JULIA Devaney pictured with visiting children in the 1960s.

A Voice from the Tuam Home - Part One

ON the night that Hurricane Debbie swept its dark and stormy way across the four corners of Ireland, a tumult of another kind raged in the heart of Tuam. On that September 16, 1961, Julia Carter, along with caretaker John Cunningham and Nurse Burke, turned the key in the Tuam Mother and Baby Home on Dublin Road for the last time, amid the sound of the wind tearing slates from the roof.

Thus, were locked away stories of separation and loneliness, sadness and heartache — and some laughter.

Julia had spent the previous 40 years in the Home, first as a child and later as an employee, and it had formed her for life. Fortunately, her story was not lost.

During the late 1970s or early 80s Julia recorded her memories on a series of tape recordings made by the late Rebecca (Rabie) Millane, whose family had a shop on High Street, where the High Cross Pharmacy is now situated.

Rabie passed the tapes to Mary Vallely Rushe shortly before her death, and the recordings were subsequently transcribed by Catherine Corless.

The articles which we publish [these articles originally appeared in The Tuam Herald Dec-Jan 2015/16] and next are a distillation of over 40,000 recorded words, and are intended as a tribute to Julia Carter, later Julia Devaney, and to all the mothers and children who passed through the Home, which was run by the Bon Secours sisters on behalf of Galway County Council from 1923 until it closed.

As the compiler of these articles, I have striven to avoid sensationalism. I knew Julia when she lived in Gilmartin Road, not far from the home of my parents, who held this gentle woman in high regard.

They are divided up by theme, and all words within quotation marks are those dictated by Julia herself.

* Some names have been changed to protect the identity of former residents of the Home.

 

Julia Carter Devaney

JULIA Carter was born in 1916. Her parents were married; she believed they were from Oughterard and had separated. She was left in the care of the nuns in the former workhouse in Glenamaddy, and when that closed she was transferred to the Home in Tuam, probably in 1923.

“The nuns owned us: we knew nobody, only them. I made my First Communion in Glenamaddy Workhouse, and I made my Confirmation in Sixth Class in Tuam. I was dressed like everyone else. Mother Hortense insisted that there would be no Home uniform, that we would not be branded. My photo was taken — Mother Hortense took the photos.”

Julia said she never thought about not having parents. “I never knew what it was like to live in a proper house or a proper home and family. In summer the nuns might have a picnic in Cloonascragh fields or Toghermore Avenue and bring us girls who stayed on in the Home to work.

“The nuns took a house down by the sea in Achill every summer for a month or six weeks. We would take it in turns to spend a week with them, Annie K the nuns’ cook, and myself, and Mary W and the other domestics.

“A yearly treat. It never dawned on us that the nuns were wronging us or that we were entitled to our own lives. It was later when the new nuns came to the Home that they asked questions and why us grown women were still in the Home.

“I don’t have any regrets, because I never knew any other way of life. *Meg was bitter though, and always regretted that she was not fostered out. Meg ended up in Ballinasloe after she got depressed when Mother Hortense left. She was very attached to Mother Hortense.”

Friends who knew Julia in her later years, when she lived on Gilmartin Road in Tuam, were aware of her delight in her garden. It was a passion all through her life.

“I was out on the land. It wasn’t as monotonous as inside. We had chickens, pigs, and I cleaned out the sheds and spread the manure on the land. I cleaned out the glass houses and put in fresh clay. We had a little ass and cart bringing out a pile of manure to the different gardens.

“Often I’d go out in the garden weeding rather than go in to the Rosary. I think it was the garden kept me sane. Oh, I loved the garden, it was like a sedative, the only thing I did love.”

 

The Mothers

MANY times in her testimony, Julia makes the point that the mothers in the Home did not confide in her or in any of the domestic staff, as they feared they would tell tales to the nuns. However it was inevitable that some stories would come out.

“A big open space and big grey stone walls. Each side of it was a three-storey building with a two-storey building in between. Cut stone, cold-looking but beautifully built.”

Julia said there were about 50 women at a time in the Home, which was kept spotless.

“The women had to have an admission ticket from the doctor to get in. There was no such thing as being signed in, but once they were there they would have to wait a year to look after their baby. One girl escaped, went out, but she was brought back again that night by the Guards. The gates were never locked as there were always bread vans and milk carts coming in.

“We got up about 6 am. The mothers would bring their child that slept with them down to the Nursery. The babies would sleep with the mothers from about nine or ten days old. Mass was at 8 am. Breakfast was after Mass.

“Breakfast consisted of porridge, milk, tea and bread — trays of bread. Then down to feed the babies. Mothers were barged into breastfeeding. If the babies weren’t breastfed, bottles would have to be made up and sterilised. She [Reverend Mother] would nearly starve the infant to make the mother breastfeed. The doctor had to certify that the mother could not breastfeed before bottles were given.

“Then the mothers went to the laundry to wash the babies’ nappies. Each mother had to account for her own nappy.

“They’d each go to their jobs after that … go out the land digging, or the kitchen, scullery, dining room, children’s dormitory, wash and polish and clean, monotonous work.

“In the morning they would take the ‘mackintoshes’ off the beds, clean and dry them by hanging them on the old iron stairs. Then at 5 pm they would put them back on the beds. The children would be taken out at night to the toilets but if they were taking them out forever they would still be pissing the beds. The smell of ammonia was all over the place!

“The mothers spoke only to each other about the fathers of their children. They’d hate to face home. The lads that were friendly with them outside would ignore them now. Many a girl shed tears — a terrible depressing place.

“An odd fella would come in and take the girl out and marry her. I remember one case where the parents and the priest and the fella came in and he said he would marry the girl, he went down on his knees, but he would not take the child as it was not his.

“None of the women ever attempted suicide. They had a very hard life, there was no consolation, no advice, no love there for them. They just got through, counting the days and weeks until they were free to go.

“The parents would come back to the Home to bring the woman out after her term of a year was up, whether it was to put them on the train or not, and the nuns would get a job for anyone else who had no-one to meet them.

“Sometimes people from Tuam would come looking for a servant girl.”

 

The Children

“THE children had a language all their own. They didn’t talk right at all, nobody to teach them, nobody to care! When the children came home from school they got their dinner and then their hair was fine-combed for nits and fleas. They got tea, bread and butter and cocoa for their supper.

“The little ones went to bed summer and winter at 6 pm. They had swings and see-saws, but when I look back they were very unnatural children, shouting, screeching, sometimes laughing, ring-a-ring-a-rosy.

“Whatever they learned at school, they learned nothing up there: eating, to sitting on the pot, to going to bed. I think they spent most of their young lives sitting on them pots!

“There were sad times, it wasn’t always sad, but it was a sad old place. You see it was always before them [the mothers] knowing that they had to part with the child, like Our Lady waiting for the Crucifixion.

“They couldn’t see any future in that child, just the year they were there. I remember a lady had a most beautiful child, and when she came back (very few of the mothers did) she was devastated to see that the child had deteriorated with loneliness.”

“Some of the mothers didn’t like their own child, you would have to watch them, maybe they wouldn’t give the child the bottle at all.

“If a child died under a year, there’d be an inquiry. If the child was over a year, there’d be no inquiry. They’d say it was neglect if the child was under a year. You see the nuns would have to account for the death if the child was under a year, and there would be a lot of investigation. Over a year and it would more likely be natural causes, like measles etc.”

“Children died of measles, there were no antibiotics. Scores of the children died under a year, and whooping cough was epidemic, they used to die like flies. Sure they had a little graveyard of their own up there, it’s still there, it’s walled in now.”

Some of the local doctors sent books and toys to the Home at Christmas, and at that time the children would put on a play.

“They used to have plays at Christmas time. Johnny Cunningham used to come in in the evenings and train us, along with Dinny O’Dowd. We had great plays, there was a stage like down in the Town Hall. The Grandfather Clock was one of the plays we did. The doctors’ families would come up to see it [and other people from the town].

 

Fostering and adoption

USUALLY, boys left the Home at the age of five, girls at seven. They were either fostered out to families, or adopted.

“Olive, I was very fond of in particular. She was boarded out. I lost touch with her. We never knew where they went, you wouldn’t dare inquire after them. The nuns never kept up contact with the children. The Loughrea ambulance used to come and they would be marched up into it. A lovely lady appointed by Galway Co Council had the job of going around to visit boarded-out children. But once the children went out in that ambulance, the nuns never heard of them again.

“Mother Hortense would never give a child to a family with children, as she would know they only wanted them for work.

“In the 1950s children were adopted to the USA. I remember a couple who came for a child, but the child had measles at the time, so the couple stayed in the hotel for a while, and came up to the Home every day to see her, and the man would say when he’d see her ‘Oh she’s too beautiful to touch’. When she did go to the USA they’d send colour photos of her with all her toys and her lovely bedroom — a lovely home.

“Sr Leondra did not like the idea at all of the children going to the USA. ‘Why should we be rearing our Irish children for America,’ she used to say.

“I wasn’t sorry that I wasn’t boarded out, I was always a square peg in a round hole! I just always felt all right as I was, but I know Meg and the others would have liked it. Meg was bitter about it, but Meg was always a little slow and found it hard to learn.

“The advertisement for the children to be fostered would be in the papers. The babies and toddlers whined and pined after the mother left. Now they were being changed out of their environment where there were children out to a house where there were no children.

“There was no effort to prepare them for the change or they weren’t told they would be going. The children would not know what a house was like, what a kettle or pan looked like: they went from the dormitory to the playroom to the dayroom. All they ever saw was the big bath of food and tin mugs and a big bucket of milk.

“There was no mother substitute. No effort was made to talk to prospective foster parents.”

 

 

In part two: How Julia met her husband — How the threat of Ballinasloe kept order — The young nun who said she would prefer to be minding pigs.