Bessborough’s 1,000 Missing Babies.

    The problem isn’t the barrel of bad apples, the roots, the trees themselves are diseased.  


    I must revisit Bessborough Mother and Baby Home, in Cork City, in the county of Cork, Ireland. The Congregation of the Sacred Hearts of Jesus and Mary who owned and ran Bessborough do not know where the babies and children are buried. The burial cesspools  of well over 1,000 children who died in the care of Bessborough Mother and Baby Home is unknown, despite very extensive inquiries and searches.I have no doubt that Bessborough Mother and Baby Home has hundreds if not thousands of babies secretly dumped into their cesspools and septic tanks on the grounds of the ex Mother and Baby Home, in Cork City. 


    According to the strictly confidential documents I have seen, I now know that most of the 1,000 babies missing, and whose cesspool cannot be found, according to the Nuns and it really is very simple. First of all, sadly many babies died in Bessborough, like all the other Religious run Institutions in Ireland. In fact according to the official documents, in Bessborough over a 20 year period, from 1934 - 1954, of relatively reliable death and birth records that I have seen, there were 478 infant deaths registered. When compared against the underestimated number of live births, this equates to a higher death rate in the region of 25%. In other words, one quarter of all babies born in Bessborough in the middle of the 20th. Century died in their first 12 months of life. 


    Put it another way, the Infant Mortality Rate for Ireland (IMR) as a whole was 3.5 per 1,000 life births. In 1950 by comparison this was approximately 50 per 1,000 live births. The IMR is a staggering and sobering statistic which I suggest was used as a cover-up to account for the illegal trafficking of stolen babies out of Bessborough Mother and Baby Home. Anecdotal accounts confirm that hundreds of mothers who gave birth in Bessborough Mother and Baby Home, were told that their babies had died but yet the mothers were never allowed to see them or bury them. So plain and simple, The Congregation of the Sacred Hearts of Jesus and Mary, Nuns, stole the new born babies from their mothers at birth, told the mothers that their babies died, moved the mothers to another Mother and Baby Home or Magdalene Laundry in another county of Ireland.  When in fact the evil Nuns trafficked and exported the new born babies into North America and elsewhere for profit, and the other crimes of the immoral Nuns was that the Nuns altered and falsified their handwritten documents, with the direct help of corrupt Irish Government Officials. I have seen these official documents, not only did the inept Nuns falsify the official documents, they then told their co-conspirators, the  Irish Government that the stolen babies had died at birth, enabling the deceitful Nuns to collect more monies from the Irish Government to bury the so call dead babies, when in fact the trafficked babies were not dead but stolen by the disingenuous​ Nuns.  It would appear that the morally corrupt ​Nuns collected monies at both ends. 

    Something else according to the original documents from, Bessborough Mother and Baby Home, was that the Death Register only lists deaths of babies and children up until January 1953, while Birth Registrations are listed up till August 1955, therefore it would appear that a total of 5.5 years of death registrations is not accounted for by the Nuns. The inference therefore is that the IMR of 25% may indeed be far higher. The findings are as follows—From entries in Bessborough’s Death and Registration of Birth Books-


Dated;-


December 1930-April 1936


April 1936- January 1942


January 1942- January 1947


January 1947- June 1951


June 1951-August 1955


1. According to the Registration of Birth Books- in Bessborough Mother and Baby Home 2,270 babies were born.


2. According to the Registration of Death Books- in Bessborough Mother and Baby Home. Between February 1934 and January 1953, the deaths of babies were recorded as 482. 


    Now this would correspondingly indicate an IMR of 21 % . However staggering these figures are, they do not reflect a complete picture of IMR as the Death Records only begin in 1934, whereas the Birth Register begins in December 1930, thereby missing 3 complete years.  


    So using the IMR in Bessborough Mother and Baby Home appears at least 212 deaths per 1,000 babies born-that is a fifth of all babies died before the end of their first year. This is the absolute minimum because over 5 years is missing from the Death Records …So 212 by 5 years equals 1,060 missing or dead. This is true and from the official records what we know of. It has implications far beyond our small universe, it is nothing but shocking. Put it another way, this is the equivalent to the IMR in Ireland in the 18th. Century. It is five times the IMR in the local community in the 1950s, which was 5% and 65 times the current IMR. The current IMR in Ireland is 3.8 per 1,000 live births. 


    Causes of baby death by the Nuns at Bessborough’s Mother and Baby Home are also a lie, because we now know that 1,060 babies didn’t die, but illegally sold into America. From the hand-written records, the causes of baby death according to the Nuns were;-


-Gastroenteritis, also known as infectious diarrhoea and gastro, is inflammation of the gastrointestinal tract.


-Congenital syphilis is a chronic infectious disease caused by a spirochete (treponema pallidum) acquired by the foetus in the uterus before birth.


-Pneumonia is an infection in one or both lungs. Bacteria, viruses, and fungi cause it. 


-Bronchitis is an infection of the main airways of the lungs (bronchi), which causes them to become inflamed.



    There are no medical records from Bessborough’s Mother and Baby Home to substantiate the veracity of these findings, in fact one child’s record cites “Prematurity” as the cause of her death, that’s impossible because the so called child was recorded as been 3 years of age at her last birthday. 


-Prematurity is a term for the broad category of neonates born at less than 37 weeks' gestation


    And more, I have seen Letters from Irish Bishops who wrote to the Nuns - requesting that babies be made available to sell-as they, the Bishops needed money. We know from other official records that the Nuns stole the babies to satisfy the Irish Bishops need for monies. There are also documents that some of the children died in transit and secretly buried, also that some of the babies stolen and sold were children from the age of 3 years old to 10 years of age.


    More shocking is that a few official documents say that Irish babies and children were illegally trafficked by the Nuns, themselves with the support of the Irish Bishops on a HP basis- Hire Lease was an agreement whereby a person lease a child  for a period of time by paying instalments, and can own the  child at the end of the agreement. This is extraordinary to see on office documents, as is the use of the words-Trafficking, Forced Adoption, Hire Purchase, and Commodities.  

       In other words, the family in American or elsewhere that wanted an Irish Baby paid the Nuns $1,500 or $2,000 up front in the 1950s, remember at that time this was a huge sum of money, before the new parents  took possession of the child, and they the new parents, would agree on a Hire Purchase form or contract to pay additionally $65 or more on monthly instalments, till the child reached the age of 18.  A document I have seen also says that the Nuns spoke and wrote about the stolen babies as “Commodities”  Another document also says that the mothers in the Mother and Baby Homes never gave their consent in spite of the fact that the Irish Catholic Church claims otherwise, the Nuns at the Mother and Baby Homes couldn’t produce a single document to support that the women gave their consent for their babies to be stolen. The trafficking of Irish Babies was a huge profitable business for the Irish Catholic Church, worth at the time at over 100 million Irish Pounds. Again another official document goes on to say, that outside private Doctors, Matrons, Welfare Officers and Irish Government Officials, all conspired and received illegal cash payment for their criminal parts in this vast criminal conspiracy, the Trafficking of stolen Irish Babies sold around the world. ​

   The criminal Nuns further criminal acts, it is reported during the period in question that, once a mother and child had been discharged from Bessborough’s Mother and Baby Home, two dates were routinely recorded. The first date of discharge listed is the date when the woman was geographically discharged from Bessborough, while the second date appears to function for administrative purposes, denoting when the woman was discharged from the institution’s books. These dates are separated in some instances by years. In addition, mothers and babies were often kept long after their babies were born, and after they were otherwise medically fit for discharge. 
​
    It appears from the official documents that monies were paid both by the natural mothers for the care of their babies, and by their adoptive parents. The latter were requested to pay sums of money for the time, in the region of £50-£60, and this was payable by monthly premium. 

    More than 120,000 babies and children were stolen, sold and treated as Commodities from their mothers in all the Mother and Baby Homes in Ireland, since the foundation of the State.  Of these, 40,000 were adopted after the introduction of legal adoption in 1952, and a further number were illegally registered as if born to their adoptive parents (known as "de facto" adoptions). Most unmarried pregnant girls were consigned to religious-run, State-funded Mother and Baby Homes in Ireland. The official documents say that the babies and children were stolen and the mothers told that their babies died at birth. What please could be more horrendous for any mother, to be told her baby died! To learn later on in her life that the baby was not dead, but was stolen, sold to another, and then to spend the rest of her life looking for that child and that is one of the worst crimes to commit again another, worse than even death. Owen Felix O’Neill.