Death cert’s tragic story of a short life at St Mary’s
IT IS the harrowing certificate that shows how 16-month-old John Desmond Dolan was described as being a ‘congenital idiot’ at the time of his death in St Mary’s Mother and Baby home.
John is one of the 796 children whose remains were left in a mass grave on the grounds of St Mary’s, which was run by the Sisters of Bon Secours.
Documents given to the Irish Mail on Sunday by the boy’s sister reveal how he had a healthy birth and weighed 8lbs 9oz when he was born at the Tuam home on February 22, 1946.
His mother Bridget Dolan, a farmer’s daughter from Clonfert, Co. Galway, gave birth to him in the presence of a woman known as Bina Rabbitte. There are no details given of his father.
Records from the home show how a health inspection was carried out in April 1947 by a man known as Mr Humphreys.
Despite being born a healthy baby, a year later John was described as a ‘miserable emaciated child with a voracious appetite and no control over his bodily functions’.
Doctors referred to John as ‘probably mental defective’.
That year there was an outbreak of measles in the home, which John contracted. He died on June 11, 1947. On his death cert it showed how Ms Rabbitte was again present at the time of John’s death. It is understood she had been born in the home and remained on, assisting the nuns with the children. John’s cause of death was recorded as ‘congential idiot and measles’.
His sister said: ‘He was born healthy and yet he died less than two years later. What is a congenital idiot? How could anyone call a child that?
‘He is on that death list and it’s terrible what happened to him. To think that report says he was a miserable 16month-old is heartbreaking.’
In the home, mothers looked after their own children. John’s mother Bridget was discharged from the home in the February before her son died after the nuns found her a job as a housekeeper.
Three years later she fell pregnant again and her second child, William Joseph, who was born at Galway University Hospital on May 21, 1950. He was born a healthy baby and there are no records of his having any illnesses. He is registered in the Tuam home as having died on February 3, 1951, yet there are no notes regarding cause of death and no records of his death among the national death registrations.
His sister has reported William Joseph missing to gardaí: ‘I don’t know where he is. I heard talk through his family that he was sent to America,’ she said.
And on Friday, the MoS has learned, the family made a formal requested to gardai that they find, exhume and return the body of John for a proper burial.