Remembering Little Nellie in the fight for universal health care

For too long people accepted the terrible toll of infant deaths like Little Nellie’s. Victoria White says we shouldn’t be trying to exhume her, but rather remember her with a fight for universal health care.

EVERY time I see a picture of Little Nellie Organ I want to get sick. The horror of it. The dying four-year-old trussed up in a chair in the bridal gown of a First Communicant. The pasty face and the huge staring eyes. It is a repulsive image.

We should be ashamed of Little Nellie Organ, not proud of her. She died from TB in the hospital of an industrial school in the Good Shepherd Convent in Sunday’s Well, Cork in 1907. Not only were her lungs destroyed by the disease, it had crippled her spine and crumbled her jaw, which was stinking and coming away in pieces.