Testimonies and affidavits from residents at Castlepollard Mother and Baby Home
These are excerpts from some of the testimonies and affidavits in the report from The Mother and Baby Homes Commission of Investigation published last week.
Resident A: Mother, mid 1960s
Resident A became pregnant at age 18 after being raped by her then boyfriend. When she was six months pregnant she told her parents. She said that the parish priest arranged for her to be admitted to Castlepollard and her parents drove her to Dublin and put her on a bus to Castlepollard. Her parents did not discuss any other options with her and ‘sent her away’. Her mother wanted to keep the baby but her father would not allow it. Her father was afraid of what the neighbours would say and her pregnancy would have brought shame on the family.
She remembered entering Castlepollard for the first time: “There was a girl waiting at the gate for me, and took me up to the – and then when I went up to the office I got a pet name, my whole identity was taken away and I got a pet name. Then when any post came in for me it was opened before I got it, and when I was sending out letters they were read before I could seal the envelope. Then I was given a job, you were given jobs like I had to sluice the nappies and I had to take them down to the laundry and I had to collect the bread down there for to bring up for the supper. Some of the days I went down the nuns were carrying the little shoe boxes down, to bury the babies.”
She told the Commission that there was a building on site at Castlepollard known as the ‘mattress room’ and the women were sent there to give birth if they were ‘screaming and shouting’. She had not seen this herself but was told about it by other women at recent meetings held at Castlepollard. She said that she was examined by a doctor and nurse about once a month.
“The doctor was in attendance when she went into labour and her baby was delivered by forceps. She said that the nuns forced her to breastfeed her baby for six weeks and she had a bad experience with it. It was probably a good thing for the baby, but it wasn’t good for me…I was made breast feed her and she was really and truly eating me. So, I said it to them, and they got me a shield and that didn’t work, and they made me express then. They got me a pump and made me express. That turned me off breast feeding my children.”
Resident B: Mother, mid 1960s
Resident B became pregnant at the age of 17. Her mother took her to her family doctor who suggested that she might move in with a couple in Cork until she had her baby. Her mother then brought her to see their parish priest who recommended that she would be admitted to Castlepollard. Her parents did not consult her or her partner on the decision: ‘It was Castlepollard or nowhere’ .
She was not allowed to use her real name and was given a house name. She said that women did not discuss their personal life with each other as they were ‘too afraid’. She wore her own clothes but was given a brown nylon shop coat to wear over them. The women woke at 6am each morning for mass followed by breakfast. She recalled the daily routine as follows: Get up, go to mass, have your breakfast, and then basically wash floors, clean windows, change beds; houseworky type things. Some of the girls worked in the laundry…It was more boring than hard… In the evening we would just sit around and read or talk or, you know, talk about nothing basically because we were all afraid to say ‘my name is …’ type of thing, and you know, ‘the guy that is the father of the baby is my boyfriend’. You know, you just didn’t talk about your personal life.
She said that the food served to women in Castlepollard was ‘horrendous’: “Breakfast would be a cereal and a cup of tea. Lunch would be a sandwich and dinner was normal dinner…You got what was on the plate and that was it. If you had a big appetite, then you were hungry… It was a harrowing experience. It was like being in jail basically; your freedom, your identity, the whole lot was taken away from you.”
Three weeks after giving birth she was collected by her partner and they handed over the baby for adoption. She and her partner went to England and they subsequently married. The adoption papers were sent to her in England about two years later. She said: “I knew that she was, you know, that she was going to be adopted and I didn’t really have the courage or the conviction to not sign them because at that stage I think I was about 20 living in a foreign country, two children, you know, and I didn’t have the means to do anything about it either.”
Resident C: Mother, late 1960s
Resident C told the Commission that she came from a family of 12 children where there was ‘a lot of religion’. She became pregnant aged 18 years in 1968. She did not tell her mother but her mother subsequently found out and was glad that Resident C was gone out of their neighbourhood so that she ‘didn’t bring shame on the family’. She told her friends that she got a job in the midlands and went to Castlepollard in November 1968. Resident C said that she went into Castlepollard with the idea of having her baby adopted but that she did not know what that entailed.
“I went in there. I remember the open armed statue at the door, it was facing the door, and I remember the girl who answered the door… So, she said, ‘Mother is expecting you’ and I was sitting down, and Mother came in. Again, in my head she was a very large presence.
I stood up when she came in and she sat down, I remained standing, which was a very odd thing in a way… She told me that basically, I nearly have the words in my head because I never, I have vivid memories of certain aspects but not others, but she said how I’d been a really bad person and that I was there to make amends, and that I was lucky that they were taking me in, and that the only way I could get God to forgive me was by giving a good Christian family the child that I couldn’t rear myself. So that was it… How my mind was, to be honest. I couldn’t keep this baby.” Resident C said that she went into Castlepollard with the idea of having her baby adopted but that she did not know what that entailed.
She met her son 30 years later in the room in which she had given him up for adoption. She said that she had a happy reunion with him and he was now part of her family. Reflecting on her time in Castlepollard, she said: “I wouldn’t, like I would never sort of condemn Castlepollard. I feel that at the time I was what was considered ‘in trouble’, that was what was on offer. It was a penance, you know? They weren’t enlightened about people’s feelings… They were God’s people and, you know we had, we did have respect for them, there is no doubt about it, and you had fear, you know you did have fear. Probably all of us down there our biggest fear was that somebody would find out about us. Like that was probably one of the biggest fears.”
Resident F, Mother, early 1960s
Resident F was collected from her home by a priest who drove her to Castlepollard when she was 14 years old. She said that she did not know that she was pregnant. She was given a ‘house name’ but she refused to acknowledge it
“ I was told ‘from now on you answer to the name […]’. I did not respond to being called […] because my name is […]. I got my ear pulled or a thump on the back or my hair pulled by the nuns when I did not respond to being called […] …Their behaviour and aggression towards me was vicious and spiteful…They would give me a vicious knock, hit or dig. The nuns were unkind, hostile, spiteful and mean.”
“She said that she was subjected to beatings by the nuns: I was beaten by the nuns with a stick. They would beat me all over, on my head, my arms, my legs, anywhere. I don’t recall what I did to get beaten so badly. I had massive welts and bruises all over me. I saw other girls get beaten with sticks and saw their welts and bruises. No one visited so no one knew what they did to us. You got beaten by sticks or by their hands; across your face, your head, hands, arms, legs or torso. She said that the nuns made her unblock toilets with her bare hands.
This used to make her physically sick and she could not get rid of the putrid smell. She stated that ‘sometimes a nun was kind’ and would give her a bar of scented soap after unblocking the toilets.
Resident H, Mother, late 1960s
Resident H became pregnant, aged 20, as a result of rape. She subsequently contacted the man who promised to support her but then disappeared. She then went to see this man’s parish priest and told him her story. She said that the priest sexually assaulted her in his car.
Her parish priest arranged for her to be admitted to Castlepollard. She said that going to Castlepollard was initially a relief for her as she was having so much trouble at home. She was given a ‘house name’ and ‘a big floral smock’ to wear. Her days in Castlepollard were ‘long and boring’ and the women were not allowed to speak to each other.
She said that she was unable to walk after her labour as ‘they had damaged a nerve in my right leg’. She was sent to work in the laundry when her baby was six weeks old: “It was a horrible place and the smell hit you each morning. Filthy nappies and sanitary towels called ‘rabbits’ were washed in huge washing machines. We could only see the babies at feeding time when you expressed your milk and fed them with a spoon. All the time we were feeding we had to recite the rosary out loud and so couldn’t talk to our babies. Once they were fed, we changed their nappies and went back to work.”
Affidavit from child born in Castlepollard
One man who was born in the mid-1960s said that his mother told him that the treatment was terrible and inhumane: “She said she was made feel like a criminal for having a baby and was constantly made to feel guilty…She said she would never be able to publicly acknowledge my existence because of the shame she felt and she was terrified that anyone would ever find out about it…My birth mother said that she did not suffer any beatings at the hands of the nuns, but she spent the majority of the day on her hands and knees scrubbing stone floors. She told me it was a very emotionally traumatic time and that it impacted her mental health severely.”
Sister Sheila Buckley, Castlepollard 1968-71
Sister Sheila was the only former member of staff from Castlepollard mother and baby home to speak to the commission. She worked as a midwife in Castlepollard from 1968 to 1971.
Sister Sheila said that it was still policy that women would take a ‘house name’ in Castlepollard in the late 1960s: “Well the girls were offered this name and they all wanted to take names when they came in and it was just because of confidentiality really, you know. If anybody didn’t know that they were there and they rang up phoning, well if they didn’t know the house name you knew you could decline and not always give out the information.”
Sister Sheila stated that Sister Rosemonde [the matron and Mother Superior] interviewed every woman on her admission to the maternity hospital at Castlepollard. She stated that the purpose of the interviews was to find out who they were, whether they intended to keep their babies and to ascertain if any family members were aware that they were in the home.
Sister Sheila explained that if a woman was undecided on whether to put her child up for adoption, she would leave the baby in Castlepollard while making her decision. She said that, while some may have decided to take the baby home, most women were advised by their families to have their babies adopted.
She said that adoptions from Castlepollard were managed by Fr Regan of St Clare’s Adoption Society, Stamullen, in conjunction with Sister Rosemonde. Sister Sheila said that she sometimes brought infants from Castlepollard to Bessborough to be adopted through the Sacred Heart Adoption Society.
She stated that on some occasions, but not always, foster parents waiting at Bessborough would give her a donation of £10 to be given to Sister Rosemonde: “If I took a baby to the parlour and if somebody would put a note in my hand, that’s the only thing that I am aware of a donation. They might say, to help you with the petrol, Sister, or something like that, you know.”