Giving the dead their due
LET us be clear: the horror of the burial pit in the mother and baby home in Tuam so brilliantly highlighted in this newspaper two weeks ago cannot be consigned to a ‘darker past’, but rather has ramifications for burial practices today by some religious and State bodies. The story which went from the front page of the Irish Mail on Sunday to grab headlines from Australia to America, eventually elicited a Government response this week with the establishment of an interdepartmental committee to investigate the burial of 796 children in an unmarked mass grave.
This story and, indeed, the phrase ‘mass grave’, reminded me of how I was the subject of a formal complaint 10 years ago by a religious order to the Broadcasting Authority of Ireland. We were covering the story of Maggie Bullen, who had lived in the care of the Sisters of Our Lady of Charity for 35 years until she died, aged 51, in 2003.
Maggie had worked in the order’s Magdalene laundries for more than three decades, during which she had two children, and died from Goodpasture Syndrome, associated with industrial-strength chemicals used in commercial laundries. Bizarrely, while her friend then living in America contacted Liveline to complain about the funeral and burial of Maggie, it was also the first time Maggie’s two daughters had heard of their mother’s premature demise. As you can imagine, this sparked a very heated debate about how ‘residents’ of mother and baby homes were treated, and it centred on the type of burial.
One caller claimed that Maggie Bullen was buried in a ‘mass grave’ run by the nuns in Glasnevin cemetery. The nuns – who refused to come on the programme – objected strongly to the use of the phrase, insisting that Maggie had received a proper burial, even though her family were unaware of their mother’s death and funeral.
On foot of this call, I visited Glasnevin the following day. Maggie Bullen is buried in a ‘communal’ grave owned by the order, just inside the main gates. It has one large cross in the centre, with the names of those interred in the space.
While Maggie Bullen’s name is on this list, there is no other information. It does not mention her date of birth or death, or indicate where her remains lie in the small grassed enclosure. And it does not refer to her life in any way.
It is unacceptable in this day and age for anyone who dies in state or institutional care to be buried in a ‘communal grave’, with no individual details or memorial. While there has been much wringing of hands since this story was exposed, there are still burial rites in force that should be changed immediately.
➤➤ APPRENTICE star and entrepreneur Jackie Lavin is dead right saying that some university courses could be easily cut by a year. There seems to be little supervision of the level and intensity of tuition third-level students get in their very short academic year. And students are afraid to complain to lecturers as their course results are often determined by these self-same academics.
➤➤ THE revelation this week that Sweny’s chemist, immortalised in Joyce’s Ulysses and now being used as a visitor centre, is in danger of closing because of high commercial rates, came on the day that I discovered something remarkable: Lionel Sweny, the 13-year-old-son of the owner, was shot and killed near the shop in 1916. Another reason to preserve the shop.