Proposal to include Bethany Home within the remit of Senator Martin McAleese’s investigation of state interactions with Magdalene institutions more

1 Niall Meehan (Griffith College Dublin) and Joe Costello TD Meeting with Minister Kathleen Lynch TD, Leinster House, 14 July 2011 (NOTE: Derek Leinster, Chairperson of the Bethany Survivors’ Group, was unable to attend as he enters hospital today, 14 July 2010) Proposal to include Bethany Home within the remit of Senator Martin McAleese’s investigation of state interactions with Magdalene institutions See also, Church & State and the Bethany Home, expanded web version, History Ireland, September-October 2010, and The State and the Bethany Home, submitted to Minister for Education and officials, 24 May 2011. Since 1917, according to Mary Raftery (writing in the Irish Times, 4 Nov 2004), ‘Protestant children in need of care’ were ‘essentially dealt with by private institutions’. She suggested that the state’s attitude was one of ‘hands-off’. Indeed, in the 1937 Cussen report on the ‘Reformatory and Industrial School System’ and the 1970 Kennedy report on the same subject and again in the 2009 Ryan Commission report on institutional child abuse, it is stated that problematic Protestants were dispersed by the Courts among Protestant clergy who were expected to deal with matters privately. Hence, there is a large gap in official knowledge as a result of implementing a sectarian welfare and detention system, albeit one in which the dominant confessional community was regulated more so than its smaller Christian counterpart. This practice had no statutory basis but statute law was used to enforce it, often against the stated intent of the law. Research into Bethany Home indicates that this is one reason for neglect and death in the Bethany Home. Official records explain why officials decided not to interfere when confronted with evidence of unusually high child mortality and medical neglect in the Bethany Home. We mainly summarise them here. Direct State involvement Bethany was a place of detention for women convicted of crimes from the trivial to the most serious. There appears to be no statutory basis for the directing of offending Protestant females into the Bethany home until 1945, but then only in the case of female Protestant children and teenagers. Incarceration of women generally in the Bethany Home was, however, an official practice. Here are some examples. 2 In 1924 two ‘English girls’ aged 17 and 18, convicted of obtaining goods by false pretences from Arnott’s department store, Mrs Geldoff of the Belgian Café, and from Mrs Pello of Leeson Street, were, ‘sent to Bethany home…. until Miss Gargan, probation officer, decided they might leave, the period not to exceed twelve months.’ The state has argued in the Magdalene case that these were voluntary arrangements. However, a choice of religiously or secularly based detention is not a voluntary ‘choice’ in a real sense. Clearly also the reported intervention of a probation officer indicates that the state supervised the length of detention and that Bethany formed part of the apparatus of incarceration within the state. This can be demonstrated further since one of the ‘English girls’ reported above was returned to court, ‘charged with breaking her probation bond by refusing to remain in Bethany Home, where she had been ordered... Detective Officer Jas Quinn asked for a remand, which was granted.’1 In 1927 the Home stated that in the previous year, ‘five prison cases, four midnight mission and four temporary cases had received attention.’2 In August 1930 the Managing Committee, ‘decided to place on record the undesirability of employing in the Home any girl admitted as a maternity or prison case,’ after an employee had been given one month’s notice.3 In Bray District Court in February 1931 a domestic servant, Elizabeth Mary Walker from Wexford, ‘was ordered to enter the Bethany Home for six months,’ after claiming to be part of the Norwegian consulate during a week’s unpaid stay in a Bray Co Wicklow hotel.4 In 1944 The Discharged Protestant Prisoners’ Aid Society donated £5 to Bethany, £1/10s of which was used ‘in taking Martha Hegarty’s child to her grandmother,’ presumably a prisoner’s daughter.5 In a society that stigmatised pregnancy out of wedlock many offences were both serious and tragic. In 1926 it was reported that a Bessie Dunleary, ‘pleaded guilty in the Central Criminal Court to concealment of birth… Accused was bound to the peace for two years with an undertaking that she should remain in a home, was given to the care of the Bethany Home.’6 Professor James Smith’s Ireland’s Magdalene Laundries and the Nation’s Architecture of Containment (2007) noted four instances in 1929, 1930, 1937 and 1945 where the courts sent Protestant women charged with murder or birth concealment, and convicted of infanticide or manslaughter, to the Bethany Home.7 Undoubtedly, there are more examples awaiting discovery. It would appear that children were referred also. In September 1947 the home asked the Minister for Justice to explain why a criminal court sent a child there. While the question was not answered, the Minister reportedly replied, ‘his department had not funds for the purpose of this case.’8 1 2 IT, Irish Independent, 20 Sep 1924; Irish Independent, 12 Nov 1924. IT, 10 Feb 1927. 3 Managing Committee, minute, 8 Aug 1930. 4 IT, 21 Feb 1931 5 Bethany Management Committee Minutes (MCM), 12 May 1944. 6 Irish Independent, 6 Nov 1926. 7 James Smith, Ireland’s Magdalene Laundries and the Nation’s Architecture of Containment, 2007, p.195. 8 MCM, 12 Sep, 10 Oct, 14 Nov, 12 Dec 1947, 9 Jan 1948. 3 We now know, as a result of information divulged by the Department of Justice in 2010 that in 1945 the state, in discussion with the Archbishop of Dublin Dr Barton, decided to designate Bethany Home as a place of detention for offending protestant children and teenagers. It is clear from Bethany minutes that the home was not consulted and was not funded for this purpose. A privately published Bethany memoir in the 1950s by former Bethany matron Lily Pilgrim refers to ‘prison cases… admitted for terms arranged by the court’. In 1965, in the last known report, the Matron, Mrs K.F. Glover, reported that one resident ‘was on prison remand and others were there for rehabilitation or moral help.’9 This activity links the home to the Roman Catholic Magdalene laundries, many of whose inmates were also court referrals.10 Bethany was, therefore, in addition to a maternity home, also a semi official prison where rehabilitation consisted of religious instruction in evangelical Protestant doctrine. In January 1935 the Residential Secretary Miss Hettie Walker proposed and formulated a compulsory ‘doctrinal’ pledge ‘for all new [Committee] members’. Passed at the next meeting, it stated: ‘Belief in the supreme and sole authority and sufficiency of the Scriptures of the old and new Testaments as the rule of faith and practice; the unity of the Father the Son and the Holy Spirit in the Godhead; the utter depravity of human nature in consequence of the fall: the forgiveness of sins only through faith in Christ’s obedience unto death, even the death of the cross; the necessity of the direct influence of the Holy Spirit to impart and sustain spiritual life; the immortality of the soul; the eternal blessedness of the righteous, and the eternal punishment of the wicked.’11 The pledge came in with the resignation from the Managing Committee of Rev’d Thomas Chatterton (TC) Hammond, prior to his departure to take op the post of Head of Moore Theological College, Australia. As former Dublin and General superintendent of the Irish Church Missions to the Romans Catholics Hammond represented the evangelical wing of the Church of Ireland, which was the pre-dominant influence in the home at that time. Residents were subject to religious instruction on this basis from staff who were required to be missionary evangelists and were banned from marrying Roman Catholics (one who became engaged to one was sacked). This is documented in Bethany Home minutes. In September 1936, a year in which more children died than in any other, staff were asked to account for ‘spiritual blessings’ among the ‘girls’. Record child mortality in 1936 was not discussed. In 1933 it was announced publicly (Irish Times, 16 Feb 1933) at Bethany’s AGM that its ‘great aim, and only aim… was to bring sinners back to Christ’. Criminalistion of birth State practice with regard to sending convicted persons to the Bethany Home is in line with confessional and sectarian aspects of welfare and prison policies. While the vast majority of institutions were Roman Catholic, given the demographic weight of that community, Protestants were expected to provide parallel institutions for those transgressing both state and moral laws. These were provided willingly as there was no difference in dominant social attitudes between Roman Catholic, Protestant and state institutions. Indeed Protestant, mainly Church of Ireland, 9 IT, 29 Apr 1965. See Smith (2007), op cit. 11 Ibid, 11 Jan, 23 Feb 1935 10 4 institutions initiated this process in the 19th Century, followed by competing Roman Catholic institutions and organisations. The effective criminalisation of something that was not illegal, childbirth out of marriage, was therefore also catered for by the Bethany Home and in turn regulated in a sectarian manner by the state. Clergy in the Church of Ireland and within other Protestant denominations referred Protestant women who became pregnant out of wedlock to Bethany Home. Women convicted of the crime of infanticide who were sent to Bethany Home were expected to interact with women whose ‘crime’ was that they had a child out of wedlock, and vice versa. It was a policy priority of the state to regulate the sectarian division between Roman Catholic and Protestant institutions. While not stated in legislation it was effected within the regulatory framework set up by legislation. This can be demonstrated without difficulty. Bethany Home experienced turmoil in the 1930s and early 1940s, as a result of death and neglect being brought to official attention after the passing of the Regulation of Maternity Homes Act in 1934. Record numbers of children died in Bethany between 1935-39, who were discovered (in 2010) to have been buried in unmarked graves in Mount Jerome cemetery. Over a third of the 219 unmarked graves discovered for the period 1922-49 originated in this period. Failure to deal with this problem defined the limitations of separate Roman Catholic and Protestant welfare provision within the 26 County state and also the limits generally of privatised social service provision based on conservative religious precepts. It also indicates a failure by the state to regulate according to statute. Instead sectarian regulation was the preferred method. In January 1939 specific criticism of Bethany’s standards of care was reported from within the Department Local Government and Public Health. In August 1939 public criticism of Bethany was raised at a meeting of the Rathdown Board of Guardians and published in the Irish Times and Independent. The Board of Guardians asked the Minister to report back to them on very ill children who required hospitalization. Bethany’s Roman Catholic competitors, who alleged proselytism on Bethany’s part, physically removed children from the home. Extremely ill Bethany children were not hospitalized. We know this because very ill children died there and not in hospital. The then Deputy Chief Medical Adviser, Winslow Sterling Berry, entered Bethany once in February and twice in October 1939 as a result of this internally and externally voiced criticism. The evidence shows that he engaged in a sectarian damage-limitation exercise. In Monaghan in January 1939 a statutory inspection of boarded out Bethany children revealed that four were with one nurse mother and with another who had three with dirty clothes that were left unwashed ‘for weeks.’ The inspector commented, ‘there was no cause for this neglect as the foster parent receives 15/- per week for these children. I would like to have these children removed to a more suitable foster home.’ In another case, a ‘baby appeared to be in a very low condition. It was dirty and neglected and sore and inflamed from a filthy napkin which cannot have been changed for a very long time.’ A draft of this report, later amended, stated that the child was in a ‘dying condition.’ The inspector noted, pointedly, in the official version, ‘As I knew the baby was suffering I had the Dispensary Doctor telephoned to ask him to call to see the child. The foster mother, Mrs Humphries, who has had nurse children under the Children’s Act 1908-34, knows the law and failed to register the child. The 5 Board of Assistance should be asked to deal drastically with the woman and to prosecute.’12 The inspector also called for these nurse children to be removed. Part of the omitted section of this report stated, ‘I was informed by the sergeant of the Civic Guards that they had received unfavourable reports of [Nurse Mother name deleted] before.’ Another child from the Bethany Home, ‘died within one month of being sent to her. I consider that the authorities of the Bethany Home were [indecipherable] culpable to send child in the condition of health.’ The inspector reported in the official version that this child should have been hospitalised.13 In February 1939 in his first of three visits that year to Bethany Home Winslow Sterling Berry dismissed criticism from this inspector. He stated that the very ill child required ‘country air’ and was ‘delicate’, a recurring phrase. In October, after the reported August meeting of the Rathdown Board of Guardians, Sterling Berry entered Bethany twice. He wrote in relation to criticism of standards of care in Bethany, ‘it is well recognised that a large number of illegitimate children are delicate’. Sterling Berry (the son of the Bishop of Killaloe) then went on to assert that Bethany’s problem was that it was an ‘objectionable’ proselytising institution and that he proposed, as Deputy Chief Medical Adviser, to end the practice of attempting to convert Roman Catholics by banning their admittance. On his third and final visit in late October 1939 Sterling Berry reported being present at the special meeting he initiated, where it was agreed to cease admitting Roman Catholics. In the sectarian welfare system the Deputy Chief Medical Advisor regulated sectarianism but not welfare. The Irish state must address the Deputy Chief Medical Advisor’s use of his statutory power in this manner in 1939. Our conclusion, which the evidence shows to be irrefutable, is that in southern Ireland’s sectarian welfare system state officials were concerned to regulate sectarianism but not welfare. Leveling the playing field in this way gave prejudiced officials an easier life. It also fatally compromised the inspection regime in Bethany. Children continued to die and to become ill in significant numbers. Over two thirds of the 219 unmarked graves originated in the 10 year 1935-44 period. This needless slaughter ended when Bethany was given a Maternity grant in 1949, something promised to Bethany management by Sterling Berry in 1940, after the Catholic ban. Indeed, in what surely must be the supreme irony, the immediate effect of the ban on admittance of Roman Catholics caused the High Court in January 1940 to reverse a decision to award Bethany Home the proceeds of a recently defunct women’s shelter. The court decided, purely as a result of the Roman Catholic Ban, that Bethany was now a ‘sectarian’ institution and could no longer benefit from the winding up of the shelter (Irish Independent, 23 Jan 1940). 12 Muineachan (Monaghan), 21 Feb 1939, P. Inspector’s report on boarded out children, P.393/39(ab), report on 13 Jan 1939, copy in author’s possession. 13 Draft inspection report, with “omit” indicated against cited text, signature appended, “[indecipherable] Kennedy O’Byrne”, copy in author’s possession. 6 Sterling Berry’s exercise in prejudice was as illegal in 1939 as it is today. What should have happened? On one other documented occasion a senior medical adviser entered a mother and babies home. Newly appointed (in 1944) Chief Medical Adviser James Deeny visited Bessbrook, Cork, arising from reports of unusually high mortality. Just as Sterling Berry said of Bethany, Bessbrook seemed ‘clean’ and ‘well run’. However, unlike his deputy, Deeny physically examined a number of children. He found them to be suffering from a range of preventable conditions causing the unnecessarily high mortality. According to Deeny, ‘The deaths had been going on for years. They had done nothing about it’. He, ‘closed the place down and sacked the Matron, a nun, and also got rid of the medical officer’. Had Sterling Berry in 1939 been less fixated on private denominational matters that were none of his statutory business, and more concerned with his statutory responsibility for public welfare, children’s lives might have been saved. Sterling Berry soon retired, while Deeny authored Mother and Child legislation that Noel Browne failed to have enacted in 1950-51 in an attempt to initiate a secular non-means tested welfare system. Protestant and Roman Catholic Doctors (and the Church of Ireland Gazette) portrayed it as ‘communist’ interference in the family. The Roman Catholic Church weighed in, condemned and effectively killed the legislation for similar reasons. Dysfunctional religiously and privately run welfare on the cheap continued. Raftery's conclusion from her analysis in 2004 bears repetition, ‘The fact that the Government uses its past neglect of this section of the community to argue that it now has no responsibility to even hear their case for redress is shameful and unjust. The number of children in this category was always small. However, the abuse some of them suffered was no less real or damaging than that of their Catholic counterparts.’ In his recent letter to Deputy Joe Costello TD, the Minister for Education, Ruairi Quinn TD, rejected the view that Bethany Home was excluded from the schedule to the Redress Act ‘for religious grounds’. However, originally in 2002 when the Act came into force no institution with a Protestant ethos was included in the Schedule to the Redress Scheme. In 2004 Mary Raftery pointed out that the 2002 Redress scheme also originally excluded mother and baby homes like Bethany. However, one of the State’s largest, St Patrick’s, was one of 13 institutions added in 2004. As it was Roman Catholic, Raftery continued, with a specific reference to Bethany Home, ‘Consequently, the exclusion of similar Protestant institutions does indeed begin to appear worryingly sectarian’. Raftery went on: ‘A further Church of Ireland institution excluded is the former Smyly's Boys' Home... A number of ex-residents have alleged that they were severely abused there as children... this group feels that it has been sidelined because of its religion.’ As a result of this and of complaints made by former Bethany resident Derek Leinster, Smiley's was then included. Also included was the Protestant run Miss Carr’s home, said to have been one of the best run children's homes in the state. One puzzled former resident of Miss Carr’s home (interviewed by Niall Meehan) discarded his Redress Scheme invitation to apply for compensation. Yet Bethany Home, from which hundreds were sent to unmarked graves, and in which many 7 suffered the onset of serious illness that lasted a lifetime, was still not included. To paraphrase James Deeny, it had been going on for years and still nothing was done about it. Just as with the Magdalene institutions, the state argues that women referred to Bethany by the courts from 1924 to 1965, entered there voluntarily. Leaving that spurious argument aside, the point is that the state had regulatory duty of care that it abandoned in favour of sectarian regulation. It abandoned it in an institution where it was deemed acceptable to lock up women charged with infanticide and petty crime with unmarried mothers and their abandoned and then neglected offspring. As a consequence children suffered gravely (in every sense of that term) and, if lucky enough to survive, were sent to other institutions inside or (illegally) outside the state or to dysfunctional families chosen solely on the basis of religious criteria. The state was aware of the illegal export of children, even to unsuitable institutions in Britain, but did nothing to stop it. One positive outcome of the process to be engaged in by Senator McAleese would be to find out how many children were sent to Barnardo’s and to Fegans Homes in the UK, as well as to other institutions outside the state. Examples of emotional, physical and sexual abuse of Bethany children have been brought to our attention. Some Bethany children had happy and fulfilled lives after the passing of the Adoption Act in 1952 and the regulation of adoption practices. Many did not, due to regulation of the Bethany Home that was as sectarian as was the institution itself. Prior to the passing of the 1952 Adoption Act, former Bethany residents report a universal practice of being disinherited by ‘parents’, of changing of names, of non possession of birth certificates and, generally, of being used as servants. Some had much worse experiences in dysfunctional families. Approximately 25 former residents have made contact with the Bethany Survivors’ Group. Almost all are frail elderly men and women. The state’s washing of its hands of its current responsibility to the victim survivors of Bethany Home is discriminatory, especially given the decision to ask Senator Martin McAleese to examine state interactions with Roman Catholic Magdalene institutions. Bethany survivors would like to be included in this process. They would like to be made feel part of Irish society and not apart from it. They would like the stigma of illegitimacy to be finally lifted by being included in and not continually excluded out.