Government banned sending pregnant women to Bessborough in 1945

A government minister ordered that no pregnant women be sent to Bessborough mother-and-baby home nearly 70 years ago.

The order was issued in January 1945, following two reports in 1943 and 1944 into the level of infant deaths that were occurring at the Cork home. The Irish Examiner revealed yesterday that the official investigation carried out by the Cork County Medical Officer, on foot of inquiries from a Department of Local Government inspector, confirmed an infant mortality rate of 68% at Bessborough in 1943.

The national mortality rate for marital infants in that year was 7.6%, rising to 25% for ‘illegitimate’ infants. A later report cited a “habitual” high infant mortality rate, while acknowledging a lack of adequate nursing training among nuns and staff, as well as a complete lack of infant hygiene and dietetics training among any of the staff.

As a result, the secretary of the Board of Public Assistance for the South Cork Public Assistance District wrote to all its medical officers, assistance officers, matrons, and head nurses of hospitals to forward an instruction from Con Ward, effectively the then Fianna Fáil health minister, ordering that no expectant mothers be sent to Bessborough.

“Dr Ward, parliamentary secretary to the minister for local government and public health, directs that, for the time being, no unmarried mother or expectant unmarried mother should be sent to The Sacred Heart Home and Hospital, Bessboro’, Blackrock. Patients who, normally, would be sent there should be sent to the County Home,” read the order.

Given the severity of the concerns raised in the investigations, it was clear the government of the day was concerned enough about the level of infant deaths to take the decision to effectively close it for a period.

It was a step further than the Board of Public Assistance went a year previously in February 1944. A record from the minutes of a meeting of the Board of Public Assistance shows that, due to concerns about the health of infants, it asked the nuns at Bessborough to only board out children that could be certified as healthy.

The following month, the board wrote to the matron of Bessborough, Sr Martina, sending the two reports it carried out into infant mortality rates. The letter confirmed the investigations were made following “an inquiry received from an inspector of the Local Government Department relative to the high level of infant mortality” and due to “complaints made by foster parents of alleged debilitated children being placed at nurse from the home”.