Dispatched to a notoriously cruel baby home to avoid being adopted by a Protestant in pagan England
Church and State robbed me of my chance to be brought up by a loving family, says Martina Kelly – still grieving today for the loss of her childhood
A WOMAN who was taken from England as an infant by the Catholic church so she wouldn’t be brought up as a Protestant is seeking redress from the Government.
Martina Kelly, who is now 62, was born to an Irish mother at St Pelagia’s Mother and Baby home in London and fostered by a ‘kind family’ there, who her birth mother knew.
However, correspondence subsequently obtained by Ms Kelly shows that two priests and an organisation called Catholic Protection and Rescue Society of Ireland (CPRSI) conspired to bring her back to Ireland when she was just a few months old.
She was placed in the notorious Bessborough Mother and Baby home in Cork and, from there, was adopted by a local Catholic family where she had an unhappy childhood. Ms Kelly, who has never told her story publicly before, says Church and State robbed her of a chance of being brought up in a loving family.
‘I can’t emphasise enough how wrong it was that they could dictate my life from that young age and
‘The fact she wanted to have me was ignored.’
everything that happened to me in my youth,’ she told the Irish Mail on Sunday.
The Commission of Investigation into Mother and Baby homes found the clergy made huge efforts to bring back ‘illegitimate’ children who had been born in England to Irish mothers.
The clergy imagined that they were saving their souls from ‘pagan England’.
Under the proposed terms of the redress scheme for Mother and Baby homes, Ms Kelly is entitled to nothing because she spent less than six months at the Bessborough home.
However, she maintains that neither she nor her mum had any say over what happened to her and she was in the care of Church and State. Now living in Castletownbere in West Cork, Ms Kelly is still receiving counselling to cope with the ‘anger’ and ‘sadness’ at how she was treated.
She explained that she only discovered she was born in England when she applied for a passport at the age of 19.
Since then, she has tried to piece together her story – always with great difficulty. Many of the records she obtained from Irish authorities were redacted and the introduction of new birth and tracing legislation in Ireland this year won’t change that.
‘Parts of my records will still be redacted,’ she says. ‘I still won’t have my full health records.
‘I don’t know about my health. It’s so important, as I was an epileptic as a child. It’s important for me, my three children and any grandchildren. I need to know and I have a right to know.’
Ms Kelly’s birth mother is still alive, but they are not in contact.
‘My mother was from up the country and very young and she ended up going to London when she got pregnant,’ says Ms Kelly
‘I was born there, in St Pelagia’s home for unmarried mothers in London, which was run by the
Congregation of the Sacred Hearts of Jesus and Mary.
‘I was fostered out to a “Mrs Hurrion”. I’m not sure how but she knew my mother. I think my mother wanted her to have me.
‘The fact that she really wanted me too was totally ignored.
‘I have letters from Father (James) Good who was attached to (Bessborough) home in Cork, asking the Catholic rescue there to send me back, to block this family from having me at all because they weren’t Catholic.
‘Father Good wrote to the priest in London and they arranged it.
‘So I was bundled up and someone brought me – I don’t know who – to Cork and I was put in the home to wait. Meanwhile my mother stayed in England.
‘I don’t know how long I was there. They put me with a family from Waterford and that’s where I grew up.’ Ms Kelly did not wish to give details of her adopted home, except to say it was an unhappy experience.
‘I had epilepsy and they were disappointed in that. I tried to hide it but of course I couldn’t.’
However, most of her anger is reserved for Church and State.
‘I think they should have left me where I was in England. They should not have interfered.’
Ms Kelly had raised her plight with the Minister for Children, Roderic O’Gorman, and local TDs, but to no satisfaction.
She told the MoS: ‘I just get standard responses. They haven’t listened to me really. But I’m not going to give up,’ she vowed.
The report of the Commission of Investigation into Mother and Baby Homes found that forced repatriation of mothers and babies from Ireland was common.
Chapter seven of the report states: ‘The number of pregnant unmarried Irish women who came into contact with British welfare services – both voluntary and public – was so great that they were commonly known by the initials, PFIs – Pregnant from Ireland.’
The report added that, in the 1920s a Canon Craven of the Crusade of Rescue (a UK Catholic charity for unmarried mothers), ‘adopted the issue of Irish unmarried mothers in Britain as a personal crusade the object of which was to force the Irish authorities and charities to assume primary responsibility for their citizens and flock’.
Canon Craven feared that the children would be adopted into nonCatholic homes, according to the report.
He is quoted as saying: ‘I can safely say that quite a large number of the applications I receive are from unmarried Irish mothers.
‘Certainly it is true that never a day passes without one or more applications either by letter or in person being made here at my office.
‘They are, however, a large number, which is certainly on the increase, who come here to England pregnant in order to get rid of their baby and hide their shame.
‘To me the saddest part of the whole business is that these girls are ready and even determined to abandon their children without any regard to their claim to the Catholic faith or any
‘I was bundled up and brought to the home.’
regard whatsoever to their future.’
However the annual report of the Catholic rescue agency noted in 1952 that Ireland’s ‘punitive’ mother and baby homes system
was in part responsible for so many unmarried mothers fleeing to the UK.
It read: ‘In no other country in the world has the unmarried mother to remain for two years in a Home
with her child. A few months is regarded as sufficient to allow the mother time to decide on the future of her child and is also believed to be adequate in helping her towards moral rehabilitation. Any longer period is regarded as punitive and it is becoming increasingly obvious that our girls will not submit themselves voluntarily to punitive treatment.’