suffered by British troops. The Times war correspondent William Howard Russell, an Irishman, reported on the well-organised services of the French Catholic military nurses, Russell asked rhetorically: “Why have we no sisters of charity?”[1]

The British are boastful in falsely claiming that Florence Nightingale invented the craft of modern nursing. She certainly revolutionised nursing in Britain and contributed to advancements in the field, but the British theft of history has obscured the real history and excluded those who might expose the braggarts of stolen history.

A classic of the genre of anti-Irish prejudice.

Florence Nightingale applied to work with the Irish Sisters of Charity twice, first in 1844 and again in 1852 when she visited Dublin only to find the hospital closed for renovations. The hospital was located on St Stephen’s Green at the former home of the Earl of Meath. It was purchased in 1834 on behalf of the Sisters of Charity, and they turned it into St Vincent’s Hospital. Later, adjacent properties were also purchased to expand the hospital.

The nursing mission to Crimea in 1854 was the result of the public outcry. In the aftermath of Russell’s report, the secretary for war, Sidney Herbert, turned to Nightingale for assistance. Florence was dispatched to Scutari with a contingent of nurses, 14 Anglican sisters, 14 lay nurses and 10 catholic nurses who were also nuns. An Irish sister, Mary Clare Moore was the Chief Executive Officer of the mission, she brought a level business head to counterbalance the more excitable Florence.

At the end of Florence’s mission, the British establishment sought to organise a big event to boastfully celebrate her achievements. To her great credit, she avoided the ruckus, and surreptitiously travelled back into England to avoid the self-aggrandising bluster of her country people dismissing it as, fuzz buzz.

Turning failure into triumph or more correctly creating such illusions is an existential imperative for the ongoing recruitment campaigns of a militaristic society, but the bluster did not go unnoticed. One American publication commenting on the hype of the era asked, “what has she done that thousands of Sisters of Charity have not been doing for the last hundred years?”[2]

Why has the massive contribution of the Sisters of Charity been written out of the history of Irish medicine? The Sisters have over near two centuries built a world-class hospital and provided the people of Dublin with free and affordable healthcare. Why are the Irish so ignorant, that instead of celebrating their magnificent altruism and thanking these great women — which would happen in any normal society — we have turned our back on them and pilloried the good sisters using a slew of falsehoods.

Feminists think that women have been written out of history — a false notion reliant on a lack of erudition — as is their failure to celebrate the achievements of women. Women who built a world-class hospital, worked for free and low wages, are to be commended and given an honoured place in history. This honour will likely be conferred upon great women by men, as Irish women are too busy creating delusions of abuse and misogyny to curry public sympathy and notoriety. It is a sad fact of life that Irish men will have to teach the feminists how to commemorate the achievements of women!

Footnotes

[1] Fealy, ‘Florence Nightingale-Lady with the Lamp: Gerard M Fealy Remembers Florence Nightingale: Writer, Scientist, Reformer, and the Key Individual in Founding Modern Nursing’.

[2] ‘Florence Nightingale, the Protestant Sister of Charity.’

References

Fealy, Gerard M. ‘Florence Nightingale-Lady with the Lamp: Gerard M Fealy Remembers Florence Nightingale: Writer, Scientist, Reformer, and the Key Individual in Founding Modern Nursing’. World of Irish Nursing 18, no. 5 (2010): 22–23.

‘Florence Nightingale, the Protestant Sister of Charity.’ Pilot 24, no. 19 (May 1861).

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What the MABH Commission got wrong!

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Dear Taoiseach, when appointing an independent ‘expert’ or new commission of investigation, it is imperative that ‘experts’ and members of the commission possess the ability to use modern scientific methods of investigation, have a strong commitment to the continuation of the intellectual tradition and use of impartial investigation techniques. All investigations must be set up in a way to mitigate, in as far as possible, all our natural cognitive biases but in particular, for researcher bias, hindsight bias and presentism in historical investigations. Science has evolved several techniques to combat bias, including a demand that contradictory evidence and contrarian views be evaluated, in order to limit the effects of confirmation bias, thus enable the production of better-quality reports.

Not one of these imperatives was a prerequisite for any commission of investigation set up by the Irish government. In particular, the commission of investigation into mother and baby homes — despite investigating allegations based on medical evidence — had no relevant knowledge or expertise. The result was a report, while not entirely incorrect, was mostly incompetent in its pronouncements on medical matters.

The commission ignored entirely — despite the evidence jumping out from the pages of its report — the causal relationship between poverty and high infant mortality rates. The scientific literature is currently awash with such studies and has been investigating the causal relationship which has been indicated by correlation for decades.[1]

The commission’s lack of basic mathematical/statistical knowledge also caused them to make one of the most basic errors in statistical interpretation. They proceeded to base many of their conclusions and speculations on the ‘false causes fallacy’. Every data scientist and statistician is taught — in their first week — that correlation cannot be used as evidence for a cause.

A correlation is simply a ‘co-relation’ between measurements that appear to increase or decrease at the same time, when one goes up/down, another goes up/down or when one goes up, the other goes down. For example, in warm countries, there is a strong correlation between the number of ice-cream sales and the number of admissions to hospital due to heatstroke. Heatstroke is not causing the increase in ice-cream sales, and neither is the increased volume of ice-cream sales driving the higher number of heatstroke victims. In the terminology of statistics, correlation does not imply causation. Accordingly, statisticians are taught to look for other variables/measurements which might be causing the correlation. In the case above, the hidden variable is hot weather.

The commission — unaware of procedures to be followed in basic statistical interpretation — imagined that there was a correlation between poor quality healthcare and high infant mortality rates. Despite having little or no figures for the healthcare side of the equation, the commission did — what anyone could do — use their imagination to fabricate assumptions to fill gaps in their knowledge.

Consequently, the commission has presented to the nation one of the most incompetent conclusions ever arrived at by a commission of investigation in the history of the State.

In Paragraph 12 of the executive summary, the commission pronounces and speculates:

In the years before 1960 mother and baby homes did not save the lives of ‘illegitimate’ children; in fact, they appear to have significantly reduced their prospects of survival.

There is absolutely no mention that these children were in a high-risk category and intuitions — even today — which deal with high-risk individuals, have higher mortality rates.

Higher Infant Mortality Rates — multiples of the national average — continue to exist in Ireland under your own leadership.

Using the same logic of the commission, we could state emphatically that the mere fact of children who were born to Traveller women seems ‘to have significantly reduced their prospects of survival’. Judge Catherine McGuinness of the Children’s Rights Alliance, tells us that the ‘infant mortality rates for Traveller children are 3.6 times that of the general population.’

In the interests of fairness and justice, the government must now appoint a commission of investigation to avoid any charges of bias for singling out the Christian community for castigation by a government suffering from a scurrilous lack of medical/scientific knowledge.

While you are at it Taoiseach, there are many more cases of high infant mortality rates which you might also want to investigate.

Children unfortunate enough to be born to women over 35 years of age seems to have ‘significantly reduced their prospects of survival’.

Would you believe the fact that children who are born to unmarried mothers in this day and age has ‘significantly reduced their prospects of survival’. The CSO has not yet measured child mortality rates for this cohort, but the Office for National Statistics has measured it in England and Wales. It found that children born to unmarried mothers suffer from a mortality rate forty per cent higher than those born to married parents.[2] Studies from Finland show similar results.[3]

Research in Ireland shows that babies born to mothers under 25 years of age suffer from a mortality rate twice for those born to mothers aged 25 to 29. Children born to women aged over forty also suffer from mortality rates twice that of the mid to late twenties cohort.[4] Can we infer, as the commission has done, that these ‘appalling’ rates are due to poor quality care, or should they have looked for other causes?

You cannot — in light of your comments — fail to launch an investigation or act upon these ‘distressing’ statistics, unless you want your inactions to be the subject of a criminal investigation in 35 years’ time and your name besmirched.

You said:

It is deeply distressing to note that the very high mortality rates were known to local and national authorities at the time and were recorded in official publications. However, there is little or no evidence of State intervention in response to these chilling statistics and deaths. In fact, a number of reports actually identifying the problems were not acted on. [5]

Lazy or incompetent reliance on imagined statistical correlation also forms the basis for your apology or more correctly, your attack on the Irish people. No national leader in history has attacked the entire population in the manner in which you have done. Yet you think that you can label all the people of the past as having ‘a completely warped attitude to sexuality and intimacy’ while holding ‘a perverse religious morality’ and that these labels do not apply to your mother and grandmother.

What is the point in naming Dublin Airport after Seán Lemass when you say that he, along with ‘the agencies of the State showed little or no interest in addressing these crimes’. You say crimes, but did you even bother to read the commission’s report or provide evidence for these alleged crimes.

As can be proved, beyond any reasonable doubt, poverty was the primary cause of high infant mortality rates, and that the issue was completely missed by the commission. Accordingly, all of their conclusions based on such rates are null and void.

While you repeated many of the falsehoods within the commission report, one, in particular, stands out. You went on Taoiseach to repeat another falsehood that illegitimacy was an ‘egregious breach of human rights’. William Duncan, — a human rights lawyer with little or no knowledge of history — went back 1,000 years to tell a lame story, scurrilously declaring a breach of human rights that continued for the duration of a full millennium. Rights that did not exist until very recently. That is not history, it is not even pseudo-history, nor indeed would it qualify as counterfactual history.

History is about what happened not what might have happened but most of all Duncan never once told us about the 2,000-year history of the church saving the lives of hundreds of thousands of unwanted and illegitimate children. He never told us that illegitimacy was designed to protect the inheritance of the children of the queen from potential claims from the children of the king’s concubines. Duncan, however, mentions an Irish bishops’ conference in 1974 which recommended that there should be no distinction between a legitimate and illegitimate child before the civil law, evincing that the discrimination had a mainly secular basis. However, the thrust of his contribution continues to blame the church entirely for its instigation and continuance. It was in fact English ‘common law’ which imposed the ‘abuses of human rights’. Common law strongly supported the primogenitor system and was stringent in order to protect large blocks of property and power, from division and weakness through partible inheritance. Canon law was much more lenient in comparison and even allowed for the subsequent legitimisation of births.

Confirming one’s own biases is common throughout the authorship of the report and is evident in quite a few of the witness statements too.

The commission points out:

A number of witnesses gave evidence that was clearly incorrect. This contamination probably occurred because of meetings with other residents and inaccurate media coverage.[6]

Judge Harding Clarke had the luxury of access to impartial evidence, which when used, showed that one third of the women claimants, who applied for compensation to the symphysiotomy ex-gratia payments scheme, were fraudulent. These women never had the operation and X-Rays were used to prove it.[7]

Many of the witness testimonies supplied to the commission of investigation into mother and baby homes stretches credulity to levels that would not be tolerated by any sensible person or administration. Yet many Irish politicians were forthright in claiming that children were starved to death at the Protestant run Bethany home, before going on to include all catholic run institutions, The politicians — speaking on parliamentary record — included:

Deputy Mary Lou McDonald (Sinn Féin), Deputy Niall Collins (Fianna Fáil), Deputy Caoimhghín Ó Caoláin (Sinn Féin), Deputy Robert Dowds (Labour Party), Deputy Seamus Healy (independent), Deputy Ciara Conway (Labour Party), Deputy Seán Crowe (Sinn Féin), Senator Marie Moloney (Labour), Deputy Lisa Chambers (Fianna Fáil), Deputy Donnchadh Ó Laoghaire (Sinn Féin), Deputy Mick Barry (Irish Solidarity–People Before Profit), Senator Catherine Noone (Fine Gael), Senator Gerald Nash (Labour Party) Deputy Kate O’Connell (Fine Gael)[8]

All of these politicians, and more, relied on the use of the medical term ‘marasmus’ on death certificates. Yet — this is important — infants and children died of marasmus at every Irish maternity hospital. Why were they not subjected to a commission of investigation? The answer is ignorance and prejudice. The commission has also rubbished such claims but has any one of these politicians come out in public and admitted to making a mistake? I surmise their reluctance is reflective of the era we live in.

There is no doubt that we are living through a time of mass hysteria and that the truth has been its first victim. I have no business defending the Catholic church or even the Anglican church. They can defend themselves. I cannot stand back, and watch lies and injustice flourish in a nation that has no regard for competent investigative methods including the use of the scientific method where appropriate.

Andreas Schleicher of the OECD reported recently, that ‘a key challenge for Irish schools will be getting students to think for themselves, and develop a strong sense of right and wrong’.[9] The corollary is that students are not currently taught to think for themselves, consequently, they have to let others do their thinking for them.

All of Europe knows that our education system is bad and that it has been in steady decline for decades. This entire scandal is based entirely on bad education which in turn allowed our cultural prejudice of self-loathing to run riot.

Ask yourself one question, why is it that the organisation which fought for the rights of unwanted children not to be killed, throughout two millennia, — and in the absence of action by the secular authorities — took practical steps to provide lifesaving care, education and establishment in employment for unwanted children, should now stand accused of operating a baby-killing and disposal service.

There is something very rotten in Irish education, I wonder will you be the leader who begins to stop the rot or will it be left to someone else, further down the line. If you are going to appoint an expert to review witness’ testimony you need someone — like the Garda commissioner — from outside the state. We certainly have no one with the relevant expertise within the Irish university system.

Without the right people in place, with the right expertise, the taxpayers and citizens of the nation will be forced to pay for the Disneyland thrills of highly paid investigators going round and round on their merry-go-round. Without leadership and competent impartial investigators the country will be stuck for decades in the home of Mickey Mouse.

 

Is mise le mas

Eugene Jordan,
Science Historian BA BSc MInfoTech

 

Footnotes

[1] Wickham et al., ‘Poverty and Child Health in the UK: Using Evidence for Action’.

[2] Reid et al., ‘Vulnerability among illegitimate children in nineteenth century Scotland’.

[3] Remes, Martikainen, and Valkonen, ‘The Effects of Family Type on Child Mortality’.

[4] Corcoran et al., ‘Perinatal Mortality in Ireland: Annual Report 2017’.

[5] Dáil Éireann debate – Wednesday, 13 Jan 2021 Vol. 1003 No. 1

[6] Commission of Investigation, ‘Mother and Baby Homes Commission of Investigation Final Report’. P12 / 2405

[7] Broadsheet, ‘Confabulation, False Memories And Conspiracy Theories’.

[8] Jordan, ‘Irish Political Fantasists – Children Starved to Death’.

[9] O’Brien, ‘Irish Schools Need to Modernise “20th Century” Approach to Learning, Warns OECD’.

 

References

Broadsheet. ‘Confabulation, False Memories And Conspiracy Theories’. Broadsheet.ie, 23 November 2016. https://www.broadsheet.ie/2016/11/23/confabulation-false-memories-and-conspiracy-theories/.

Commission of Investigation. ‘Mother and Baby Homes Commission of Investigation Final Report’. Irish Government, 30 October 2020.

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Latest -Press Watch, MABH

Bias and Prejudice Unbridled on Children’s Committee

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When welcoming the report, it was obvious that Kathleen Funchion had not read it… Speaking in the Dáil  Éireann debate on the 13th of January, the day following the public release of the final report of the commission of investigation into mother and baby homes, Kathleen Funchion (Sinn Féin), Chair of the Joint Oireachtas Committee on children… etc. stated.

KF: ‘Mother and baby homes were not homes, they were detention centres’.

Funchion had not managed to read as far as paragraph eight of the executive summary:

  1. There is no evidence that women were forced to enter mother and baby homes by the church or State authorities.

KF: [Women were] forced to give birth in the most appalling conditions, often without medical support or even basic pain relief

The commission wrote:

  1. There is no evidence that the women who gave birth in mother and baby homes were denied pain relief or other medical interventions that were available to a public patient who gave birth in a Dublin or Cork maternity unit. There is evidence of women in mother and baby homes being given pain relief, and being stitched following birth.

Had she been aware at that time that the commission’s report directly contradicted what she was about to say at the Dáil, there is no doubt that she would have attacked the commission’s findings, there and then. Now however, six months later, when she and others realise that the commission have rubbished many of her claims, she now says that ‘the report of the Mother and Baby Homes Commission cannot stand and must be repudiated’.

As it slowly began to dawn on her that her allegations are not supported by evidence, she has followed the only option available — to maintain any semblance of credibility — by calling for the report to be repudiated.

She has been howling from the rafters of Leinster House for the former members of the now disbanded commission to appear before the Oireachtas committee, of which she happens to be the chairperson.

However, given the obvious bias and prejudice which she showed and her motivation to keep her credibility intact, would any sensible person allow themselves to be publicly grilled and abused by political grandstanders.

Clearly many of the witnesses have made false allegations — allegations which stretch credulity to levels where only some sections of Irish society can reach — and the commission have stated, — in an overly polite disposition — that ‘a number of witnesses gave evidence that was clearly incorrect. This contamination probably occurred because of meetings with other residents and inaccurate media coverage’. The amount of inaccurate media coverage has been alarming. It is not really the sheer volume of falsehoods which most alarming, but the ease by which beliefs could be fabricated by the politicians and media, which any normally functioning society would have remained sceptical.

She also said that Irish women operated these institutions as if they were prisons.  We ignored the cries of women and children subjected to ‘torture, deprivation and humiliation on a colossal scale’. She clearly holds the opinion that Irish women are particularly faulty and cruel, all wanting to join an organisation so that they could go about the business of torturing women and children. What was in it for them! Is that not the first question any sensible person would ask not to mind a professional investigator?

There is only one motivation put forward, and the entire scandal rests on this one foundation, women hated unmarried mothers and their illegitimate children. That is what motivated them to kill and torture vulnerable people, not money, not prestige, not notoriety, carrying all that risk for nothing! The risk of excommunication, risk of execution for murder, risk of reputational damage, risk of banishment etc. All that risk for no gain whatsoever.

The science of motivation holds that two things drive human actions: necessities — food, sleep, avoidance of pain; and rewards. There is no reward for killing a baby, unless you happen to be its mother. That is the very reason mother and baby homes were set up in the first place.

In most countries politicians can fool some of the people some of the time, but in Ireland they can fool all the people all of the time because we are too nice and trusting.

EJ

References

Dáil Éireann debate – Wednesday, 13 Jan 2021 Vol. 1003 No. 1
Report of the Commission of Investigation into Mother and Baby Homes: Statements

Link – page search: funchion

Deputy Kathleen Funchion (Sinn Féin)

Mother and baby homes were not homes, they were detention centres. A home is somewhere where one should feel safe, loved and protected, not a place where one is tortured, imprisoned and forced to give birth in the most appalling conditions, often without medical support or even basic pain relief. These walls hid torture, deprivation and humiliation on a colossal scale. Human rights did not exist in these centres. As a mother, daughter, sister and Irish citizen, I cannot countenance this cruelty. The cries of children and tortured mothers were ignored and trivialised by cruel nuns [women] and others who were involved in these institutions, who ran the institutions as if they were prisons.