The Irish Attack on Christianity – The Case for the Defence
The mother and baby homes scandal is but one example of the Irish abuse of history with many of its falsities guarded from public view. All historical debates have historians on at least two sides, but Irish historical scandals are remarkable for the lack of dissenting historians, who have been silenced or are totally disinterested in the subject. The other side of the story has not been told until now.
The book takes an empirical look at the mother and baby homes scandal and others in what the author claims to be Ireland’s greatest history scandal. A scandal founded upon false allegations, bad history and incompetent statistical interpretation. It drew its oxygen from populism, cultural biases and the prospect of compensation, and it grew into a triumph for ignorance. Babies were not starved to death by religious women, women were not banned from sitting on juries, nor were they banned from doing work ‘unsuited to their sex’ nor did the state create a ‘brutal carceral’ system to confine wayward women. The underlying causes of the mother and baby homes scandal have been allowed to fester for decades due to a breakdown in the quality control systems in academic history. The aim of the book is to apply the quality control methods which should have been in use and seek to discover the reasons for their failure.
Published in March 2021, it is the first book to be released critiquing the final report of the commission of investigation into mother and baby homes released two months earlier. The commission have done a good job in places but have made significant blunders through a lack of knowledge of statistical interpretation, they had no more than an amateur knowledge of vintage medicine, relied on non-fact checked academic historical writing and of course, presentism. That is interpreting the past through the eyes of today.
Written for a general audience, the book goes in search of the causes and finds the evidence to present to readers in order to restore some balance and common sense to Irish history.
Eugene Jordan is an expert in the field of historical medicine and science. He holds degrees in science, psychology, history and a master’s degree in information technology. His Facebook blog on Irish Medieval History has over 230,000 followers and is still growing. Over the years, he has published many articles, including lessons for historians in the Tuam Mother and Baby Homes Scandal, published by the Federation of Local History Societies in 2018. He is the Vice Chair of Moycullen Heritage, past president of one of Ireland’s oldest academic heritage societies, Galway Archaeological and Historical Society and former chair of the city’s Civic Trust. He continues to give public lectures on diverse topics, from the science behind Formula One Racing to the meaning of Irish place names.
The Irish Attack on Christianity – The Case for the Defence is published by Tafannóir Press. tafannoirpress@gmail.com The book will be available for purchase online, at a special launch price of €20 including postage, at falsehistory.ie and as an eBook from Google Play Books.
The book launch will be held online using Zoom and will consist of a short presentation by the author, followed by a question and answers session. Questions can be asked in person or by using Zoom text messaging. The presentation video will be available shortly after on the Irish History Facebook Page, @trueirishhistory, and also on falsehistory.ie
The book launch event takes place online using Zoom at 8pm Friday 2nd April. Places can be booked using Eventbrite. A link will be sent to all who have registered which can be clicked on to access the event.
Use this discount code and get the book including postage for €20.00 or €22.00 shipped internationally€8.00 off the recommended retail price. Code: launch2021
Available also as in eBook format from Google Play Books
This headline was probably the most significant comment made during a Zoom presentation hosted by An Cumann Staire, the history society of NUI, Galway last evening 11th March 2021. The event featured speeches by four former residents of Irish mother and baby homes who all agreed that it was mainly the young who believed their story and who support them. It might seem obvious to state that the young people do not have much knowledge of the past and are therefore vulnerable to believe stories and claims which older people do not believe. Old fogies like me, could see that all the speeches contained significant errors, and some of the claims made were so fanciful, that only the most gullible people could find them credible.
The attendees were nearly all female and at times the host and event co-ordinator, Neasa Gorrell, could be observed fighting back tears as she listened to stories told by the various speakers. The history society Auditor, Grace Carolan also admitted afterwards that see too was actually crying, off screen, during the presentations. When emotion is present, reason is absent, and so on a wintery March night, the current sorry state of the Irish university system was on full display due to the absence of critical thinking skills.
The commission of investigation into mother and baby homes does not believe many of the testimonies supplied to it, and this was the primary grounds for complaint amongst all the speakers present. Aside from former residents, the speaker list included two journalists, both authors of books on Irish institutions, one university PhD student and a representative of the Irish Council for Civil Liberties.
Alison O’Reilly, the journalist who broke the Tuam story in 2014, continued to make claims which have been disproven along with the university researcher who claimed that children were starved at these homes. Jamie Canavan, a female PhD student researching the topic of fostered children spoke in an American accent on the subject of the wider context of old Irish institutions. She continued to make claims which the commission of investigation have stated categorically are not supported by the evidence. ‘Coercive confinement’ was one of these claims which is no doubt built on the declaration of one of her university mentors, Sarah-Anne Buckley, who wrote that Ireland built ‘a brutal carceral state’ to confine women. However, the reality is that mothers had to apply for admission to mother and baby homes and were never places of incarceration. Canavan went on to posit the full gamut of falsehoods which have been thrown out by the commission of investigation and did so without ever presenting the evidence to show why she thought the commission was in error. Both she and O’Reilly mentioned that ‘marasmus’ on death certificates indicated that illegitimate children died due to hunger. However, the commission, after consulting with medical experts say that it was a general term used by medics for ‘defects in the mucus membrane of the intestine which prevents absorption of food’. Consequently, the commission used the term malabsorption throughout its report to clarify the meaning of marasmus. O’Reilly ignored it completely and went on to state that ‘in terms of children dying in appalling circumstances such as hunger, you know, gastro problems, babies being referred to as congenital idiots all these horrifying terms, nobody reacted’. ‘Idiot’ was at first a medical term which has made its way into popular language as an insult. However, medics were not using it as an insult and the term also appears on many death certificates of legitimate children. Clearly Alison O’Reilly has no education in the area of medical terms nor vintage medicine, nor does it appear do many writers including academic writers who write on the subject.
Caelainn Hogan, author of a book which apparently is based mostly on the testimonies of former residents of Ireland’s intuitions, complained that their stories were contradicted by the commission’s report. The commission stated that the homes were refuges and provided some form of service and that women were not forced in there. Hogan disagrees as it appears out of fear that the allegations made in her book are could be rendered invalid.
Sharon McGuigan, a former resident of a mother and baby home, told how she was made pregnant by a friend of the family when she was only 15 years of age. Her parents would not have the child in their home, and so they arranged for her to stay at the Dunboyne mother and baby home. She recollected that the treatment she received at the home was good but her only complaint was that that she got no emotional support while there. She claimed that her treatment at the National Maternity Hospital, Holles St in Dublin was ‘absolutely terrible’, for no other reason than she was unmarried mother. The hospital was secular in ethos, even though all the hospital’s masters were protestant until the 1990s. She claims to have given birth on her own, alone in her cubicle, to a premature baby girl born on 25 Nov 1985. She stated that the treatment she got from her family was worse than she got any where else. She signed adoption papers but did not know what she was signing. She made contact with her daughter, now 35 years old, who replied that she does not want to meet her. In spite of all of her negative comments about the secular system, she maintains that ‘if it were not for the church and state the parents would not have been able to put their children in there’. ‘I lived with shame from people in the village, they didn’t say anything, but you knew that they were talking behind your back’. I am sure that that is her honest perception and in certain psychological states we can perceive information which may not be realty. Other than her perception we cannot know if people were actually talking about her behind her back.
Grace Tierney development officer with the Irish Council for Civil Liberties also spoke in an American accent. She delivered a speech which claimed that human rights were violated, even human rights which did not exist in the past. The Irish Council for Civil liberties is a one of the strangest organisations on the planet. In a country which had a great deal of civil liberty until the corona virus lockdown, they had nothing to do but to go back into the past and pick a fight with the dead. For me, the council are reminiscent of Monty Python’s Peoples Front of Judea, an organisation run by a committee, which sits around all day, argues endlessly about irrelevant issues and gets stuck in a rut of useless bureaucracy and ineffectual action.
Many young Irish people today speak with American accents which is a manifestation of Irish cultural prejudices and I would contend the strength of the American accent is directly proportional to the severity of cultural prejudice. The old Irish prejudices of self-loathing are abundantly manifest in the entire scandal. A topic I explore in more detail in my forthcoming book.
Two male former residents of mother and baby homes representative of the babies recounted being only vague memories or no memories at all. One man with vague memories said he stayed in bed all day and got no education and when brought to foster parents at four years of age he killed all their Turkeys because he did not know what they were. He had never seen them before. Another man recalled that he had been born at a hospital which was not built at that time. He could not recall any bad treatment while in the Tuam home but had memories of his foster father who he described as a brute. He continued to live with the brute until the age of 33. On one occasion he described how his foster father was going to murder him but for some inexplicable reason he did not carry it out. In recent times he found out he had a sister who was born at the Tuam home who died shortly after. According to him, her death was certified, not by a doctor but by a woman working at the home.
That has been a common falsehood doing the rounds in the media. Bina Rabbite was not certifying the deaths; her name is recorded on the certificates as ‘the informant’. That is the person who brings the doctor signed death certificate to the registrar’s office to have it entered on the register.
A thread running through all the claims of the former residents was the issue of their poor education and that of an almost complete lack of personal awareness.
Terri Harrison said that did not really know she was pregnant and went to England not telling the child’s father. She puts her behaviour down to an unawareness life in general and remarks that she was living in ‘cuckoo land’ at that time. ‘I thought I left the narrow mindedness, all the ‘catlick’ profound hurt and pain, no matter where they go in the world, they bring it with them’. In 1973 while firmly ensconced in cuckoo land, in London, she had an accident and went to hospital where the medics revealed to her that she that she was pregnant. Before you could say boo, a priest and nun showed up in a black car and were let into her bedsit. When she arrived back to the bedsit, they forcibly took her out of her flat. She shouted at them and they shouted back at her and she shouted for help, but no one came to her aid. She was then escorted through security at Heathrow airport with a priest holding on to her tightly. She struggled to get away, but the airport police did not intervene. She was never on a plane before, had a fear of flying and suffered a panic attack. She alleged that the priest thumped her on her back, presumably to force her on to the plane. She asked the air hostess where the plane was going, and she said Cork. Two nuns met her at the airport and brought her to the Bessborough home. She claims to have escaped Bessborough but was found in Dublin and put into the St Patrick’s Home on the Navan road. She says that some nuns were not unkind but were totally indifferent to her, you were just not a person. She alleged that some of the nuns told her she was a whore, dirty, filthy and that nobody wanted her.
Later she said that the noise of the Angelus bells was used by a paedophile ring to cover the noise of screams of the boys while they were being raped. Angelus bells have a duration of one minute, and I am not sure if one minute of sex is long enough to gratify a paedophile.
Terri Harrison certainly appeared overly keen to promote anti-Catholic myths, but her biggest complaint was that despite having gave evidence to the commission of investigation, her story was not deemed to be credible. Nonetheless, the meeting host, Ms Gorrell, was visibly close to tears while she was telling her story. Clearly, she believes Terri over the commission of investigation.
I don’t think it is possible to be forcibly removed from a country through an airport, as all passengers came in close contact with airport security. In 1973, all ports in Britain were subject to tight security due to the Northern Ireland Troubles and the police special branch was also deployed to ports to look for suspicious persons. Any person could easily go up to security personnel or shout loudly to ask for help. In relative terms, flying was extremely expensive in the early 1970s and was only for the wealthy, it would have been far cheaper and much easier to forcibly transport a person by sea. Although getting through seaport security was less of a challenge, it was not entirely without risk.
She claims that after the birth of her son in hospital she was ‘wrapped in tin-foil’ due to bleeding. However, mylar or space blankets were not likely to have been in use in Irish hospitals in the 1970s and are not used in hospital settings today to treat hypovolemic shock.
‘Sunday shoppers’ was the term Terri used to describe people who came to the institution to ‘buy babies’ after mass. However, babies were a hard sell, and even a cursory glance at the history of childcare, shows that unwanted babies were produced in such numbers, that it was difficult to find enough foster parents to care for them. Thus, the need for orphanages and care homes.
I don’t believe that the nuns/women who were in charge of the care of unmarried mothers ever abused her in the way she described. It looks like the commission were also sceptical of her allegations, hence her anger directed at it. Moreover, one would have to have a deep knowledge and understanding of the time to be able to spot errors or mis-recollections. This greater knowledge is in possession of older people and that is why they remain far more sceptical than young people.
Galway university claims to be able teach its students ‘critical thinking skills’ but time and again, this claim is rendered bogus, as there was no evidence that any of the students or academics involved, had subjected witness testimony to critical evaluation. Furthermore, there is evidence that group think is present and that the quality control mechanisms to prevent this and other maladies like confirmation bias are completely dysfunctional.
Irish academia has left the job of critical thinking entirely to the commission of investigation. ‘The Commission has no doubt that the witnesses recounted their experiences as honestly as possible. However, the Commission does have concerns about the contamination of some evidence. A number of witnesses gave evidence that was clearly incorrect. This contamination probably occurred because of meetings with other residents and inaccurate media coverage.’
It would seem that the campaign currently run by NUI, Galway to repudiate the findings of the commission is imperative in order to save academia from one of its greatest embarrassments.
EJ
A typical meeting of the Irish Council for Civil Liberties
During the second decade of the twenty-first century, under the rule of the Taoiseach/Prime minister Micheál Martin, children born to a cohort of mothers suffer from infant mortality rates that are multiples that of the average. High infant mortality rates present in a previous era of Irish history were referred to by the Taoiseach as ‘disquieting’, and he went on to attack the apparent lack of action on behalf of the authorities, labelling it ‘distressing’. Yet, the same statistics and apparent inaction are very much in evidence during his tenure as the nation’s leader. As we will see, it would be an example of gross hypocrisy if it was not for the presence of ignorance. The Taoiseach was given his opinion by the commission of investigation into mother and baby homes. It appears that the commission thought that they had sufficient expertise in the areas of vintage medicine, pathology and medical statistics that they did not need to consult with experts in such fields. Accordingly, the commission used assumptions in places where it could have used evidence and consequently arrived at wildly inaccurate conclusions. On top of these assumptions, the Taoiseach used his own assumptions and used them to accuse his mother and grandmother; he said they ‘embraced a perverse religious morality and control, judgementalism and moral certainty’. They ‘had a completely warped attitude to sexuality and intimacy, and young mothers’. There you have it; the entire Martin family were sneering at unmarried mothers and oppressed women and children. The Irish view their own history and society through cowhight tinted glasses, accordingly Micheál Martin was not able to see the contemptuousness he holds for his own family, because in Irish society, one can sneer at everyone else and not think that such sneers apply to oneself nor to one’s kin.
In societies where the intellectual tradition is not dead, there is a commitment to the scientific study of problems to improve the conditions for its citizens and humanity. In countries like the UK and Sweden, researchers continue to study high infant mortality rates and look for causes. Even today, the evidence shows that the infant mortality rates for children born to unmarried mothers are significantly higher than for children born to married parents. Ireland does not measure or at least does not publish such statistics, but if they were ever made public, they would likely show the same problem exists in Irish society.
The Taoiseach can quite happily rule over a nation where the infant mortality rate for traveller children is over three and a half times that of the average. It is likely that the English rates of 40% greater infant mortality for children of unmarried mothers also applies to Ireland, then our Taoiseach is gravely in error to attack the dead when he is in no position to grasp the significance of the statistics lying on his own desk.
Erudite research, both scientific and social, continues to show that the causes of high infant mortality rates and high mortality rates, in general, are due to deprivation and poverty. The commission of investigation was unaware of this present-day research and so used the assumption that high infant mortality rates were due almost entirely to the spread of disease. They took no account of that the use of the word ‘congenital’ on deaths certificates which meant that a disease or a condition was present at birth. Consequently, they assumed that deaths were due to overcrowding and cots too close together. They might not have reached such conclusions if they visited the nursery in a modern maternity hospital and observed the current practices with cots close together. The commission also tells us that Tuam was never overcrowded, yet the home’s high infant mortality rates triggered the whole scandal.
No competent statistician would draw inferences from crude statistics like the Irish mother and baby homes commission has done. It has long been known that hospitals that deal with high-risk individuals have higher mortality rates. An example would be the recent media reports that several of Ireland’s biggest hospitals had high mortality rates for different conditions. In 2017, the National Audit of Hospital Mortality (NAHM) found a higher mortality rate was recorded at Cork University Hospital (CUH) for ischaemic stroke than anywhere else in the country. At first glance, it might appear that if you were suffering from a stroke, CUH is the last place you would want to be. It is natural to equate high mortality statistics with poor quality care, but such an inference cannot be made from basic statistics. All statisticians and data scientists are taught how to avoid the logical fallacy of ‘false causes’ from the very beginning. Essentially, in this case, it means that one cannot use high infant mortality rates to imply poor quality health care without looking for other causes.
CUH has a specialist stroke unit, and so patients are sent to it from other hospitals and directly from the community, avoiding other hospitals. Consequently, CUH has many more patients at risk of dying from a stroke than any other hospital. That is why it has a higher mortality rate, not because the patients received poor quality treatment. A hospice is a hospital with mortality rates of close to 100 per cent. Hospitals offering palliative care have high mortality statistics than those with none. What can be inferred from these ‘appalling mortality rates?
Crude statistics are so useless an indicator that statisticians have tried to effect improvements by factoring in differences in the population and their risk of death. These called standardised mortality ratios (SMR), and ones designed explicitly for hospitals, are Hospital Standardised Mortality Ratio (HSMR). The intention is to try and spot hospitals where the treatments could be improved.
In a scandal that bore many striking similarities to the Irish mother and baby homes scandal, high HSMRs were spotted at the UK’s Stafford Hospital, Staffordshire, in 2009. ‘The regulator condemned “appalling” standards of care and reported there had been at least 400 more deaths than expected between 2005 and 2008.’ Patients came out of the woodwork and claimed that they had been mistreated. An enquiry was set up, ‘it heard accounts of almost unimaginable neglect – with patients left in soiled sheets, others crying out in pain and some so dehydrated they drank from flower vases.’ The team went through more than one million pages of evidence. In his report, published in February 2013, Sir Robert found there were failings from the top to the bottom of the NHS, commenting, ‘this is a story of appalling and unnecessary suffering of hundreds of people. They were failed by a system which ignored the warning signs and put corporate self-interest and cost control ahead of patients and their safety.’[1]
The British prime minister issued an apology on behalf of the government.
The whole sordid affair has been the subject of debate within science ever since. It turns out that the scientists are sure that conditions at Stafford Hospital were no worse than at other hospitals and that the statistics were pretty useless. One team of researchers stated:
Using the HSMR [hospital standardised mortality ratios] to identify ‘good/bad’ hospitals is analogous to the practice of dowsing—the search for water without scientific apparatus—it is time to abandon this screening test and search for a better one.[2]
If the standardised statistics we use today are deficient, then the reliance on raw statistics of the past to imply causes is amateurishly inept.
The evidence is clear; the commission of investigation and many mother and baby home commentators have no expertise in statistics, medical statistics, epidemiology, nursing care or in vintage medicine. Yet they take it upon themselves to make pronouncements which no expert could make.
The leader of the Irish nation, Micheál Martin, has not got the time, expertise, or the wit to know anything about statistics. Like many others, he launched a scathing and scurrilous attack on his own people based on no more than an ignorant and inept interpretation of the evidence.
Michael Martin used the word ‘we’ to include my family and relations in his outburst. I say sneer at your own family before you sneer at others. See if they like it. Open your eyes to the high infant mortality rates under your own nose, and then accuse yourself of a ‘perverse morality’ and of being ‘distressingly’ indifferent to the plight of these children.
[2] Mohammed, M. A., R. Lilford, G. Rudge, R. Holder, and A. Stevens. ‘The Findings of the Mid-Staffordshire Inquiry Do Not Uphold the Use of Hospital Standardized Mortality Ratios as a Screening Test for ‘Bad’Hospitals’. QJM: An International Journal of Medicine 106, no. 9 (2013): 849–54.
Sinn Féin has suddenly dropped its false claims of deliberate starvation of children and women at Ireland’s Mother and Baby Homes but insist that women were imprisoned at such institutions. The notion enjoys the support of at least one feminist historian who puts it more academically, Ireland built ‘a brutal carceral state’ to contain ‘unmarried mothers’. The Commission rather politely say that there is no evidence to support these allegations. Does the truth matter to feminists and others?
Dáil Éireann debate – Wednesday, 13 Jan 2021 Vol. 1003 No. 1 Report of the Commission of Investigation into Mother and Baby Homes: Statements
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 and others who were involved in these institutions, who ran the institutions as if they were prisons.
Not true Kathleen and not supported by evidence. Engage brain or read the report before opening mouth.
Deputy Mary Lou McDonald (Sinn Féin)
I want to conclude with the words of a good friend of mine, Joan McDermott, who was imprisoned in Bessborough for eight months. She was made to cut the grass of the grounds with scissors. Joan gave birth to a baby boy whose name is David. He was taken from her without her consent or her knowledge. She did not see him again for five long decades.
Not true Mary Lou, your friend had to apply to get in and was only there with her consent. Engage brain or read the report before opening mouth.
The commission of investigation had dismissed this myth in their final report under discussion at
8. There is no evidence that women were forced to enter mother and baby homes by the church or State authorities.
The commission are again far too polite in their dismissal of falsehoods.
7.1 Her efforts to secure admission to a mother and baby home, and countless other stories in this chapter, call into question the widely-held opinion that women were sent to these homes against their will. Mother and baby homes were often the only shelter available to unmarried mothers
For years before, the myth had been perpetrated with one history lecturer at the National University of Ireland, Galway, claiming in 2016 that Ireland built a brutal carceral state. The article is chiefly remarkable for the elementary errors and stands as a work of pseudo-history. More details in the book.
The paragraph numbers correspond to the paragraphs in the Commission of investigation into Mother and Baby Homes Final Report
Once upon a time in a land of little people, officials were employed by the country’s health services to create fairy tales. Disney have a long history of taking European folklore and turning into a magical cinematic experience. The HSE on the other hand, employ more creative methods using the tradition Irish game of ‘Pin the Tail on the Leprechaun’. A picture of a leprechaun is pinned on to a wall chart, which can pivot so words and phrases can be chosen at random, all with crackpot notions.
As with the donkey version, blindfolded game players attempt to pin the tail as close to the leprechaun’s behind as possible. The pin invariably lands on a words or phrases, which are then used to produce random sneers and slurs, wound into a spiral of deceit and cast upon oneself and others. It is self-deprecating, self-loathing, small-minded black humour, written with the intent to give a sense of self-worth to people who feel worthless. A sense of self-importance gained the expense of others through gasbagging.
The report of the commission investigating mother and baby homes tells the story of the saga. ‘It appears that, in October 2012 two documents described as a file note and a draft briefing paper were circulated among senior HSE staff. […] These documents contained a number of allegations regarding Bessborough mother and baby home and the Tuam home.’
In other words, senior HSE staff filled a gigantic gasbag with crackpot notions taken from the leprechaun’s behind…
A database of 1,000 names of children existed who were sent abroad for adoption.
Death records of children were falsified to hide illegal adoptions.
Children were held in the homes longer than necessary for financial reasons.
Letters were sent to parents asking for money for children who had died.
Tuam and Bessborough charged a fee for the upkeep of children to both adoptive parents and the birth parent.
Women who gave birth were discharged to a Magdalen institution.
Money was claimed from the government for mothers and children after they had left the home.
The ‘trafficking’ of babies was facilitated by doctors, social workers and others, some of whom could still be working in the system.
The commission of investigation comment: ‘details of the document were repeated many times including during a Seanad debate of 17 May 2017. It appeared to be accepted by commentators and politicians that the allegations and suppositions made in these documents were statements of fact.’
HSE Mission Accomplished, politicians, journalists, bloggers et al., became shivers in search of a spine, the buck-leppin leprechauns went a buck-leppin, the shillelaghs waved menacingly, thumping anyone and everything in range, jigs were danced and the magic mushrooms passed around. There was ballyhoo from Ballymaloe to Timbuktu. Mouths frothed without the need for beer, and dung of all types was flung at their own ancestors and themselves.
What a session, you should have been there, the crack was 90… euros, there was no hangover suffered the morning after, no sense of shame and no apology.
In evidence to the commission, the HSE official [the witness] who prepared the document said she “could only recollect finding two photographs which appeared to be passport photographs for children being adopted to the US”.
The report added:
With respect to the allegation that there was ‘more than one letter asking for money for an infant who had been discharged or died’ the witness stated that she had no recollection of finding more than one letter if even one letter. The witness stated that she did not come across any evidence of trafficking of babies and in relation to the phrase ‘it must be that it was facilitated by adoptive social workers’ stated that ‘I don’t know what that is alluding to’. The witness had no memory of seeing evidence relating to nuns claiming for a dead baby. The witness had found no evidence of trafficking of babies. The witness did have a memory of reading a letter from a couple who had gone back to America with their adopted child saying that they would send money on to ‘the nuns’. The witness remarked ‘I certainly didn’t see any evidence of vast sums of money being passed over, you know parents being groomed to have children in order to … for prospective adoptive parents’.
Disney could never create as much magic as the Irish, no other nation has the imagination nor the inclination to live within the imagination, and no one else needs to feel alive by fighting with the dead. Reality, honesty, and integrity are not the values of ‘senior HSE staff’, nobody expects high standards and none are achieved.
Michael McDowell assumed his role as the Joseph Goebbels of anti-Catholic Ireland. The country’s biggest eejit had to apologise for likening Richard Bruton to the Nazi propaganda minister in 2006. While McDowell had no justification for his slur against Bruton, the Irish nation has grounds to return McDowell’s slurs to their source.
McDowell in an article in the Irish Times published today, 20 Jan 2021, adds his voice to scathing attacks on the Irish nation, the church and political establishment. He writes:
Our church-dominated society perpetrated this terrible mistreatment of its weakest and most vulnerable. Apart from the appalling level of infant mortality, the outline of this shameful aspect of independent Ireland has never been secret. It was a case of unacknowledged acquiescence.
McDowell’s ‘appalling’ attack relies completely for its evidential basis on an ignorant interpretation of health statistics. He has no idea that the purpose of gathering these statistics was to identify problems, report them to the experts, with a view to instilling action. One of those problems identified, even under British rule, was the high infant mortality rates among illegitimate children. The rates continued to be high for decades because no one could solve the causes of the problem. Accordingly, it is simply scurrilous to imply that nobody cared, and it is a claim which is not supported by the evidence.
He is right on one point, high infant mortality rates have never been secret but then goes on to imply that the seeming lack of action was due to ‘acquiescence’, an assertion, which no competent health statistician would be able to make. If the mortality rates remain high for certain diseases for decades, does this mean that nobody cared or could it be that there was no cure for the disease.
The ‘appalling level of infant mortality’ can be found in Ireland today. The children’s Alliance reported in 2014 that children born to Travellers suffered an infant mortality rate which was multiples of the normal rate. The rate was put at 360 percent, or 3.6 times that of the normal infant mortality rate. The British Office for National Statistics reported in 2003, that children born to unmarried mothers suffered from an ‘appalling’ high infant mortality rate, 30 percent higher than children born to married parents.
If high infant mortality rates are an indication of ‘appalling’ abuse, why are we not accusing the travellers and present day unmarried mothers of starving and murdering their infants?
The answer is very simple, only a dirty eejit, ignorant of mathematics, can think that high infant mortality rates are correlated with abuse, and use false assertions to attack innocent people.
Health statistics across the world, for over a century, have shown that high infant mortality rates are primarily caused by poverty. This ‘poverty penalty’ remains a problem even today in general health statistics and ‘has never been secret’. The CSO reported in 2006 that the poorest men lived on average 4.3 years less than the richest. The poorest women live on average 2.6 years less than the richest women. That was reported in 2006, a time when McDowell was Táinste and Minister of Justice. Was his gobshite government ‘acquiescent’ in the abuse of poor people?
I am using ‘appalling’ to mimic McDowell’s attempt to rouse emotions in the minds of the jury. Such actions are born of the intent to get a defendant hung, but even though the accused are entitled to a defence, McDowell, along with every media organisation in Ireland is sitting on the face of the defence lawyer to keep her quite. His flatulence is quite ‘appalling’, his title forever changed to former minister of the promotion of injustice.
Fergus Finlay tells his readers to believe him on the sole basis that he ‘knows what he is talking about’. It is a warning to all that they cannot rely on evidence, especially evidence which contradicts his pinion. Relying on solely on one’s credentials to lend truth to an argument, is a logical fallacy, its use has been unacceptable for decades and is taboo in the intellectual tradition.
In 218 Finlay retired as CEO of Barnardos, a children’s charity, the biggest beneficiary of taxpayer’s money, on a fat cat pension after years of drawing a salary ‘in excess of government guidelines’. Like the Tuam Children’s Home, Barnardos has been subjected to sensationalist reporting for burying 500 children in unmarked graves. Barnardos’ institutions, like all other such institutions, had a high infant mortality rates at a particular time in history.
Finlay tells us that there is ‘huge evidence’ for a range of claims which clearly Finlay believes to be true, but the commission have rubbished most of them.
He is evidently annoyed that the commission shared the blame with wider Irish society, and he wants to firmly lay it back on the Catholic Church, and to it alone. Accordingly, Finlay’s article shows clear and unequivocal evidence of anti-Catholic prejudice.
Prejudice is not founded on reason and therefore cannot be removed by reasoned argument. Moreover, prejudices are so highly resistant to rational influence that they will defend themselves no matter what the cost is to their keeper.
When genuine proof to underscore an opinion is unavailable, it is now common practice to call forth from the heavens, the avenging angels of ad-hominem. A practice where one attempts to give credibility to their argument, not by proving their point, but by casting a personal sneer at the opposition. Finlay wrote: ‘they produced a report that was so unworthy of the calibre of people involved’. A stylish sneer, but a sneer nonetheless.
‘I’m older than you minister’, declared Finlay. Patronisingly hinting that the Minister for Children was too young to understand the report findings, and if he was as old as him, he too would be as anti-Catholic as he. Get off yer ass sonny, and listen to me ‘cause I know what I’m talking about!
To add more power to his opinion, Finlay loaded his most fearsome weapon, his AK, with misogyny bullets and managed to squeeze off four rounds at the target of truth. He declares that misogyny is the only reason to apply a stigma to unmarried mothers. However, Finlay misses the elephant in the room, and fails miserably to factor in the cost to children. The entire system was instantiated by the church 1,700 years before, to protect children from infanticide. Misogyny bullets are made of a compound of ice and balderdash and melt before reaching the target of truth. It is too distant for many to see, but it is always worthy of making the effort to check the target, no damage, no score.
If Finlay had an ounce of impartial intent, he would no doubt have brought evidence such as this to public attention before casting such slurs.
The real attitude of the state was summed up in an infanticide case by Mr. Justice Kenny. K.C. in 1928
Infanticide has become a national industry in parts of this country the number of newly-born illegitimate children murdered is very great; their bodies are disposed of with a great deal of skill, so much so, that the people guilty are not often brought to justice. An illegitimate child is entitled to the protection of the law just, ns much as one born in lawful wedlock. It is in no extenuation of illegitimacy that 1 say that some of the most distinguished people who ever lived were illegitimate. I have no doubt that, young girl that you are, that your murder of this child was deliberate. It must be brought home to all girls in this country that they am amenable to the law and must suffer this crime. No doubt there is another person in each case who should suffer too, but he cannot be got. But somebody must pay the penalty —not the penalty for being immoral, but the penalty for taking human life. The life of this child might have been valuable: it was of some value at least, and that child was entitled to the protection of the law of this land. […] that their lives are just as sacred as the lives of any other children, and that the State is prepared and has always been prepared to support and maintain them until they reach an age when they can work for themselves.
‘It is fortunate that each generation does not comprehend its own ignorance. We are thus enabled to call our ancestors barbarous.’ – Charles Dudley Warner
Despite newspaper reports that Ireland was once a ‘deeply misogynistic’ society, the word makes only one appearance in the commission’s report. The commission do not use the word directly, instead they quote a feminist historian, Lindsey Earner-Byrne. However, Earner-Byrne’s opinion is not justified in the context of the debate.
On page 45 the report states:
Earner-Byrne states that the Minister for Justice, James Fitzgerald Kenney, who introduced the legislation ‘presented a disturbingly misogynistic approach to welfare’, presenting the unmarried mother as ‘temptress and blackmailer’.
It is clear from the debate that James Fitzgerald Kenney was not labelling all unmarried mothers as Earner-Byrne has described. He was referring to different types of people who might take advantage of the new law as it was then proposed.
The law in question was a philogynistic attempt to help unmarried mothers to get maintenance from the putative father. It required the unmarried mother to go to court and name the father who then would be issued with a court order for maintenance of the child. A debate took place on whether it was better to hold the cases with members of the public present, or with only the press present or completely in-camera.
As would be expected when formulating new laws, various types of scenarios were imagined and thrashed out. One concern was that unscrupulous persons might use the courts to blackmail innocent men, especially if the cases were heard in public or the names of individuals were published in the press. In this scenario, a man could find himself deliberately targeted by a ‘temptress’ whose primary motivation was money. It often happened, in Ireland and abroad, that well-to-do men were often targeted in such a way, and in many cases the child was not even his.
However, the point James Fitzgerald Kenney was articulating was that he believed that when a man was wrongly charged and the case dismissed by the court, the name of his accuser should be published as deterrent against false charges and that a wrongly accused man should have his good name vindicated in public.
The parliamentary record shows that James Fitzgerald Kenney was replying to a question about amending sub-section 6 (a) of the Act, which dealt with the naming of individuals in the case. In the end, the decision was to hold courts with no members of the public present, but press reporters were permitted to attend. Accordingly, the names of the plaintiff, defendant and court officials could appear in public, but they were prevented from publishing details of the proceedings, other than if significant points of law arose.
This acceptance of another person’s opinion without any check for its validity or truthfulness is a problem persistent throughout the commission’s report and has a significant malignant effect on the on many of the report’s conclusions.
Taking the word of academic historians as gospel, also points to significant failings within Irish academic history. Scholars are too frightened of feminist historians to challenge claims, even when they might appear to be totally incorrect.
The assumption of academic inerrancy is a failure of biblical proportions, and the commission’s report is peppered with false assumptions.
Politicians out to fool the people jumped at the chance to fabricate notions of murderous women, both protestant and catholic who were killing babies at mother and baby homes. They took the word marasmus, which appeared as a cause of death on a small number of death certificates as evidence of starvation. It was a lie, and that has been proven Final Report of Mother and Baby Homes Commission of Investigation. Will they have the guts to do the right thing and apologise for misleading the people? As ever truth and politicians are seldom bedfellows.
5. Some commentators have concluded that infant deaths which occurred in mother and baby homes due to marasmus indicates that infants were neglected, not appropriately cared for, and/or wilfully starved to death in these institutions.
However, marasmus was a frequently cited cause of infant deaths in institutional, hospital and community settings in early twentieth-century Ireland. The Commission considers it unlikely that deaths in hospitals and family homes were due to wilful neglect and so cannot conclude that the term marasmus denotes wilful neglect in mother and baby homes. The more likely explanation is that marasmus as a cause of death was cited when an infant failed to thrive due to malabsorption of essential nutrients due to an underlying, undiagnosed medical condition.
In 1939, the Government’s Deputy Chief Medical Officer refuted damning public and health inspectorate concerns in regard to the standards of care at Bethany Home on the basis of a barbaric belief that it was normal for children of unmarried mothers to suffer from starvation. While no action was taken by the Government to protect the children in Bethany Home, which was a Protestant run home, the State did force the home to cease admitting Catholic mothers and babies. What does that say about the State, its orientation and actions?
Evidence in the public domain and records held by Departments tell us this, yet the Minister of State will table an amendment to the Sinn Féin motion that is beyond a distortion of the truth. She has underpinned her amendment with an argument set out in the same vein as that used by the State’s deputy chief medical adviser in the 1930s. He was of the view that children born outside of marriage were prone to starvation and, judging by the amendment before us, it appears the Government shares this view.
In 1939, the State’s Deputy Chief Medical Officer visited Bethany and attributed the ill health of children – rickets, scalding and purulent conjunctivitis – in the home to the fact that they were “illegitimate” and, therefore, “delicate” and prone to starvation. Are the Minister of State and the Government supporting that view in 2013?
The State colluded. In 1939, for example, the deputy chief medical adviser, Dr. Winslow Sterling Berry, dismissed public concerns and even the concerns of his own health inspectors, by claiming that it was “well known that illegitimate children are delicate and marasmic” – in other words, that they suffered from starvation.
Deputy Niall Collins (Fianna Fáil)
Records reveal that 54 of the children had died from convulsions, 41 from heart failure and 26 from marasmus, a form of malnutrition.
Sterling Berry, in 1939. In his report, Berry reported that it was well recognised that a large number of illegitimate children were delicate and marasmic, which means they were suffering the effects of starvation.I stress that this is from the report of an inspection of the home by the State. Was the State involved, was it indifferent to their plight and did the State fail them? The answer is obviously “Yes”.
Deputy Seán Crowe (Sinn Féin)
The big question that arises during this debate, when one steps back from the apology, is why it took the State so long to accept that it played a central and crucial part in supplying the women who were enslaved, starved, ill-treated, abused and treated with cold contempt.
Cemetery records indicate that the causes of death included 54 from convulsions, 41 from heart failure, 26 from starvation and seven from pneumonia. [the death certs record marasmus not starvation]
Death and Burial of Children in Mother and Baby Homes: Motion (Resumed) [Private Members]
Deputy Seamus Healy (independent)
State inspection reports described children as being fragile, pot-bellied and emaciated. Cause of death was regularly recorded as starvation. [marasmus]
Deputy Richard Boyd Barrett (Solidarity–People Before Profit)
Children died of starvation or were used as guinea pigs, while families were ripped apart. It is an appalling stain on our history.
Deputy Ciara Conway (Labour Party)
Young women were forcibly separated first from their communities, then from any sense of pride or self worth and then from their babies. Their babies were neglected and starved, with illnesses untreated. They were seen as worthless and buried, ultimately, in unmarked graves, left in the end without even an identity.
Deputy Seán Crowe (Sinn Féin)
Women’s children were starved and disease, including TB, was rampant. The child mortality rate was massively higher in these institutions than among the general public and the State allowed this to go on.
…
Seanad Éireann debate – Tuesday, 27 Jan 2015 Vol. 237 No. 4 Commission of Investigation into Mother and Baby Homes: Motion
Senator Marie Moloney (Labour)
State inspection reports described children as being fragile, emaciated and pot-bellied. Cause of death was often recorded as starvation.[marasmus]
Dáil Éireann debate – Thursday, 9 Mar 2017 Vol. 942 No. 2 Commission of Investigation Announcement on Tuam Mother and Baby Home: Statements
Deputy Lisa Chambers (Fianna Fáil)
What was uncovered in Tuam is only the tip of the iceberg. We do not know exactly how these babies died and it seems likely they were left to starve or die in the cold, as the mortality rate is too high to suggest otherwise.
Deputy Donnchadh Ó Laoghaire (Sinn Féin)
In Sean Ross Abbey, the death register lists a total of 269 deaths between 1934 and 1967, but some of those buried in the plot there are not listed on the register. It is also deeply shocking and appalling to learn that the main cause of death in the case of some 20% of the deaths in Bessborough was marasmus or severe malnutrition – in other words, death by hunger was happening in the 1940s and 1950s in Cork. At a minimum, we need to expand drastically the terms of reference of the commission of investigation into mother and baby homes.
Deputy Mick Barry (Irish Solidarity–People Before Profit)
According to a former chief medical officer of the State, James Deeny, in his autobiography, To Cure and to Care, in one year alone, of the 180 children born in the home 100 died. One in five of those who died in the 1934 to 1953 period died of marasmus, that is, severe malnutrition.
Commission of Investigation Announcement on Tuam Mother and Baby Home: Statements
Senator Alice-Mary Higgins (Daughter of Michael D IND)
There were 472 deaths in 19 years in the Bessborough home. Some 80 of those children were suffering from marasmus, which means severe malnutrition, including babies who have in many cases been taken away from the arms of their mothers, who have not been allowed to breast-feed them. Children suffering from malnutrition – an issue which is easy to control, deal with and address – represent almost 20% of known deaths in a short period in the Bessborough home alone, as we heard in the story earlier.
Senator Catherine Noone (Fine Gael)
Women were starved, neglected and hidden from society. They suffered horrendous abuse. It is imperative that we now respond with sensitivity and respect to what has been unearthed.
We gave them up because of our perverse, in fact, morbid relationship with what is called respectability. Indeed, for a while it seemed as if in Ireland our women had the amazing capacity to self-impregnate. For their trouble, we took their babies and gifted them, sold them, trafficked them, starved them, neglected them or denied them to the point of their disappearance from our hearts, our sight, our country and, in the case of Tuam and possibly other places, from life itself.
Commission of Investigation Announcement on Tuam Mother and Baby Home: Statements (Resumed)
Deputy Seán Crowe
They have come up to me and started telling the story of what they went through – the starvation, abuse, malnutrition and the fact their spirit was broken. That is what we did. We stripped people and took their clothes away. We took their identity, beat them and starved them. This was all done for what was supposed to be the greater good of some individuals or idea.
Dáil Éireann debate – Thursday, 18 Jan 2018
Vol. 963 No. 7 Report of the Joint Committee on the Eighth Amendment of the Constitution: Statements (Resumed)
Deputy Kate O’Connell (Fine Gael)
We murdered them in their hundreds through neglect and hate, brutalised them in the name of salvation and enslaved them in the name of redemption.
Infants in 21st century England, who are born to unmarried mothers, are 30% more likely to die than those born to married parents. The Irish think that because infant morality rates were high in mother and baby homes that children were abused and murdered. Why are the English not accusing their unmarried mothers of abuse and murder of their children through interpreting statistics the same way as the Irish? The answer is simple, a high IMR is not evidence of poor quality care.
Illegitimate infants in past times are generally considered to have been among the most vulnerable population groups: in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, for example, children born out of wedlock were around twice as likely to have died before the age of one year than those born to an official union. The illegitimate penalty decreased as overall infant mortality rates fell in the twentieth century, yet today, in the early years of the twenty-first century, illegitimate infants in England and Wales are still 30 per cent more likely to die during their first year of life than legitimate infants. Even those reported to be illegitimate but registered by both parents living at the same address are 17 per cent more likely to die in infancy.
This is not a mistake, the authors reference the UK publication ‘Health Statistics Quarterly, 2004’, which I have checked and can confirm the accuracy of the statement. If this UK statistical gathering proves anything, it is that Irish social and medical research is disconcertingly deficient and the consequences are manifest through misinformed beliefs and assertions, which are nearly always expressed with oikophobic belligerence.
EJ
Ref:
Reid, Alice, Ros Davies, Eilidh Garrett, and Andrew Blaikie. ‘Vulnerability among illegitimate children in nineteenth century Scotland’. Annales de démographie historique 111, no. 1 (2006): 89–113.
