Her baby was ripped away by nuns and died at just 6 months... I’ve vowed to find her remains
A TIde of emotion sweeps over Annette McKay as she holds a cherished picture of her smiling mum Maggie O’Connor.
Aged 21, Maggie is beaming, a headscarf in her swept-back hair – a woman with her whole life ahead of her.
But Annette knows now that the smile masked a world of pain, heartache and injustice. For Maggie was one of thousands of young women who fell into the care of Irish Catholic nuns at a mother and baby home.
Unmarried mums were sheltered there – and parted from their babies.
Maggie had a daughter Mary, but they were quickly separated and the young mum was sent to another institution.
Mary died at just six months old and the news was delivered to Maggie by a nun who simply declared: “That child of your sin is dead. Leave the home.”
Annette and her family were stunned to learn of their secret sibling – revealed to them by Maggie in 1996, a full five decades later.
Maggie, then 70, was cradling newborn grandchild Joshua when she was suddenly overcome with tears.
Shaking with grief, she repeated: “It’s the baby. My baby who died.”
dIsCARded
Even when the story came out Annette had no idea of the scandal that would later be exposed.
In a damning report this month, it emerged 9,000 children died in the mother and baby homes over 80 years. Mary – born at Bon Secours home in Tuam, Galway – was one of them.
The remains of many youngsters were discarded in unmarked pits linked to a sewer system.
Annette, from Bury, Gtr Manchester, today tells Maggie’s heartrending story – and vows to do all she can to trace the remains of the sister she never knew.
She says: “I promised Mum then and again on her deathbed in 2016 that I would find Mary. It’s a pledge I will keep while I am alive and well.”
Maggie was born in the mid-1920s and raised on the rural west coast of Ireland. With her Hollywood good looks she was dubbed “the Elizabeth Taylor of Galway”.
But life took the first of a series of tragic turns when her mother died in 1936. Maggie was among eight children aged three to 16 who had to fend for themselves as their father worked away for months at a time.
Welfare services brought them before a court.
Maggie, at 12, was charged with being “found destitute” and was sent to a home.
It was the start of years of abuse by nuns.
Annette says: “As we grew up, Mum told us how she’d be beaten repeatedly for anything from not walking in a straight line to defending her sisters.
“To Mum’s dying day, nuns meant monsters. If she saw one when she was out, she would shake with fear and be rooted to the spot.”
Aged just 18, and in St Anne’s Industrial School, Galway, Maggie was raped by a male staff member and fell pregnant. The man was not prosecuted. Maggie was moved to the now infamous mother and baby home at Tuam. She gave birth to Mary Margaret O’Connor on December 7, 1942. Maggie was sent 30 miles away to a third institution, St Bridget’s Industrial School in Loughrea.
It meant she had just one fleeting memory of her child. After her secret was revealed to the family, Maggie had said: “She was so bonny and such a weight on my hip, oh she was bonny.” Mary died, according to her death certificate, on June 6, 1943 from cardiac failure after suffering whooping cough for two months.
The certificate recorded that Bina Rabbitte, the home’s cleaner, was present when Mary slipped away.
ejeCTed
Maggie was hanging washing out when the coldhearted nun gave her the tragic news of Mary’s death.
Ejected from the home, Maggie was literally cast out on to the streets.
She returned to Galway City briefly before moving to Belfast to work for shipbuilders Harland and Wolff.
She met Anthony Cawley, a comedian in working men’s clubs. They married in Ireland and moved to England, settling
WRONGED
PROUD GRAN Maggie had 31 grandkids and great-grandkids in Bury in 1952.
Anthony pursued his showbusiness career but with limited success.
He and Maggie had Annette, now
66, Sheila, 64, and
Lawrence, 68.
But the marriage fell apart and the pair divorced.
Maggie married a second time. With new husband Keith Heaton she had daughters Dawn, now 62, and Michelle, 60, and a son – also named Keith.
But tragedy would strike again when young Keith, who was epileptic, drowned
LIFE CUT SHORT
Annette wants to reunite Maggie with Mary
Mary was just six months when she succumbed. Maggie was told by a nun: ‘That child of your sin is dead’
in an accident at work. He was just 25. Despite the latter part of her life being filled with laughter and the arrival of 14 grandchildren and 17 great grandchildren, Maggie never got over the loss of her first born.
Now Annette is campaigning to uncover the truth behind her mother’s tragic story. She even says the lack of a grave offers the faintest of hopes that Mary could be alive.
But human remains have been found in the sewers below where the former Tuam home once stood. And if Mary’s are among them, Annette wants to reunite her with her mum.
She says: “There is a place for Mary’s remains in Mum’s grave, where she is buried with my dad and my brother at Bury Cemetery.
“My siblings and I feel bad we have not put Mum’s name on the stone, but
when we do we want Mary’s remains and name included, for Mum and her first born to be reunited once more.”
Annette is scathing of the judicial report into the heartbreaking mother and baby home scandal.
The Irish government acknowledged it exposed a “conspiracy of shame and silence and cruelty”.
Annette says: “The report is a whitewash, blaming it on ‘society’s fault’. At the very least, the State and Church are responsible for child neglect, at the worst for child trafficking and killing.
“The Government is trying to seal records for 30 years – till we all die. What are they scared of ? Tuam and other
homes were like concentration camps for children and mothers. They should be treated as crime scenes and be fully excavated. All remains should be DNA tested.
“The Church always told us to be truthful as we grew up – why isn’t it practising what it preaches?”
After her years of torment, Maggie never set foot inside a Catholic church again.
She developed Alzheimer’s in her 80s and died without ever knowing the full truth about her first born.
Annette is determined to get the answers – for her mum Maggie, for herself... and for the memory of little Mary.
We want to reunite her with Mum, put their names on one grave ANNETTE MCKAY ON BID TO FIND SISTER’S REMAINS