Michael Moynihan: The prospect of building on Bessborough babies' bones should anger us all
The 'Little Angels' memorial plot on the grounds of Bessborough: Cork City Council has granted planning permission for 140 apartments on the site. File Picture: Larry Cummins
Last week, planning permission was granted by Cork City Council for 140 apartments on the site of the former Bessborough mother and baby institution.
The reaction was swift. Speaking to this newspaper, Carmel Cantwell of the Bessborough Mother and Baby Home Support Group said: “We objected to this planning application because we believe that this site is one containing a landscape of trauma, loss, and unmarked burials.
For those unfamiliar with the background, the Congregation of the Sacred Hearts of Jesus and Mary ran the facility in Bessborough as a mother and baby institution from 1922 to 1998, and in that time 9,768 mothers and 8,938 babies were admitted.
According to the Mother and Baby Homes Commission, 923 children died at Bessborough or after being transferred from there. Burial records exist for only 64 of those children
This assertion of the facts only hints at the story. The context matters.
Bessborough was part of a network of similar mother and baby homes which is now rightly regarded with horror because of the litany of cruelties it is responsible for. Children were sold to adoptive parents in America. Mothers were abused and institutionalised.
And plenty of children died in these institutions. Work is currently under way in Tuam to recover bodies of children believed to be buried in unmarked graves in a former mother and baby home.
Readers will be well aware of this, of course, because the Tuam babies case has made headlines all over the world, not just in Ireland. As for the most recent work, an update from the Office of the Director of Authorised Intervention in Tuam stated forensic analysis is being carried out on the bodies which have been recovered: the remains of 33 infants have been found so far.
If that were not bad enough, an initial examination carried out in Tuam by the Commission of Investigation into Mother and Baby Homes 10 years ago found commingled remains of infants buried in the chambers of a disused sewage system.
This is how children were treated in these institutions.
The Bessborough Mother and Baby Home Support Group has called for a full forensic investigation of the site, and it is not the only organisation which appears to have qualms about building in this area.
Last July, for instance, An Coimisiún Pleanála's planning inspector said a planning application here should also be refused due to concerns around possible burials.
That seems a pretty specific reason for refusal, and even the conditions now attached to the planning permission appear to strengthen the case against building rather than making a stronger argument in favour of the new development.
Labour Party councillor Peter Horgan pointed this out last week in this newspaper when he told Donal O’Keeffe: “I firmly remain of the belief that building on this site is wrong.
"At least five sections of the 70 conditions refer to discovery of human remains potential in the construction of this site and the need for expertise in juvenile skeletal remains.
“This in itself outlines that this is not an ordinary site.”
Including such specific conditions to deal with the recovery of human remains is an admission of sorts. Namely, that such remains are likely to be found on the site — otherwise such extensive provisions would not be made to address that situation occurring.
Clearly, the pressing need for accommodation and housing is the piercing challenge of our time. Only last week we read, for instance, that homeless numbers have now reached 17,112 — 11,793 adults and 5,319 children.
The fact over five thousand children are homeless is an indictment of us all, not of some amorphous ‘society’. Those with an eye to history might also point out the youngest and most vulnerable members of our society are suffering now, just as the same cohort suffered when the mother and baby homes were open.
I’m not sure if the case is proven beyond all doubt that some of that housing must be provided on this site. It is not as if this is the only available space for housing in Cork: indeed, Carmel Cantwell has pointed out it wasn't even the only available space for housing in the original Bessborough site.
She said the original site consisted of 210 acres, 150 acres of which have already been built on to provide housing, a hospital, offices and a retail park.
Ms Cantwell added a simple question: “Was it too much to ask that the last 60 acres surrounding the buildings be preserved as a park of remembrance?”
The Taoiseach agrees with her. Micheál Martin told the Dáil this week the city council “should, in my view, some years ago, should have acquired that for amenity purposes and recreation and memorialisation".
The sheer misery inflicted in institutions like Bessborough can barely be imagined, but occasionally it can be glimpsed. It’s the matter-of-fact nature of the descriptions in official reports such as the final report of the Commission of Investigation into Mother and Baby Homes, which was published in January 2021, which somehow adds to that misery.
And not just in the occasional throwaway line in the report referring to Bessborough (“In the period 31 March 1945 to 6 March 1946, 48 infants were born in or admitted to the institution and 23 infant deaths had occurred”). The report has plenty of short stories which hint at heartache enough for a novel:
In 1924, two women left Bessborough and sought admission to Cork County Home. The board’s solicitor advised the women be prosecuted "for disobeying the rules". The chairman of the South Cork board (South Cork board of public assistance) and the lord mayor agreed both women should be prosecuted.
The solicitor told the board infants born to both women had died in Bessborough and that is why they left. The solicitor said: "These women may not like to remain where their babies had died." The board voted to reverse their decision to prosecute the women.
Those two stories reach all the way down to us today. Are the bodies of those babies and infants still buried in Bessborough somewhere?
Apologies to readers expecting some drollery about potholes or parking today, and who may find this fare a little dark for the morning coffee. I agree: it couldn’t be much darker.
But this is something that demands attention. If we can’t get angry about the prospect of diggers unearthing the bones and skulls of dead babies in order to build apartments, what is there to be angry about? And if our society doesn’t understand that this is wrong, then what is?
- A vigil will take place at the former Bessborough home on Sunday March 8 at 1pm.
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