Memento Mori
A dignified burial (heck, even a memorial) would go a long way...
Firstly, thank you to every single one of you that attended my talks at RootsTech over the past few days. If you missed any of them, you can find them all here. Now that it has concluded and the anxiety of giving talks to such a large audience has subsided for me, it’s back to (semi-)regular programming for me.
After a while, I suspect I’ll start to sound like a broken record although I hope to write about a lot more before any of that happens. At the moment, the public is aware of the names for 887 children who had died in Bessborough. We’re still searching for 36 names. At this point, I am going through every detail of the Commission’s report to see if I can figure out who I am missing. However, that’s proving to be more difficult than I’d like at the moment. But one detail that did catch my eye was about one of the mothers.
She was a lady who had died in Bessborough in 1974 at the age of 81, spending time there since 1923. When Carmel and I had gone to the GRO in Roscommon last November, this was one of the people we had been searching for. We had an age, location and year - that was it. We weren’t able to find her there. (I did end up finding the missing name as the caretaker was able to assist me. Her name was Bridget O’Leary — she died on March 23rd, 1974 at the age of 81.)
I had known that there was a plot in St. Joseph’s Cemetery in Ballyphehane, Cork, but didn’t know where it was. Thankfully, one kind caretaker showed me around and brought me to the Bessborough plot. This is the state of the plot which I was greeted with.
It looked messy and there are only two memorial markers, one of which is severely damaged. [As in split in half, damaged] The other one is a metal cross which bears incorrect information.
Admittedly, the first words out of my mouth to the caretaker were “Is that it?” as I had (naively) thought that there would be some semblance of a decent memorial because I know that there are nine individuals buried in that plot. The other 50, which I have burial records for, are in the ‘poor ground’, below is the image of one of the poor grounds in that cemetery.
Along the back wall are a line of headstones added by relatives of those buried in the poor ground at a later point. But what I find incredible (and not in a good way) about this plot that has nine people in it is that the grave owners didn’t seem to show much concern in memorialising them at all.
The two memorials on the plot I showed earlier belong to two mothers: Julia O’Donoghue and Ann Walsh. Julia died in 1984 and Ann died in 1985, both mothers spending over 60 years in Bessborough, making them the longest residents in the institution.
Julia’s plaque was pretty difficult to read, but Ann’s memorial cross bears her ‘house name’, which was Doris. So it doesn’t properly honour her memory (in my opinion).
A house name is a name given to a mother upon entering an institution to obscure her identity to others in the institution with them.
This is more information for some of the burials that 859 missing children don’t have the luxury of having. For 9 people, why wasn’t there even an attempt made to put a proper memorial on the plot? Not even adding a ‘cover all’ memorial with an inscription like ‘In memory of the Bessborough children buried here’? But the fact that they had stopped short of that, to me is quite telling.
So, while looking into seeing if there is any way of getting a memorial placed in that plot, [there may not be, but we may as well see, right?] — here are the names of the 5 mothers and 4 children who are buried in that plot.
Bridget McCarthy - November 22nd 1927 - 23 years
Michael Thompson - December 19th 1927 - 2 months
Joseph Grace - May 28th 1928 - 1 month
John Grace - June 22nd 1928 - 6 weeks
John Swanton - June 26th 1928 - 2 months
Catherine (Kate) O’Brien - July 27th 1929 - 25 years
Bridget O’Leary - March 23rd 1974 - 81 years
Julia O’Donoghue - May 17th 1984 - 81 years
Ann Walsh - January 23rd 1985 - 85 years
May their names be whispered by angels.
I love what you're doing, Daniel, and many other people do too! Could you set up a "Go Fund Me" asking for funds to create this type of plaque or memorial - it they would allow them to be added to the plots? Perhaps find out the cost of such a memorial for the amount to ask for. You know you'll have the support of many!