Locked away: Thousands of 'unwanted' children failed by foundling hospitals

John Gilroy, archaeologist, outside the former Cork Foundling Hospital at Leitrim St, Cork.

Between 1728–1828, the foundling hospital served the purpose of removing unwanted infants from the view of Irish society. With a stated aim 'to make good Protestants of the foundling children', conditions were bleak, often resulting in illness and death, writes Sean O'Riordan

The Cork Foundling Hospital was established in 1747 on the site now occupied by Murphy’s Brewery on Leitrim St. Its construction was funded by a special tax on all coal imported into Cork. This was the source of continual complaints from the merchants of Cork, who felt that the charge was an unreasonable one.

However, despite their vocal opposition to the charge, they failed to suggest an alternative funding stream and the coal tax continued to fund the place until its closure in 1854.

The Cork Foundling Hospital was not as large as its Dublin counterpart. To get some idea of the numbers of children in the hospital, a report published in 1830 tells us that, from 1820 to 1829, 11,754 Cork children were admitted to the hospital, of which 1,674 died.

Ten years later, the figures were no better. There were 408 children, known as interns, in the hospital in 1838 — 232 of them under the age of five years old. Another 653 children were ‘sent to service’ or apprenticed.

Dining Hall of the Foundling Hospital, Dublin

By 1842, three interns had been ‘claimed’, 90 apprenticed and 265 had died.

There are numerous newspaper reports of girls from the Cork Foundling Hospital being sent to Australia as a source of domestic help and, no doubt, marriage.

In 1831, 59 girls from the Cork Foundling Hospital were sent to New South Wales. The following year another consignment of Cork girls — aged between 12 and 20 — was needed.

In total, 132 females from the ‘House of Industry’ in Cork were chosen, but it was found that the required number was, in fact, 140.

“We are told that to make up the numbers, eight were taken from the Foundling Hospital. Four years later, in 1836, 16 girls from the Cork Foundling Hospital were sent to Australia.

“In 1849, the Pemberton arrived in Australia after a voyage that lasted 103 days with 307 orphan girls on board. They were ‘selected from the Irish poorhouses’, but 16 of the girls had come from the Cork Foundling Hospital. In 1851, a further 22 Cork girls were sent to Australia,” archaeologist John Gilroy said.

Little is known about the operation of the Cork Foundling Hospital. It, and several other institutions, require further study which will, no doubt, shine an uncomfortable light on Irish societal attitudes over the last 200 years.

The Cork Foundling Hospital finally closed its doors in 1854, when the site was purchased by Murphy’s Brewery. By this time, there were 29 residents in the place. Five were sent to the mental hospital, while the rest were transferred to the Cork Union Workhouse (now St Finbarr’s Hospital).

As one of the stated aims of the Irish foundling hospitals was “to make good Protestants of the foundling children” (the other aim was to prevent infanticide), once the children were admitted their parents were no longer allowed access to them.

Mr Gilroy said a mere enquiry by a mother as to the welfare of her child resulted in the child being taken from the Dublin Foundling Hospital and transferred to Cork, and vice versa. As far as the governors were concerned, this served a dual purpose.

It prevented “interference” from the (usually Catholic) mother and made sure that mothers would not seek to “get themselves accepted as the nurses of their own offspring”. The legal authority for the exchange of foundlings was stated.

“And, whereas, many of the foundlings exposed in the streets of Dublin and Cork are of Popish parents, and it has been found by experience that many of such foundlings, through visits from their parents and Popish relations, are prevented from embracing the Protestant religion; where remedy whereof be it enacted — That it shall and may be lawful for the governors of the workhouses of Dublin and Cork to exchange the children in their respective workhouses, or to send foundlings from one of these workhouses to the other as often as the governors shall agree and find convenient.”

Mr Gilroy said it was impossible to say how many children were transferred, but we are told that “children from six to eight years were exchanged between Cork and Dublin”.

Listed among the governors of the Dublin Foundling Hospital are the well-known names of Henry Grattan, speaker of the Irish parliament, and Dean Swift.

'Infants' cradles were alive with vermin'

In 2002, an archaeological examination of a portion of the St James’s Hospital was undertaken by archaeologist Linzi Simpson, in advance of the construction of a new unit on the hospital campus.

The excavation uncovered an arched passageway, or cellar, which Ms Simpson identified as part of the basement of the Dublin Foundling Hospital. This is all that remains today of that hospital.

Archaeologist John Gilroy said the notorious ‘infirmary, where so many infants died, seems to have been located on one of the upper floors of the building.

Following the scandal after the publication of a report into conditions there in 1797, a major programme of reform took place.

The ‘infirmary’ was cleared out, but the description of the work makes for distressing reading.

Mr Gilroy said one witness wrote: “The cradles were broken up and thrown out the window and burnt. They were found to be alive with vermin and they could not be carried down the stairs.

“The men who were employed to break them up had to get stimulants to aid them as they did the work.”

According to Mr Gilroy: “The subsequent building of the workhouse meant that much of the structure of the Dublin Foundling Hospital was demolished and, over the years, all the above-ground structure was removed.

“The basement excavated by Ms Simpson has been preserved beneath the floor of the Trinity College Building on the site,” Mr Gilroy said.

The first building on the site was the poorhouse, which opened in 1702. The Dublin Foundling Hospital was established in 1727 on the site and operated there until 1829.

From 1838, its use changed again to become the Poorhouse of the South Dublin Union and that remained in operation until 1931, when its name was changed to St Kevin’s Hospital.

“In a remarkable twist of history, in the 1930s, women who were admitted to St Patrick’s Mother and Baby Home on the Navan Road were first admitted to St Kevin’s Hospital to have their babies, which after delivery were sent to St Patrick’s. The current St James’s Hospital, which occupies the site, was formed as an amalgamation of St Kevin’s and other smaller hospitals. The current building was constructed in 1971. The campus is now the location for the new National Children’s Hospital,” Mr Gilroy added.

Letters of petition to governors of the Dublin Foundling Hospital

Written on behalf of Bridget Kearney: “This poor girl had travelled 100 miles on foot in order that she might herself place her child safely in the cradle and she travelled back the same weary distance. She left her child at the Foundling Hospital to be reared, she being at the time poor and unable to support her. She is now informed by letter from her brothers who were serving in the army that a remittance is to be made her to enable her to support herself and her child. She humbly begs your reverence will relieve her anxiety by giving her an order to have her child restored.”

Written on behalf of Bridget McCullogh: “A rich Protestant seduced his poor Roman Catholic servant (her) and then sending her child up to the foundling hospital cradle against her will.” 

Written on behalf of Rose Trent: “The misfortune to be seduced by a person of the name of Thomas Stackdale under a promise of marriage. The child which she bore to Stockdale was sent to a nurse, where he remained for a considerable time. The nurse demanded her wages, when the said Stockdale took the child and under an assumed name of John Johnson sent him to the foundling hospital, though very well able to keep the child”.

Written on behalf of child Ann Magee: “Sir - There was a female child named Ann Magee sent to the foundling hospital in the month of September 1811 from the townland of Ballywooden. The father’s name is James Magee, mother’s name I forget but I think was Ann Keown. The father of the child died lately and his father and mother, who are rich and comfortable, wish to get the child back again. I do not know whether the Governors ever consent to return a child but think it would be a very happy circumstance for the child if they would accede to the old people’s wishes in this case”.

Written on behalf of the mother of Arthur Wellington: “To the Governors of the foundling hospital. The mother of a child named Arthur Wellington (admitted there on October 1, 1815) wishes him to be restored to her as she is now perfectly able to support him and most anxious to get him from the situation, she having been forced to allow him being placed there. Circumstances of a pecuniary nature obliged her to separate from his father about three months before he was born. These circumstances no longer existing, she prays and begs the Governors not to hesitate in giving him to her."

Written on behalf of Letty Spires: “Her child was transmitted from her on the 15th October and received into the hospital under the following circumstances. The mother Letty Spires was married to a soldier of the 611st Regiment of Foot whilst quartered here. The Regiment is gone to the West Indies and she was left behind with any provision for herself or child. She sent the child to the paternal grandfather and he sent it off to the Foundling Hospital. She is now most anxious to recover possession of her child which I trust you will have the goodness to direct that she may receive it again.”

Mortality rates show conditions ‘among worst in Europe’

John Gilroy, a former senator, recently graduated with a first class honours degree in Archaeology from UCC. As a former psychiatric nurse, he is interested in the history and archaeology of the numerous institutions which formed a large part of Irish society until relatively recent times.

The mental hospitals — which he is currently researching — formed one part of a society that didn’t care much for the marginalised, the poor or the unwanted.

He says the foundling hospitals, later the poorhouses, and later again Magdalene laundries, mother and baby homes, industrial schools, mental hospitals and borstals made up an institutional infrastructure which “saw Ireland as the world leader in locking away its citizens”. 

Mr Gilroy pointed out that between 1728–1828, the foundling hospital served the purpose of removing unwanted infants and children from the view of Irish society.

Vaults of the Foundling Hospital, Dublin.

Once inside the doors, the fate of the infants was determined by chance — healthy children sent out ‘to nurse’ and, if they survived, raised in the tradition of the established Protestant Church.

However, infants deemed ‘unhealthy’ were dispatched to the infirmary where they died in a systematic manner.

“When the scandal was exposed and the Dublin Foundling Hospital closed its doors, the systemic disposal of unwanted infants became anonymised in the overcrowded poorhouses which came into being after 1838, where the mortality rate continued at appalling levels,” he said.

“The poorhouses remained in existence until the 1920s. While it may not be valid to see a strict linear trajectory between the eighteenth century foundling hospitals, the poorhouses and the mother and baby homes, it does set a historical context to how Irish society has failed to look after the welfare of the poor, the vulnerable and the marginalised,” he added.

The foundling hospital was a phenomenon that existed across Europe and the reports of conditions within the hospitals varied.

Mr Gilroy said that in Spain, the hospitals were run by a religious order and conditions seemed relatively good.

The Barcelona hospital was praised for its “regularity, cleanliness and the manner in which it is worked is certainly wonderful".

However, in France, where there were 296 such hospitals and conditions within them were very poor; “babies (12 at a time) lying in one tray, jammed closer to each other than keys on a piano”.

The London Foundling Hospital, established as a charitable institute, maintained a much more benign environment but even so, the death rate for infants admitted in the first year ran to 40%.

In the Moscow Foundling Hospital “the size of which is truly astonishing” – of every 1,000 children admitted in 1876, 655 were alive at the end of five years.

“It seems that conditions in the Dublin Foundling Hospital, if we judge from mortality rates elsewhere, were among the worst in Europe,” Mr Gilroy said.

Infants ‘carted up’ to hospital from around the country

Wodsworth’s Report carries the example of Bridget Kearney who walked over 100 miles to leave her baby at the Dublin Foundling Hospital.

Doubtless, she was unaware of the conditions there, she must have felt that she was giving her baby the best chance.

But why would Bridget walk 100 miles when she could have availed of the services of the carrying nurse?

John Gilroy pointed out that the carrying nurse was a well-known character who would relieve the new mother of the burden of her unwanted child and take the waif to Dublin for a minimal charge.

The post of carrying nurse involved transporting infants to the Dublin Foundling Hospital from all parts of the country.

Clearly, Bridget knew that the innocently named carrying nurse was anything but innocent.

Wodsworth tells us that the admission papers of the foundling hospital state that “this child was injured in carriage (a frequent entry)”.

“In a disturbing description, the report outlines how ‘thousands of newly born infants were ‘carried’ by the professional ‘Foundling Carriers’ and were ‘carted up’ eight or ten tossed into a kish or creel (basket) from all parts of the country,” said Mr Gilroy.

“No wonder they died on the road or ‘came in dying’ and were injured and much ill-treated. Their poor little arms and legs were frequently found fractured on arrival. The dread of what these innocents suffered in transition north, east and west, on jolting springless carts or carried in a basket or sack on the backs of these old harpies — the carriers by profession must have been present in the mind of Bridget Kearney,” said Mr Gilroy.

The report continues:

The carriers, or persons bringing up the children, finding no admission, left the infants on the banks of the adjacent canal and there they perished from cold, starvation or by drowning.

The position of carrying nurse was not unique to Ireland.

Known across Europe by the grotesque epithet, ‘the Angelmaker’, the job saw children being transported often hundreds of miles to the foundling hospitals where it is estimated that the mortality rate during transit was over 90%.

In the 30 years 1796 to 1826 (this was after the scandal was exposed in 1797), 52,150 children were admitted, of whom 14,613 died in the hospital while infants.

Some 25,859 were returned as dead by nurses in the country — in all, 41,524 died.

Of 5,213 infants admitted to the infirmary part of the Dublin Foundling Hospital between 1791 and 1796, only three survived — all the rest died.