The true picture of what happened in the Bessborough Mother and Baby Home in Cork may be difficult to hear but it needs to come out, Bishop of Cloyne Dr William Crean has said.
Dr Crean said details of the goings on at Bessborough, in Blackrock, should be heard as “this is part of our national story”.
“It is only unfolding slowly. The truth may be very difficult. But it is best that we have the truth in relation to it,” he told Cork’s Red FM. “ Whatever is required in that regard will serve us well in the long term even though, in the shorter term, it might be difficult.”
The Sacred Heart Home in Bessborough, managed by the Sisters of the Sacred Hearts of Jesus and Mary, opened in 1922. Similar homes were established by the same order in Roscrea and Castlepollard in the 1930s.
The home previously told the Department of Local Government and Public Health that 353 infants died at the home in Blackrock between 1939 and 1944. That figure was disputed in reports published by the Irish Examiner, which said 273 children died and the others may have given away in clandestine adoptions.
Following the discovery of human remains in a mass grave on the grounds of the mother and baby home in Tuam, there have been calls for similar investigations to take place in other facilities across the State.
The Mother and Baby Homes Commission said there has not yet been a decision to carry out any excavations at Bessborough.
Pain relief
June Goulding, a midwife who worked at Bessborough from 1951, described conditions there in her book The Light in the Window.
She said women who gave birth at Bessborough were not allowed pain relief during labour or stitches after birth, and when they developed abscesses from breast feeding they were denied penicillin.
One nun who ran the labour ward in the 1950’s also forbade any “moaning or screaming” during childbirth, she wrote.
Girls who could not afford to make donations to the Sacred Heart order had to spend another three years after their babies were born working around the home to “make amends” for their pregnancy.
At Ms Goulding’s first Bessborough birth, she asked someone at the hospital what painkillers were used in labour.
“Nobody gets any here, nurse. They just have to suffer,” she was told.
Countless woman who experienced severe treatment at the hands of nuns in Bessborough have contacted radio stations to tell their story since the revelations about Tuam emerged.
One woman named "Bridget" called RTÉ's Liveline earlier this week and alleged that babies were often taken from women in Bessborough and sold to the highest bidder.