My mother was 'trafficked': Daughter's search uncovers family link to Bessborough's missing children
Mary Donovan holds a photo of her late mother Margaret who spent time at Bessborough. Picture Noel Sweeney
Mary Donovan knew she had a brother born in a Cork mother and baby institution, but it was only six years after her mother’s death before she learned she had twin siblings among the missing children of Bessborough.
“Margaret Mary Donovan, née Finn, was my mother. Everyone said she was the most beautiful woman in Tralee,” says Mary Donovan, sitting in the kitchen of her cosy home in Tipperary. Beside her is a picture of her mother; they have the same vivid green eyes.
“My mom was born on July 27, 1939, and at the age of 16, in July 1955, she was sent from her home in Tralee, and she was committed, through a court order, to be detained in a reformatory school in Limerick.
“She was ‘wayward’. Those were the grounds of why she was put away the age of 16.”
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That single day had a catastrophic impact on Margaret Mary Finn’s life, and seven decades later its effects are still being felt.
“In April 1956 she was admitted into St Finan’s mental asylum in Killarney, because she was pulling her hair out."
Margaret Mary later left St Finan’s, and, because she was under a court order, she was arrested and admitted to the Magdalene laundry in Limerick in October 1956.
“They noticed she was pregnant, and they brought her down to Bessborough in the late night of the February 4, 1957, and Davy was born at 4.10am, full term, eight and 10 ounces,” says Mary.
Margaret Mary refused to give up Davy for adoption, and her grandmother, Margaret, who had reared her, took Davy in too.
Mary has spent years trying to piece together the events of her mother’s life.
After Davy was born, Margaret Mary was committed. She left St Finan’s in 1963 at the age of 20. She met Jimmy ‘Rattler’ Donovan, a skilled handballer, who had been put in the Pembroke Alms Industrial School in Tralee at the age of 12, after his mother died.
Jimmy and Margaret Mary married four weeks after they met.
Mary knew nothing about her brother Davy until she was 13 or 14.
“Caroline was born in ’64, Ann Marie was born in ’65. She died at nine weeks old of anaemia. James was born in ’66, I was born in ’68, Michael was born in ’69, Martin was born in ’70. Those were the Donovan children.”
Theirs was a chaotic home environment, and the family suffered extreme poverty. Jimmy became possessive, and violent, and Margaret Mary left him multiple times.
In 1969, at the age of one, Mary was committed to the same industrial school her father had been sent to as a child.
“The older girls minded us, and they potty-trained us, and when I was older, I had to mind babies at night and get up during the night and feed a baby,” she says.
She remembers scrubbing floors, “knee-deep in water”, polishing them, repetitively cleaning. She now suffers from severe rheumatoid arthritis.
“I was boarded out as a free nanny, housekeeper to the elite of the elite. I had to mind their children for nothing, and was put back into the institution afterward.
“I was subjected to sexual abuse and molestation for six years.”
Margaret Mary died in 2014, and it was only later that Mary gained access to her mother’s medical and psychiatric files through freedom of information requests.
“Mom’s records show she was in five psychiatric asylums, three Magdalene laundries, and Bessborough twice.
“I was devastated. I only discovered that in late 2020.”
Twins Vincent Joseph and Ann Veronica were born at Bessborough on Tuesday, March 24, 1959. Ann Veronica died the next day, and Vincent Joseph the day after.
The Sacred Heart sisters who ran Bessborough gave Margaret Mary a ‘house name’ during both of her incarcerations in the Cork institution.
“The first thing the nuns took was her name,” Mary says. “The first time, they told her she was Dorothea, the second time Eva.
“She had the twins in March 1959, and from October 1959 up till March 22, 1963, she remained locked in St Finan’s for four years.
“She was in St Brendan’s in Grangegorman in 1959 as well. She was in St Stephen’s Hospital in Glanmire, in St Patrick’s psychiatric ward; she was in Our Lady’s on the Lee Rd in Cork, the Good Shepherd Magdalene laundry in Sunday’s Well, and she was in St Joseph’s in Limerick.
“I do really think the word ‘trafficked’ describes what they did to my mother: she was trafficked from one institution to another to another, back and forth.”
Margaret Mary’s records say she had 13 pregnancies and multiple miscarriages.
Mary has birth certificates for 10 children, the three babies Margaret Mary had in Bessborough, the six she had with Jimmy, and a tenth, Finbarr, who was born in 1972.
“I don’t know where Finbarr is. He was born in September ’72 while she was in a homeless hostel on the grounds of the Good Shepherd in Sunday’s Well. Her maiden name is on his birth cert, Margaret Finn.”
Mary believes her mother never recovered from being institutionalised.
Margaret Mary was subjected to electroshock treatment (ECT) and multiple rounds of insulin shock treatment, a dangerous procedure in which psychiatric patients were repeatedly injected with large doses of insulin, causing daily comas over weeks.
“A 16-year-old child, in her innocence, and the signatures on some of the consent forms in her files are not her signature.
“She was locked away for four years, and rapes happened in these asylums.
“I feel the psychiatric hospitals really need researching, I believe there’s many women suffering in silence, afraid.”
The damage has extended beyond Margaret Mary too. Apart from Finbarr, whose fate is unknown, all of Mary’s siblings are dead.
“My brother Martin, the youngest, suffered abuse in the industrial school and lived on the streets for 25 years. He did every county of Ireland, and he was found unresponsive on August 24, 2016, dead at 45.
“James had an awful life too, he died last year; 45 years of solvent abuse finally caught up with him at 58. Caroline died in 2022 at 58. Davy died at 58.
“It’s been horrific. I don’t know where I get my strength from. I think it’s from my mom.
“I know she’s watching over me. I know they’re all watching over me.” Mary has had her troubles too, suffering a severe eating disorder and becoming anorexic.
“That’s where my mental health started to deteriorate, and more so when I had my son and my daughter.
“I just couldn’t believe how could a baby end up in an institution, and then I started to begin to understand how, because of what they did to my mother at 16. She was never right, she couldn’t be our mom, and I made that promise I would be the best mom to both of my kids.
“My marriage ended in 2000, and my father died in 2004. I saw him take his last breath. It was horrific.
“Mom went into long-term care in 1995 in Kilarden House in Tralee after Finan’s closed. In March 2009 she had to go into a nursing home because she got diagnosed with dementia.”
Last winter, Mary was one of four survivors of industrial and reformatory schools who concluded a 51-day hunger strike outside Leinster House, having secured a Government-backed package of apology and supports.
The twins, Ann Veronica and Vincent Joseph, are among 859 children whose burial records are missing from Bessborough.
In 2021, the Commission of Investigation into Mother and Baby Homes reported 923 child deaths relating to Bessborough, with burial records existing for only 64. It said it was “highly likely some children were buried on the Bessborough estate.
Last month, An Coimisiún Pleanála cleared the way for the building of 106 apartments on the remaining 60 acres at Bessborough. Taoiseach Micheál Martin subsequently intervened, calling on Cork City Council to engage with the landowners.
Like so many survivors and relatives, Mary Donovan says she has been traumatised by the planning decision, and she believes the State must purchase the land.
“Let it become a memorial garden. Put out 923 white little crosses, and for the 19 mothers who are missing also.
“I would love to have a place where I could sit down and talk to Vincent and Ann,” she says.
“They were real people. One lived a day, and the other lived two days, but they left a mark on the world.”
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