Jude’s lifelong journey to know family history
A MIXED- race Irishman who spent his childhood in three State institutions has fought most of his life to find information about his background.
Dublin tailor Jude Hughes, 79, born to an Irish mother and an African father, has fought for years to gain access to his family’s history.
He said: “I’m only now getting the results that I’ve been looking for.
“It was more through DNA than through their help.
“To compound when you’re in these places, then when you come out of it they try and stop you getting your background information.
“There was no need for that carry- on. They forgot that the children also had rights that were completely ignored.
“I’m one of the rare mixed- race people who were born in this country back in 1941.
“There were issues, simple things like when the lads would go to Croke Park, I’d be left behind, as if I wasn’t fit to go there or something like that.
“Then eventually someone had a row with the Christian
Brothers who stopped me going and that all changed and I was allowed back again.
“People wanted to take me out for
Sunday, to give me a day out, they’d refuse point blank. That happened in one place and in another place I went to that didn’t happen, I was allowed to go out and stay weekends.
“Simple things, they weren’t much, but they meant a lot.”
Jude’s mother worked in the sewing trade for Singers on Mary Street, Dublin.
His father was a wealthy medical student from Nigeria. He said: “I think I was born in St Patrick’s on Navan Road. I’ve tried to make allowances for the situation that prevailed in those days.
“You can imagine someone from the country having a baby and having a black baby you can be bloody sure back in 1941 that wouldn’t be acceptable.”
Jude, who runs a tailor’s shop on Middle Abbey Street in Dublin, said most boys left the homes with a trade aged 16 and that some “cracked up” in the wider world.
He added: “No back up, that was the frightening part I felt.
“Some of us managed to come through and I know everyone is surprised I’m still working away and doing things and I got settled, married and kids and all that.
“The memory of these places, it need not have been that way if they’d have just added a little bit more humanity.”
I’m only now getting results I’ve wanted
JUDE HUGHES
DUBLIN, YESTERDAY
STRUGGLES Jude had tough childhood