St Patrick’s Guild adoption agency catered to ‘unfortunate girls of good class’
‘These unfortunate girls are of good class with, usually, excellent background. In most cases it is imperative that they return to their employment within a fortnight or less, after the birth.
Many of them are working in such places as government offices, solicitors’ offices or hospitals. The greatest secrecy is not merely desirable but essential. Should there be a shadow of suspicion or scandal the girl’s whole future might be in jeopardy.’
Sister Frances Elizabeth, of the Daughters of Charity of St Vincent de Paul, writing in 1952 about St Patrick’s Guild, the same year in which legislation was passed creating a legal framework for adoption from An Affair with My Mother: A Story of Adoption, Secrecy and Love by Caitríona Palmer (Penguin).
Between 1947 and 1967, St Patrick’s Guild sent 572 children to the United States for adoption, the largest number of any adoption agency in the state.
Good times.
Yesterday:‘People May Not Know They Were Adopted’
Broadsheet finds a topic and seems to stick with it these days. I mean, post stuff that’s great. Just try not to labour the point like you are trying to convert people to your point of view. It’s not only boring it’s just bad journalism.
Abortion referendum posts every 30 minutes was great fun but let’s try to stretch these adoption ones to every 45 minutes. God bless.
I agree. It’s overload on abortion, church and religion. Let’s get back lost bikes and crying chairs.
Well, it would be if the no voters had taken stock and reconsidered their view point or even just accepted the result. The denial has to be addressed. Every time someone seeks to deny, lie, cover up, then we must call them out. Never again will we fall back into the dark and terrible world of RC Ireland.
And it’s not ‘sent’ to the US, the word is sold.
and kittens
I do miss the crying chairs. There was a comment made a while back about himself rocking himself to sleep in his y-fronts whilst eating a Snickers bar and crying at the same time. Oh, the salad days…
As one of the only news outlets without the invisible hand of the crone calling the shots broadsheet has a responsibility to cover those stories that the rest of the media is otherwise discouraged from discussing. More power to ye broadsheet. Keep up the good work!
while I can understand a feeling of saturation
all this matters and the last comment is spot on
go BS
i have a photo of a puddle of john waters’ tears that sort of looks like ireland if anyone is interested..?
GIVE IT TO ME
from your left corner you hear a bid for 5 pounds…
damit Euros
That’s not tears?
ewwwww…I retract my big big 5
TEN EURO! I BID TEN!
As you should know, anything that looks like Ireland is fair game for BS so go ahead and submit it. That it’s a direct product of that simpering weaselly fool’s misery so much the better! It might even get a few shares on twitter.
is it 26-county Ireland? or 32-county Ireland?
I’m guessing his tears taste bitter.
they aren’t tears !
Don’t say anything more lest you make our nation collectively shudder.
It’s shaped like Ireland’s pious antiquity.
I have a filthy mind
https://www.broadsheet.ie/2011/06/15/were-going-to-need-a-smaller-daffodil/
#Neverforget #NomatterhowhardItry
Broadsheet is NOT a news outlet. It’s a blog
Can people stop propogating this nonsense
You might have noticed that this particular story was broken by all the main news sources before BS started posting about it. That might be your first clue.
I imagined you stamping your foot a little as you typed that out.
Don’t ruin this illusion for me.
A tad inaccurate – it’s a news source the newspapers refer to, I know, I’ve been on the receiving end.
You’re the one being inaccurate here. News sources referred to here because you posted stuff here. Broadsheet didn’t source it.
If you had posted the same information on Boards.ie news sources would have referrred to that instead, that doesn’t make Boards a news outlet.
Blimey! Quite the conundrum, when is a blog a news outlet, rather than a blog? Actually, that’s my defence case. I’ll not be calling Rotide to testify on my behalf, it would appear.
When it publishes original researched, verified and edited material?
You commenting on the rape trial thread might be extraordinarily risky but it’s not BS being a news source.
In fact if I remember correctly, The Irish Times published a piece on you before Broadsheet actually did.
@rotide I really think I’d remember The IT publishing something about me. I’m a nobody.
I apologise. I should have said the IT published a piece on your incredibly ill advised public comments
@rotide My incredibly ill-advised comments? I’m a free thinker, I don’t need advice to offer an opinion. Sure, I’m in trouble, but you know what – so what?
It’s whatever we make it Rotie
would a rose by any other name smell as sweet
nelly doesn’t want anything bad said about the nuns, who were only trying to make a few quid from them fallen women that arrived on their door steps.
What are you on about on? Are you ok? Seriously?
Throw a few blueshirts in there for good measure, haven’t seen you use that for a few days now. Good lad.
And I dislike the Catholic Church. I also dislike boring repetitive posts. Kind of like your blue shirt obsessive ramblings .
Feel free to ignore the ones you find boring NOYN.
Concentration camps don’t run themselves you know. Bills to pay, mouths to (occasionally) feed.. we can’t do it on air..!!
Did you ever find the evidence that infants were deliberately starved in Tuam Cu?
Oh, and I see that original claim of yours on the Bishop Doran post has been changed and the questions and answers that followed it have been removed. Nice clean up.
Yup. And I’m sure he’s personally responsible too…
Yes. It’s in the report, read into the Dail record by Taoiseach Enda Kenny. I posted it earlier. It you cared it might take 30 seconds to find it. I’ll post it again if you like.
How did so many children die from malnourishment, but there’s no record of any of the nuns succumbing to the same symptoms? Plenty of food for the nuns, not enough for their charges despite getting a stipend for each one. Also, the malnutrition numbers dropped significantly when they realised they could sell the babies, but they needed to be in good health first.
Malnutrition does not mean there was not enough food around or on offer. As I gave an example of yesterday (But now it’s deleted) infants died from malnutrition because they couldn’t feed for some reason…not that there wasn’t any food. A baby unable to swallow in 1945 had, very sadly, a very bleak outlook.
Think about it for a second Daisy. Think rationally. If you were deliberately starving children in your care until they died, would you then have the cause of death recorded as malnutrition?
I think your point, false and self serving as it was, was well answered by Listrade.
As you ask: Enda Kenny made an impassioned speech in the Dail yesterday calling Tuam a “Chamber of horrors”. He stated. “No nuns broke into our homes to kidnap our children.
“We gave them up to what we convinced ourselves was the nuns’ care. “We took their babies (unmarried mothers) and gifted them, sold them, trafficked them, starved them, neglected them or denied them to the point of their disappearance from our hearts, our sight, our country and, in the case of Tuam and possibly other places, from life itself.”
Twelve of the 18 who starved were girls and there is a suspicion that some were mentally retarded. Bridget Agatha Kenny was two months old when she died as a result of marasmus, child malnutrition, on August 23, 1947. She is described as having been ‘mentally defective.’
She was one of 18 children whose cause of death was listed as child malnutrition or the official term “marasmus.”
Marasmus is a form of severe malnutrition characterized by energy deficiency. A child with marasmus looks utterly emaciated with ribs protruding. Body weight is reduced to less than 60% of the normal body weight for the age.
In 2014 it was revealed in a report compiled by Michael Dwyer of Cork University’s School of History 2,051 children from state-run homes were used as medical guinea pigs for the pharma giant Burroughs Wellcome during the 1930s. He came to this conclusion after trawling through tens of thousands of medical journal articles and archived files.
Well that certainly is sobering. It puts a chill in my heart.
Hundreds unable to swallow though? How were they suddenly all able to swallow better when the nuns started selling them?
swallowing air
How did so many children die from malnourishment?
– was it “hundreds”
– or was it “18”
The example is taken from one of the many boxes of information. Thousands probably. But the records have to be put together one by one. There are of course no resources to do that.
love newsjustin’s work on this
one of the best apologists for state-sanctioned murder ever
yet claims to be an anti abortionist
you couldn’t make it up
be quiet you dose!
okay – so you are quoting just one sample – not the whole thing.
Thanks for clarifying.
Eddard. You will never find me sanctioning “state sponsored murder”. Nor will you find me making wild claims about deliberate starvation of children that can’t be backed up.
As you raise the subject of abortion. Many of you were unceasing in your tackling of what you saw as No side untruths and halftruths and manipulative use of language. Yet someone says babies were deliberately killed by starvation and openly recorded of dying from that, and people accept it without a second thought.
Never change Broadsheet readers. Never change.
Well that’s nice. It will be a relief to all those people to know that their birth mother was a better class of ‘fallen woman’; when they get out of the cardiac unit and/or psychiatric hospital.
Anything to be said for another lawsuit father?
And another endless “commission of inquiry” which will never get to the bottom of anything or hold anyone accountable.
You can hold a view that abortion is wrong. Don’t have one. But you are not allowed to vote no and deny that right to others. Mother and Baby Homes, forced adoption, clerical sex abuse, god but the list goes on. That’s were your vote no leads to. I couldn’t care what religion you are. Voting no, with all the information you had access to makes you a lesser person. I’m sorry for you, but it does.
You’re right to spot the connection. Abortion is the direct equivalent to mother and baby homes and forced adoption. Out of sight out of mind. Only this time, it’s worse, babies are deliberately killed before their unwanted lungs breathe our clean, progressive air.
But you are not allowed to vote no and deny that right to others.
He’s not allowed? Well hello there Bishop Brennan. Any more rules that the irish citzenry should be aware of?