Devotion to a cause helps shed new light on dark past
Dr Lorraine Grimes’s research has laid bare the trauma of women compelled to give up their babies for adoption, writes Eavan Murray
THE lives of women forced to enter mother and baby homes were often forever marred by the experience. Many went on to build productive lives and loving families after their trauma, but many others did not.
Exhaustive research by an NUIG academic unearthed the stories of women and girls forced to flee to England in a bid to outrun the shame and stigma attached to unmarried motherhood.
Dr Lorraine Grimes worked part-time in a bar while studying for her master’s to fund flights to the UK, where she trawled archives and public records. She wanted to find out what happened to women abandoned and cast out from their people and place.
“It was around the time the Eighth Amendment was being debated and I had friends who travelled to England. I knew it was an issue that should be studied in a historical context.
“I wasn’t enrolled on a PhD at the time but I was just really interested in trying to find the stories of these women.”
Her devotion to her cause took her to Liverpool, Glasgow, London and Birmingham.
The accounts she uncovered span the decades between 1927 and 1973. Most are desperately, achingly sad. But there are chinks of light.
Two women who became pregnant as teenagers went on to earn PhDs.
In a series of articles this week, the Irish Independent will bring a selection of stories uncovered by Dr Grimes.
Sarah was 16 when she became pregnant in 1967 and was sent to London to stay with her aunt and uncle.
Sarah had never even been to Dublin before but travelled on the train by herself, then by plane to London.
“My family didn’t want me at home.
“They wanted me looked after but they didn’t want anybody in the family, let alone the community, to know,” she told Dr Grimes.
“I had every hope that my parents would give in and let me and the baby’s father get married and keep the baby, because he was always willing to marry me.”
Her parents did not agree to the marriage as he was “not from a good family” but, as Sarah said: “There was nothing wrong with his family.”
Just days after she arrived in London, her aunt took her to the Crusade of Rescue in Hammersmith – a charity for destitute Catholic children, where she was interviewed.
Feeling she had no choice, Sarah agreed to be repatriated and was sent to a mother and baby home in Ireland.
“My uncle and aunt took me to Heathrow. I was probably eight months [pregnant] at that time.”
On her arrival in Dublin, Sarah was met by a worker from the Crusade of Rescue.
“A woman met me at the airport. She wasn’t unkind but she was very dismissive. I was interviewed again in Dublin – all kinds of questions asked. That evening somebody else put me on a train to Cork.
“I had to get a taxi out to Bessborough. I had never been in a taxi before so it was really scary.
“The taxi driver was very nice but I knew he was looking at me thinking ‘another one of those’.”
Sarah said she found Bessborough “very difficult”.
“We were given a name. We were told not to say where we came from.”
Sarah felt “a lot of pressure” to consent to an adoption. “I think I stood my ground for as long as I could,” she said.
After the baby was born, she was sent back to work in a children’s home in London.
She cared for children who were awaiting adoption while her daughter was in an institution in Ireland. She only got to travel to see her on one occasion.
“That was very difficult. I was only allowed to go home on holiday once,” she said. “The baby’s dad used to go in and out and see her. And his mother used to go and see her.”
With no support from her family, adoption seemed like the only solution.
“I had to make a decision. And I think I made the best decision. You can have regrets later. But there was no way.
I had no support.” Sarah had hoped to return home to her family and complete her Leaving Cert, but they were unwelcoming.
She became a nurse and later attended university where she attained a PhD and became a lecturer in health and social care.
Today Sarah admits she is terrified to trace her daughter after a woman she knew had a bad experience when she traced her son.
“It frightened the living daylights out of me,” she said.
“Then I thought, the child can contact me if and when they want to.
“I was always afraid of saying ‘I’m your mother’ and creating havoc for them.
“Every now and then, I think I will and then I think I won’t.”