Facing uncertainty

Not quite knowing what’s ahead.

Photo by Jignesh Chudasama on Unsplash

Lately, I’ve been feeling in research limbo. Not wanting to immediately go for some things in case they may be a wasted effort mixed with feelings of worry over many other things, that I can’t even tell you what I’ll be doing a week from now. I’m hoping that’ll clear soon.

Something that has been on my mind again and again is the Commission of Investigation into Mother and Baby Homes. I know, I know, I’m a broken record at this point. I’ve accepted it! But it’s something that can be looked at in a genealogical sense too. The question being is: “Do we have the entire picture?”.

Allow me to elaborate. Here are two numbers: 3,658 & 923. The first is how many children died in Pelletstown and the second is how many children died in Bessborough. Except, these numbers are made up of recorded deaths. The one thing that these numbers don’t include is stillbirths. How much would those two numbers grow if stillbirths were included?

When it comes to registering a stillbirth, it took a while for it to happen. While England introduced stillbirth registration in 1927, and Scotland in 1939, it took until 1995 for Ireland to introduce it.

Comparing the UK Government’s website to Ireland’s Citizen’s Information, the UK Government’s regulations are certainly more stringent in comparison to Ireland, where it’s very much a personal decision.

But, let’s look at it from a genealogical perspective, I’m sadly all too used to documenting child loss in a family. I remember doing research into my great-grandmother Ellen’s family. Ellen grew up in a remote part of rural Mayo and was the youngest of 9 children. 2 of her brothers died on the same day. One, 2 years, the other, 2 weeks. Both died from croup. Another example I discovered was a 1911 census return where one woman stated, she had 12 children and by 1911, only 2 were still alive. But that is only from child loss that we can document.

In my own family, I know of two stillbirths, one is documented, and the other I don’t know. So, while I might be quite confident that I’ve thoroughly researched a part of my tree, there will always be plenty of things that I will never know about that records don’t tell us. It just makes me think about those who came before us and those they held dear, who we don’t know about because they couldn’t be registered. Have you come across a similar situation in your research and if so, how did you record them?

One of the names we had on the Bessborough boards was that of a stillborn child whose memory was carried forward by their surviving family and their name wasn’t lost to time. Their name was added, with a simple note next to it which read ‘Born sleeping’. Once again, it makes me wonder how many others aren’t included in that number, as no matter what number any of those sections of infant deaths state, it will not give a true representation because of this.

To finish, look at your tree. While we think we have the whole picture from our research, ask yourself, do we?

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A minor update (albeit, not a very positive one) from my last blog post:

As for the 70 remaining children I’m still searching for that I wrote about in my last blog post, I was immediately stonewalled. One other reason (that wasn’t given originally when they refused it) as to why my FOI requests for the names of Bessborough children were declined, is a result of a Bill introduced by Minister Roderic O’Gorman back in late 2020. This Bill, in the long and short of it — sealed anything created by the Commission of Investigation (including those lists of names that I have been searching for, but doesn’t include info held on children born in the mother and baby homes) for 30 YEARS, meaning that I won’t be able to get a list of children’s names until 2050 when I’ll be 47. So, that can also be added to the list of things where I don’t know what the outcome will be if I do the research, although I’m hoping that update will be a more positive one.