BS: 'Ireland's Lost Babies' BBC2

Subject: BS: 'Ireland's Lost Babies' BBC2
From: Rog Peek
Date: 17 Sep 14 - 03:52 PM

Journalist Martin Sixsmith hears the moving stories of the parents and children involved in a transatlantic adoption run by the Irish Catholic Church during the 1950 and 60s.

BBC2 21.00 - 22.00 tonight.

Short notice I know, but just spotted it.

Rog

Subject: RE: BS: 'Ireland's Lost Babies' BBC2
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 17 Sep 14 - 06:07 PM

That programme enraged me and saddened me beyond recall. The Catholic Church is one of the most evil and inhumane institutions ever spawned by this planet. To think that much of the atrocity described in that programme happened on the watch of Pius XII, who is currently being considered for sainthood fer chrissake. I would dearly like to hear a good few Catholic voices being, just for a change, a little less pusillanimous than usual on this. I won't be holding my breath. Why would anyone wish to remain a member of that benighted church?

Subject: RE: BS: 'Ireland's Lost Babies' BBC2
From: GUEST,Sapper in Broadholme Loop at stupid o'clock
Date: 18 Sep 14 - 01:16 AM

Steve, the Catholic Church can be a force for good, but sadly has been used as a force for gaining political power, especially in Ireland.

Subject: RE: BS: 'Ireland's Lost Babies' BBC2
From: GUEST,leeneia
Date: 18 Sep 14 - 10:25 AM

You need to start at the beginning. Ask why the Irish would give away their own children.

Subject: RE: BS: 'Ireland's Lost Babies' BBC2
From: GUEST,Peter Laban
Date: 18 Sep 14 - 10:41 AM

Because the church told them of the immense shame of having a child out of wedlock and then took the children off them? Giving away doesn't quite cover it.

Subject: RE: BS: 'Ireland's Lost Babies' BBC2
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 18 Sep 14 - 04:36 PM

Leeneia, do watch the programme if you can. Reflect on the almost unlimited power and controlling authority of the Church in Ireland over who, in many cases (and patronising definitely not intended here), were poorly-educated and vulnerable young women before you rush to somewhat facile conclusions about children being "given away".

Subject: RE: BS: 'Ireland's Lost Babies' BBC2
From: Rog Peek
Date: 18 Sep 14 - 05:17 PM

Clearly, the young women whose children were TAKEN were given absolutely no choice whatsoever.

Rog

Subject: RE: BS: 'Ireland's Lost Babies' BBC2
From: GUEST,MG
Date: 18 Sep 14 - 06:26 PM

I have two songs that refer to this so pm me if you want the words. standard irish/english tunes.

Subject: RE: BS: 'Ireland's Lost Babies' BBC2
From: JennieG
Date: 18 Sep 14 - 06:30 PM

The movie 'Philomena' tells the story of one woman and her child affected by these forced removals and adoptions. Times were different then, and the shame of a young woman having a child out of wedlock is something many people can't understand, these days.

Subject: RE: BS: 'Ireland's Lost Babies' BBC2
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 18 Sep 14 - 08:06 PM

"Times were different" just a few short years after when Jimmy Savile was doing his worst. Doesn't seem so long ago to me.

Subject: RE: BS: 'Ireland's Lost Babies' BBC2
From: Thompson
Date: 19 Sep 14 - 06:42 AM

Quite amazing to me that none of these nuns have faced prosecution.

Subject: RE: BS: 'Ireland's Lost Babies' BBC2
From: GUEST,Peter Laban
Date: 19 Sep 14 - 06:51 AM

RTE aired this last night, some heart breaking stories although maybe they didn't add much to what was already known about the situation.

It's on the RTE player but with the caveat I don't know how the access from outside the country is Ireland's Lost Babies

Subject: RE: BS: 'Ireland's Lost Babies' BBC2
From: GUEST,Peter Laban
Date: 19 Sep 14 - 08:02 AM

The church was shipping out babies for adoption in exchange for 'donations'. Civil servants issued special passports to enable this trade. This is not a matter of a few isolated cases at the hands of a few rogue nuns, it was established and systematic.

Subject: RE: BS: 'Ireland's Lost Babies' BBC2
From: GUEST,Peter Laban
Date: 19 Sep 14 - 10:03 AM

My last post there was in response to Stilly River Sage who asked if the church was aware of what was going on, and what about the children born to nuns in convents?. She then deleted her own post and left my reply dangling there. Weird.

Subject: RE: BS: 'Ireland's Lost Babies' BBC2
From: mg
Date: 19 Sep 14 - 12:00 PM

Apparently there was a crude mail order system.

Subject: RE: BS: 'Ireland's Lost Babies' BBC2
From: Stilly River Sage
Date: 19 Sep 14 - 01:08 PM

You were responding to the troll. I never post as a guest. Other than speaking to that remark, your observation seemed to be what the thread is more or less about, so I left it.

Subject: RE: BS: 'Ireland's Lost Babies' BBC2
From: Thompson
Date: 19 Sep 14 - 03:19 PM

I've honestly never heard of babies born to nuns in convents, or of priests and nuns having sex. It would be pretty astonishing if neither ever happened, but they're not part of the consciousness of Ireland, so I don't think they can have been common.
However, I did hear of a priest who brought up three babies that were left on his doorstep - all girls. He was a motherly man, and the parish and his superiors simply ignored the whole thing. He seems to have done a pretty creditable job. The three grew up and left, and he was all lonely in the presbytery by himself, then one after another they came back with their babies - marriages having broken up or whatever - and he delightedly tied on his frilly pink apron again and took to his grandmotherly duties, and they all continued to live in the parish house, again with no one paying a blind bit of attention.
He must have been a truly exceptional pastor for his parishioners to have valued him so much that they could pretend not to notice. Lovely guy, apparently.

Subject: RE: BS: 'Ireland's Lost Babies' BBC2
From: LadyJean
Date: 19 Sep 14 - 11:13 PM

Adoption in the good old days, was generally horrible. Two women in Tennessee, Georgia Tann and Camille Kelly took children from their families, and sold them to families all over the U.S. There was a woman in New York named Bessie Bernard, who sold babies.

Adopting parents were lied to about where their children came from. Mothers were lied to about the kind of families who took their children. Mothers weren't allowed to see their babies.

Just about any couple could adopt a baby. I had a friend whose mother had some mental health issues, obvious to anyone who talked to her for more than 20 minutes. My friend was adopted and she had a brother who was also adopted.

Subject: RE: BS: 'Ireland's Lost Babies' BBC2
From: MGM·Lion
Date: 20 Sep 14 - 02:15 AM

"Times were different then" --

It all happened within my adult life. Times I remember well. I know I'm an old man now; but it wasn't during the Dark Ages, or the Mediæval period, or even in Good King George's Glorious Days or under Victora RI, for heaven's sake. The programme was mainly set well post-WWii. Many of those to whom it related, some of whom participated, are still only late middle-aged people. The Church will need a very big carpet, falsely labelled "Waywayway-Back-When", to sweep all this shame & disgrace under.

≈M≈

Subject: RE: BS: 'Ireland's Lost Babies' BBC2
From: mayomick
Date: 20 Sep 14 - 05:23 AM

MGM Lion and other British writers seem to think this problem with orphanages all began after Ireland got its partial independence , which is understandable when the Irish national broadcaster , RTE, gives that impression : as if the Catholic Church in Ireland was established post-independence when the Irish were still not quite fit to govern themselves . But the Catholic Church was indeed established in pudding time during the goodly King George's Glorious Days, MGM . The Irish Free State government didn't exist during good Queen Victoria's reign, but the laundries and the abuse of children in Catholic (and Protestant)orphanages certainly did exist.

Subject: RE: BS: 'Ireland's Lost Babies' BBC2
From: mayomick
Date: 20 Sep 14 - 05:26 AM

The first Magdalen institution was founded in late 1758 in Whitechapel, England,[1] which led to the establishment of a similar institution in Ireland by 1767.[1] The first Magdalene asylum in the United States was the Magdalen Society of Philadelphia, founded in 1800; other North American cities, including New York, Boston, Chicago, and Toronto, quickly followed suit.[2][3] In the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, Magdalen asylums were common in several countries.[2] By 1900, there were more than 300 asylums in England and more than 20 in Scotland.

Subject: RE: BS: 'Ireland's Lost Babies' BBC2
From: mayomick
Date: 20 Sep 14 - 05:38 AM

How much better the girls would have fared had they been sent to the colonies can be judged by such comments as these that appeared in the Australian press during good Queen Victoria's golden days:

'Irish orphans, workhouse sweepings'were 'hordes of useless trollops, thrust upon an unwilling community', 'instead of a few hundreds, the girls are coming out by thousands. Instead of mere orphans, we are being inundated with Irish paupers'.
"It is downright robbery to withhold our funds from decent eligible well brought up girls, to lavish it upon a set of ignorant creatures, whose knowledge of household duty barely reaches to distinguishing the inside from the outside of a potato, and whose chief employment hitherto, has consisted of some intellectual occupation as occasionally trotting across a bog to fetch back a runaway pig. Our money ought to be expended upon the rosy cheeked girls of England, upon the braw lassies of bonnie Scotland, instead of being wasted upon these coarse, useless creatures who, with their squat, stunted figures, thick waists and clumsy ankles promises but badly for the 'physique' of the future colonists of Victoria."

Subject: RE: BS: 'Ireland's Lost Babies' BBC2
From: Thompson
Date: 20 Sep 14 - 05:45 AM

It's true that this didn't start with independence, and it wasn't confined to Catholics; or indeed to Ireland.
I wonder whether the rescue of thousands of Romanian orphans given to adoptive families abroad post-Ceaucescu will be discovered to be much the same, for instance. And the many Chinese and Vietnamese babies adopted in the west.

Subject: RE: BS: 'Ireland's Lost Babies' BBC2
From: MGM·Lion
Date: 20 Sep 14 - 06:13 AM

"MGM Lion and other British writers seem to think this problem with orphanages all began after Ireland got its partial independence"

..,,.,.

Looking back at my previous post, I can identify no scintilla of a suggestion that I ever 'seemed to think' any such thing. I was simply referring to the period covered by the programme under consideration; which itself didn't imply this was a new phenomenon, but, as it was explicitly based on the recollections of those involved, dealt with the years I mentioned. I was replying to the statement that "Times were different then", pointing out that "then" wasn't that long since.

≈M≈

Subject: RE: BS: 'Ireland's Lost Babies' BBC2
From: Thompson
Date: 20 Sep 14 - 06:15 AM

My apologies; it seems to be commoner now on Mudcat that people reply to what they thought you meant rather than what they read you said, and the discussion continues on that basis.

Subject: RE: BS: 'Ireland's Lost Babies' BBC2
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 20 Sep 14 - 07:34 PM

Yes, "mayomick", that was an utterly unjustified remark.

Subject: RE: BS: 'Ireland's Lost Babies' BBC2
From: mayomick
Date: 24 Sep 14 - 05:50 AM

"It all happened within my adult life. Times I remember well. I know I'm an old man now; but it wasn't during the Dark Ages, or the Mediæval period, or even in Good King George's Glorious Days or under Victora RI, for heaven's sake. The programme was mainly set well post-WWii."
That's the scintilla , MGM .The programme was set post WW2 ,but abuse of children in Catholic-run ,Irish orphanages had already been set - i.e. it had been institutionalized - during good King George's golden days. The abuse continued through the Victorian and Edwardian eras ; a child born and institutionalized in 1910 or in 1945 wouldn't have been treated much differently to one who had been born in 1900.

Steve Shaw. Why do you put my user name of over ten years in quotation marks - do you think I'm an impostor?

Subject: RE: BS: 'Ireland's Lost Babies' BBC2
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 24 Sep 14 - 08:16 AM

"How much better the girls would have fared had they been sent to the colonies"
Mick
They should never have been living in the conditions you describe in the first place
The mothers were taken into custody as "sinners" and their children were seized by the people who you described as "workhouse sweepings'were 'hordes of useless trollops, thrust upon an unwilling community" - for profit.
This was the fare of Philomena Lee's son, who not only underwent the process, but both he and his mother were barred from having contact with each other throughout their lives and, on the point of his death, her son had to pay an exorbitant sum of money to be buried in the grounds of the convent that sold him so his mother might get to know that he hadn't forgotten his Irish origins.
The last Magdalene Laundry closed in 1996
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: BS: 'Ireland's Lost Babies' BBC2
From: MGM·Lion
Date: 24 Sep 14 - 08:31 AM

Nobody says it hadn't mayomick. But that wasn't what the programme was about. This thread is about the programme, not the history.
Now climb down off my back please

≈M≈

Subject: RE: BS: 'Ireland's Lost Babies' BBC2
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 24 Sep 14 - 07:03 PM

Steve Shaw. Why do you put my user name of over ten years in quotation marks - do you think I'm an impostor?

Nope.

Yours sincerely

"Steve Shaw"

Subject: RE: BS: 'Ireland's Lost Babies' BBC2
From: mayomick
Date: 26 Sep 14 - 09:08 AM

so why do you put my name in quotation marks, Steve? Use them to draw attention to something by all means , but like car horns, quotation marks shouldn't be used to admonish. your's faithfully, mayomick

MGM, I'm sorry if I picked on British TV viewers for special mention -it's just that the link is to a BBC rather than an RTE program. Decontextualizing the past is just as big or is a bigger problem in Ireland and with its media. The Catholic Church was established in Ireland under British rule as a buttress against the republican secularism of the United Irishmen . Things didn't essentially change post-1922 The new rulers of a poor country that had historically been kept backward by its powerful nearest neighbour , continued to dump its orphans into the welcoming , groping hands of the clergy .