Respectfully submitted by Lawrence E. Rafferty (rafflaw)-Weekend Contributor
It is an agonizing story, and a book has been written about it and a movie was also recently made about it. The story I am referring to is the story of Philomena Lee who at the age of 19 gave birth to a baby boy, out-of-wedlock, at the Sean Ross Abbey in County Tipperary, in Ireland. If you are unfamiliar with the story, Philomena became pregnant out-of-wedlock after being raised in a convent after her mother died at the age of 6. Her father kept 3 boys at home and put Philomena and her two sisters in the convent because he was unable to care of all of them.
After she left the convent at age 18, she became pregnant and was sent to the Sean Ross Abbey where her son was born and three years later, was adopted and moved to America. If you have seen the movie or read the book you know what happened to her son, who she never saw alive again. But the story of Philomena is not the main focus of this article. Philomena was one of thousands of Irish women who were forced by religious beliefs and societal pressures to hide their “sin”. However, what happened to some of the children who did not get adopted?
If the idea of watching your 3-year-old son being driven away from you is not horrifying enough, a recent disclosure out of Ireland exemplifies what happened to many of the children born out-of-wedlock and forced to live in these religious orders homes. “The Catholic Church in Ireland is facing fresh accusations of child abuse after a researcher found records for 796 young children allegedly buried in a mass grave beside a former orphanage for the children of unwed mothers.
The researcher, Catherine Corless, says her discovery of child death records at the Catholic nun-run home in Tuam, County Galway, suggests that the former septic tank filled with bones is the final resting place for most, if not all, of the children” Reader Supported News Evidence indicates that the septic tank was renovated to be used as a burial crypt.
We have to remember that this sad find was uncovered by a researcher and not disclosed by the Irish Catholic Church or officials from the religious order that ran the home. It is also important to note that this is just one of the many church run mother-child homes run in Ireland.
The Church or the religious orders that ran these institutions were considered the place of last resort for these women who, in most cases, were too poor to go elsewhere or to buy themselves out of the arrangement. Unfortunately, the homes were not maintained just for charitable reasons. It seems that the homes were paid by the government for each mother and each child being taken care of and then there were the adoption “fees”.
“Such was the power of the church, and of Archbishop John Charles McQuaid, that the state bowed before its demands, ceding responsibility for the mothers and babies to the nuns. For them it was not only a matter of sin and morality, but one of pounds, shillings and pence. At the time young Anthony Lee was born, I discovered that the Irish government was paying the Catholic church a pound a week for every woman in its care, and two shillings and sixpence for every baby. And that was not all.
After giving birth, the girls were allowed to leave the convent only if they or their family could pay the nuns £100. It was a substantial sum, and those who couldn’t afford it – the vast majority – were kept in the convent for three years, working in kitchens, greenhouses and laundries or making rosary beads and religious artefacts, while the church kept the profits from their labour. ” The Guardian
The women and their children were money makers for the religious orders and the Church. The adoption fees at the time were reported to be in the range of $2000-$3000 dollars which during those days was a large amount of money. I wish I could say that this was the end of a horrible story. However, if the above abuses were not enough, it has now been reported that at various mother child homes, secret and illegal drug testing was done on the children in residence there!
“Michael Dwyer, of Cork University’s School of History, found the child vaccination data by trawling through tens of thousands of medical journal articles and archive files. He discovered that the trials were carried out before the vaccine was made available for commercial use in the UK.
Homes where children were secretly tested included Bessborough, in Co. Cork and Sean Ross Abbey in Roscrea, Co. Tipperary, both of which are at the centre of the mass baby graves scandal. Other institutions where children may also have been vaccinated include Cork orphanages St Joseph’s Industrial School for Boys, run by the Presentation Brothers, and St Finbarr’s Industrial School for Girls, run by the Sisters of the Good Shepherd.
In Dublin, it is believed that children for the trials came from St Vincent’s Industrial School, Goldenbridge, St Joseph’s School for Deaf Boys, Cabra, and St Saviours’s Dominican Orphanage. But Mr Dwyer said: ‘What I have found is just the tip of a very large and submerged iceberg.
‘The fact that no record of these trials can be found in the files relating to the Department of Local Government and Public Health, the Municipal Health Reports relating to Cork and Dublin, or the Wellcome Archives in London, suggests that vaccine trials would not have been acceptable to government, municipal authorities, or the general public.
‘However, the fact that reports of these trials were published in the most prestigious medical journals suggests that this type of human experimentation was largely accepted by medical practitioners and facilitated by authorities in charge of children’s residential institutions.'” Reader Supported News
I realize that when all of these alleged travesties occurred the world was a different place for women and their babies born out-of-wedlock. However, why did it take researchers, through countless hours of research and the living victims of these mother child homes going public to uncover the truth?
I would assume that one of the questions the current Irish government will be asking is if these secret vaccination tests resulted in payments to these very same religious orders and the Irish Catholic Church.
I would think the Catholic Church of Ireland would have been doing its own research to try to get to the bottom of its seamy and relatively recent history. I wonder why not?
When Philomena Lee’s son returned to Sean Ross Abbey in the late 1990’s and suffering from an illness that would soon take his life, he pleaded with the Sisters at Sean Ross Abbey to tell him who his birth mother was and to help him find her, they rejected his plea. Maybe he didn’t offer enough money?
Philomena Lee has been able to forgive all of those who hid the truth from her and her son. I admire her ability to forgive, but at the same time, I don’t know how anyone could forgive these transgressions that went on for decades. And how many other mothers like Philomena and their sons and daughters are still searching? Shameful.
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And THAT is why women in labor create inventive new obscenities to call their husbands, who are out having a fine time celebrating! 🙂
I am not sure where you got your nursing degree, but nurses did not offer gas to anyone unless they were a doctor.
Paul, And then our old men smoked and passed out cigars.
Nick – I had forgotten the tradition of handing out cigars.
Karen – during my father’s time they were NOT allowed in the delivery room. This is when children were not allowed in hospitals unless they were sick. They could not visit anyone.
Hi Annie:
So you were not referring to my and Feynman’s comments about Twilight Sleep, and yet you said, “The women are far from unconscious.”
My mom didn’t get strapped down because my dad was there.
Are you trying to say the Twilight Sleep did not cause thrashing?
My point being that what passed for acceptable in the medical community has evolved quite drastically.
Also Karen, even in completely natural childbirth in 1972 and 1973 when I had my first two children, women’s hands were strapped onto a handle on the delivery table and legs put up in stirrups. Also an episiotomy was routinely done with absolutely no pain meds. Things weren’t that much better by having natural childbirth until years later, when women could labor and deliver in the same bed, episiotomies weren’t routinely done and with the blessed advent of epidurals.
Annie – I cannot speak to your birthing conditions, but my mother had an epidural with all deliveries starting in 1943. My father went to the bar and got drunk.
raff ~
I like the ending of that Gandhi quote as well “…Your Christians are so unlike your Christ.”
Thanks for sharing a bit of wisdom.
That is correct Karen. I didn’t refer to Feynman’s comment whatsoever. Nitrous oxide was used since 1881, scopolamine and morphine wasn’t used until 1902.
So . . . when feynman said I didn’t know what I was talking about in regards to Twilight Sleep, and you chimed in that that gas and air have been used, you were NOT actually commenting on Twilight Sleep? Thanks for clearing that up.
http://books.google.com/books?id=l3cBqRVXz0YC&pg=PA46&lpg=PA46&dq=twilight+sleep+childbirth+in+the+US+hallucinations&source=bl&ots=uMRUauaHkM&sig=_0VhUXX62UQX7wV8VMFgqRqHnfU&hl=en&sa=X&ei=XlSWU_y6IcmZyASnuYHoDw&ved=0CDAQ6AEwAg#v=onepage&q&f=false
“Women in Twilight Sleep would become out of control, hallucinating, screaming themselves hoarse, and thrashing so much they hurt themselves or the hospital staff if they weren’t physically restrained.”
My mom insisted on seeing the delivery ward. What she saw there scared her so badly that she would insisted on a natural childbirth, with my father there to ensure nothing like that was done to her.
http://www.slate.com/articles/double_x/doublex/2014/01/laughing_gas_for_labor_could_nitrous_oxide_be_the_next_big_thing_in_american.html
Excuse me Karen? I didn’t speak of Twighlight sleep AT ALL, I mentioned GAS. I didn’t say that Scoplomine wasn’t ALSO used, nor did I say I agreed with any sort of twighlight sleep in labor. Scoplomine wasn’t always used with gas and from what I recall the use of Scoplomine started until years after gas was used.
I’m kind of surprised that a nurse has no idea what the original Twilight Sleep was, considering it persisted until the 1970s.
http://blog.ctnews.com/elwood/2009/09/29/going-back-in-time-twilight-sleep/
As no one seems to actually research anymore:
http://www.supportedbirth.com/articles/twilight-sleep-childbirth-history
The Twilight Sleep was scopolamine and morphine. I suppose any sedation can be called “Twilight Sleep,” but it is not the original, obviously.
Here is a quote: “While the 1914 lay press raved about Twilight Sleep, the medical literature continued to report the problems – asphyxia, agitation, inhuman suffering of women, morphine-slowed contractions, headaches, thirst, uncontrollable delirium requiring restraints or straitjackets. Some hospitals tried it after its introduction and abandoned it within months. Women kept insisting on it. Champions of Twilight Sleep insisted that the side effects stemmed from incompetence. The popular press excluded details of violent kicking, thrashing, screaming, restraints, caged animal behavior, depressed newborns.”
So unless the historical literature, and my own parents, are liars, you are not referring to the original Twilight Sleep.
“Gas and air”, nitrous oxide and oxygen is used in GB on laboring mothers. It was used back in the 1800’s also. It seems to give the laboring mom’s some relief and we may be seeing it used here in this country in the future. Watch the BBC reality shows “The Midwives” and “One Born Every Minute” on YouTube . The women are far from unconscious. I had four children completely naturally with absolutely no pain relief, looking back, I would’ve been happy to have some gas and air. To deny these young women any pain relief was cruel, if it was their choice that’s a different story.
Twilight sleep is commonly used in many medical and dental procedures today. It most certainly is not ‘chilling stuff’. I’ve had it for a couple of procedures and several members of my family have had it – no hallucinations, no fear, no acting like animals and able to go home in an hour.
Some crazy stories around here.
Paulette:
My mother was the first person to have a natural childbirth, with her husband present, at the military hospital where I was born.
Why did she want to go natural? She toured the hospital, and saw restraints on the delivery table. She heard inhuman screams. She discovered that the “anesthesia” used was The Twilight Sleep. It was an amnesiac. The patient was still conscious but heavily drugged, which could cause hallucinations, and great fear. They acted like animals during the delivery. Later, they held their beautiful baby in their arms, with no memory of it at all. They said how lovely it was not to go through the pain of child birth, but for some reason, the “anesthesia” always gave them a sore throat.
This was the main reason why fathers were forbidden from being in the room. Because I seriously doubt they would just stand there. A while ago, I GOOGLED video of The Twilight Sleep. Chilling stuff. And, in line with this thread, it is chilling what was considered acceptable by the medical community.
They tried to forbid my father from attending, but they were adamant that if he couldn’t be present, they were having a home birth. My mom got her way.
Unless you are having a C Section, it is my understanding that you cannot deliver a baby unconscious.
My father made an audio recording of my birth as a keepsake. There was no screaming. It was beautiful.
Mike A – I’m sorry for what your family went through. It was not only the Catholic Church that took that view. That was the social more. Girls were sent away. Terms of illegitimacy were true curse words. Even divorce was rare and carried stigma. Society was just not as accepting as it is today.
Just to clarify, the movie Philomena was based on the epilogue to the book. It is based on a true story, but the script writer took great artistic license to tell the story. It is not a documentary. But there were tragic abuses that happened.
http://filmschoolrejects.com/features/interview-steve-coogan-talks-nonfiction.php
SierraRose – so the children died of diseases, and not from abuse, as in the FL case?
It is true that diseases swept through crowded areas with poor hygiene, such as cities and institutions.
The forceful separation of children from their mothers, and the experimentation, are both shameful, though, and grim reminders of a different time.
Paul – so tragic about the Tuskagee experiment. Since the mean thought they had received treatment, that meant they could infect others. Betrayal.