Paul KeenanA history of marginalising the most vulnerable
The horrific revelations about the treatment of women and children in the mother and baby homes of Ireland has been the subject of heated discussion over the past week or so.
Many have called for a criminal investigation, and this may indeed be necessary. The question such a step poses, however, is who, precisely, should be investigated?
Who are the suspects in this case?
The religious orders were the contact care workers with the women and children incarcerated in the homes.
They can answer very pertinent questions about why exactly the death rates in the homes were so at odds with that of the rest of the population, and if adoptions that occurred were forced and illegal.
But should the nuns be the only ones in the frame? The Irish government must be viewed with a cold eye, as they specifically asked the religious orders to take the leading role in child care and protection in the newly founded Irish State. It was no secret that the laws governing the care and welfare of children were outdated, yet absolutely nothing was done to redress this for more than half a century (under the 1908 Children Act, a child was legally seen as little more than cattle – basically having the same rights as a piece of furniture). Concerns were raised in the Dáil in 1938 relating to reports of neglect in care institutions, yet absolutely no action was taken until the late 1970s, when an investigation was launched and its findings then roundly ignored.
Truth
The truth is that the Irish government did not want to know what was being done with the ‘illegitimate’ children of Ireland’s poor. And neither did the average person in the street.
In fact, the next group to come under our scrutiny must be the wider Irish public. By the 1940s, Irish society already had a long history of marginalising its most vulnerable members.
Medieval attitudes toward the poor prevailed in the land of Saints and Scholars until the mid-18th Century, rooted in the belief that poverty was visited upon children primarily due to the sins of their parents – alcoholism, slothfulness and moral degradation were seen as genetic inheritances.
Accepted wisdom dictated that street urchins were not a group who needed to be protected and cared for, but a demographic from which the better among us (the upper classes) need to be protected.
The workhouses, foundling hospitals, industrial schools and other mechanisms for getting children off the street were all about one thing: containment. “Lock these sorry creatures away,” was the philosophy, “so the rest of us don’t have to look at them or suffer at their criminal hands.”
Outcry
The regimes in these (mostly State-run) homes were barbaric – the poor only entered a workhouse if they were literally at death’s door from starvation and had no other option.
Infanticide was, regrettably, very common, so much so that Jonathan Swift, the author of Gulliver’s Travels, famously suggested in his satirical essay A Modest Proposal in 1729 that, to save money and general hassle, the children of the poor should be eaten.
Despite the fact that quite a number of readers thought he was being serious, there was little outcry on publication, although it did prompt political and intellectual debate.
The ideal course of action to quell the Irish psyche, then, was to make the problem disappear. This was achieved by placing it behind the high walls of institutions vested with the necessary moral authority to deal with the problems presented by the lumpen poor and their progeny, a group, it was believed, so debased as to have nothing to offer their communities other than shame, squalor and disease. Whether they lived or died was of neither consequence nor concern.
Whatever way we look at this abominable chapter in our recent history, a terrible wrong has been committed, and justice should be seen to be done.
However, it must be acknowledged that this is a complex matter, and none of us are wholly innocent of blame. Any investigation must give this truth grave consideration.
Shane Dunphy is a child protection expert and author.