Banished Babies: The Secret History of Ireland's Baby Export Business (10 page)

‘It is suspected,’ the embassy noted, ‘that the persons who reported the births of these children and, presumably,

registered them with the local authorities are not the mothers of the children, but obtained them from the real mothers.’ In other words, there was some sort of racket going on whereby Irish babies were being passed to American servicemen and their wives and registered as the Americans’ natural children. If so, it would be highly irregular and illegal.

As we have seen, American servicemen stationed in the United Kingdom had been among the first to spot the opportunities presented by Ireland’s bulging ‘orphanages’. Commenting on their great interest in acquiring Irish babies, one official in the Department of External Affairs had noted a ‘higher than average level of sterility’ among American airmen. But he cited no scientific evidence for this sweeping assertion.

Joe Horan in the passport section of the Department recorded an early meeting he had held with an American airman’s wife who told him Ireland enjoyed ‘quite a reputation among the personnel of the US airbases in Britain as a place where one can get children for adoption without much difficulty’.
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The woman described Ireland as ‘a happy hunting ground’, a phrase that seems to have been in common use.

In the early days, before any sort of regulations were introduced, the airmen would come armed with little more than a reference from a superior officer which was usually enough to secure a child. Major Randal Cole of the United States Air Force supplied such a reference to one of his Staff Sergeants. It makes interesting, if somewhat garbled reading. ‘From my personal association with this airman,’ Cole wrote, ‘I find him of the greatest character, morally and mentally which, in its self (sic) is a pleasure to have a person of this calibar (sic) in your command. These qualities are an asset to the United States Airforce (sic) and a credit to the individual concerned. I take great pride and pleasure to recommend this airman to you.’
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It isn’t clear if this particular airman obtained a baby or not, but certainly others did with even less to go on.

Someone who had direct experience with members of the US armed forces on their adoption trips to Ireland was Anne Phelan, who worked for Aer Lingus in the 1950s. She recalled sitting beside an American Colonel on a flight to Britain. ‘He had a child on his knee and he was very nervous and sweating,’ she said. ‘He asked me to hold the child, which I did of course. We got chatting and then he told me he had bought the baby from an orphanage. I am in no doubt at all that he used the word “bought”, it has stuck in my mind ever since.’ Some time later Anne was working in the Aer Lingus office on Dublin’s O’Connell Street when a different American officer came in with his wife. ‘They informed the Aer Lingus staff that they had come to buy a second Irish baby, because the first one had proved so successful,’ Anne said. Again, she was in no doubt that they referred openly and unashamedly to buying babies.
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Whether the officers Anne Phelan encountered were among the ones now being investigated by the American embassy, it is impossible to tell.

The scam that had been uncovered by the American authorities would certainly have had many ‘benefits’. By registering the birth of an Irish child to an American couple, which is what the embassy knew had happened, the natural mother’s – and father’s – anonymity could be permanently guaranteed since their identities would be completely obliterated, with no reference even to their existence appearing on official documents of any kind. Pretending the child had been born to American citizens also disposed of the need for an Irish passport or American entry visa. Such illegally registered children could simply be entered on the Americans’ own passports. In addition, the American couple could acquire a child (or children in some cases) without having to formally adopt them, thereby avoiding a lot of procedural and legal red tape – an ideal system for couples who, for whatever reason, had been refused permission to adopt a child legally. And for those running such an illegal racket, there was the obvious prospect of making big money, since desperate couples would go a long way to secure a child. And, relative to the Irish, the Americans certainly had the money. Children removed from the country in this way, of course, would not show up in the official statistics – which is why the official figures grossly understate the true extent of the baby export business.

In helping the American embassy with its investigation into the eight suspicious cases in 1954, the Department of External Affairs accepted the request for confidentiality Some of the servicemen involved were high ranking officers in the US Air Force. Scandal had to be avoided. By chance, in that very month of June 1954, the Department had acquired a new (Fine Gael) Minister, Liam Cosgrave.

Although it was clear the law had been broken – and broken in many places – the main concern of the authorities was less to apprehend the wrongdoers than to ‘regularise the position as soon as possible’ by getting the paperwork in order.
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The police were asked to help and Garda Chief Superintendent Carroll of the Special Branch obliged, advising the Department that ‘the necessary enquiries can be made without attracting undue publicity’.
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The task of finding out about the eight babies was given to Detective Inspector John Flaherty of the Special Branch. Flaherty soon reported that seven of the children had been born at St Rita’s Nursing Home, in Ranelagh, South Dublin, a private institution run by an enterprising midwife called Mary Keating. The eighth child would have been born at St Rita’s too but because of antenatal complications, the mother had been referred to the Rotunda maternity hospital.
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Mary Keating, who will feature again in this story in later years, was a capable and ambitious woman with a growing family of her own. As a midwife in 1940s Dublin, she had responded eagerly to a suggestion from one of the city’s leading gynaecologists, Dr Cross, that she should open a private maternity home and go into business for herself. It was 1947, and the American adoptions were already underway. For £1,200 Mrs Keating bought a large, terraced house at 68 Sandford Road, Ranelagh, which she soon opened as St Rita’s Nursing Home. Business was brisk, and not only among the respectably married ladies of the south city suburbs, for Mrs Keating catered also for unmarried girls and women – from city or country. Most of her clients, married or not, were reasonably well-to-do, with enough money behind them to pay the private confinement fees. But Mrs Keating could always find space for a few girls who couldn’t pay, taking them in in return for cleaning and cooking and attending to the needs of her paying clients.

Yet Mrs Keating wasn’t just a hard-headed businesswoman. She also had a reputation for kind-heartedness and an open, non-judgmental approach to the unmarried women and girls in her care. It would have surprised, indeed shocked, her neighbours to know that the Special Branch were interested in the goings-on behind St Rita’s respectable red brick facade.

Detective Inspector Flaherty soon discovered that the eight infants of concern to the American embassy were ‘illegitimate’. But each one, he claimed, had been ‘handed over with the mother’s consent.’ In fact, the only real job the Gardai were asked to perform was to establish whether the mother of each child had consented to their being given to an American for removal from the country. There was no question of discovering who falsified the birth records – a serious offence in itself – or if the Americans had been asked for money in return for the children – also a criminal offence under the recent Adoption Act – and if so who benefited financially. Nor was there any consideration given to prosecuting the American couples for removing children under one year of age from the country. All the babies had been taken to the UK when just days old, again a fundamental breach of the law.

Although a whole string of potentially serious offences had been committed, Detective Inspector Flaherty, quite incredibly, made no mention whatever of illegality in his report. What he did establish was that while all of the unmarried mothers in question were Irish, several of them had been living in England and had been brought back to St Rita’s to have their babies. There was evidence that at least one British anti-proselytising organisation was involved: the Crusade of Rescue and Homes for Destitute Catholic Children.
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Flaherty had indicated that all of the mothers had consented to the surrender of their children, yet when it came to substantiating this claim it turned out that he had been able to obtain signed consent papers in respect of three of the children only. In the other five cases he had no evidence of consent other than the word of Mrs Keating. Indeed, it transpired that Flaherty did not even know the true identity of four of the seven mothers concerned (one of them had twins) since false names had been used throughout their stay at St Rita’s. It was clear that the Special Branch were totally out of their depth in handling such matters.

Despite the law-breaking involved, and Flaherty’s acknowledgement that many of those interviewed by him had been uncooperative for ‘fear of exposure’, the Special Branch man ended his report by assuring his superiors that he had conducted his enquiries on a strictly personal and confidential basis, ‘as instructed’.
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No one would be embarrassed and certainly no one would be prosecuted. Had

Flaherty looked deeper into Mrs Keating’s business he would have discovered that falsifying birth records was common practice for ‘illegitimate’ babies born at St Rita’s.

Major Charles Harden and his wife Lucille were one of the air force couples, whose acquisition of not one but two babies from Mrs Keating had been investigated by the Special Branch.
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The two children Mrs Harden acquired – whom she named David and Lynda – had been born two days apart to separate mothers in December 1952, but Mrs Keating registered them as having been born on the same day to Mrs Harden herself. Mrs Harden had already been turned down when she tried to adopt a child in California before she and her husband moved to a US Air Force base in Britain. It may have been just her age that was against her – she was 40 – but such matters were of no concern to Mrs Keating. Mrs Harden recalled in later life how cold she had felt while staying at St Rita’s waiting for ‘her’ babies to be born. And in later life too, Lynda’s natural mother, Vivian, who was Welsh rather than Irish, told of how she had been directed to St Rita’s by an Irish priest who in turn had been contacted by a family priest in Wales. Vivian recalled how devastated and heartbroken she had been when her eight-day-old baby was removed from her side while she slept, allowing her no opportunity to say goodbye. Vivian had no idea she had been sucked into an illegal baby black market until the Special Branch came knocking on her door three years after she had given birth. It was something that would haunt her through all the years to come. One thing she could – and did – do, however, was attempt to correct the birth registry. When Lynda came to Ireland in later life looking for her birth certificate, it still incorrectly recorded the Major and Mrs Harden as her birth parents, but in the margin was a note to say Vivian had reported this as false and had given her name as the real mother. (This enabled Lynda to find Vivian in later life.)

As for the Hardens, they had already returned to the United States with their babies when the Special Branch investigation got under way, but as their illegal acquisition of the children had been discovered, they had no alternative but to proceed with a legal adoption in the United States, something they had hoped wouldn’t be necessary. To avoid another adoption ‘no’ from child welfare agencies, Mrs Harden this time lied about her age, claiming to be 28 when she was by then well over 40. Somehow she got away with it and their acquisition of the children was finally legalised. David found out at an early age that he was adopted but Lynda only discovered the fact by accident when she was 13. But she was in her late 30s before she found out, through a conversation with David, that they were not twins. These were enormous shocks that she had to cope with in her life – a life already made difficult by profound deafness from birth. The deception in which her adoptive parents had engaged with Mrs Keating had prevented them from ever talking openly or honestly with Lynda about her origins, and this meant relationships were always challenging, imposing great strain on everyone.

‘After learning that I was adopted at age 13,’ Lynda said, ‘I tried to pursue more information from my parents, but they refused to explain what really took place in my birth mother’s life. But I do remember pretty vivid things like my dad saying, “It was very unpleasant and she was very young.” And that was all I could get out of my dad, which really made me angry because I really thought he would tell me since I was closer to him than I was to my mom. From then on I knew they were hiding things from me. I strongly believe what my dad was referring to when he said “it was very unpleasant” was this illegal stuff, this Catholic mess. My parents did not have a good marriage because I remember sensing strong frictions between them when I was growing up without understanding why, and it probably started with all the “illegal mess.” They eventually divorced after David and I became adults. I grew up angry because I hated secrets and I just simply wanted to know what happened and who I was. Later, in my middle twenties, I tried to get some information from mom. She got very defensive and basically told me that I was not old enough to know, which deeply hurt me. After that I never questioned her again because I saw how terrified she was. Sadly both of my parents took their secrets to their graves.’

Another couple who learned about Mrs Keating’s illicit baby business from the Hardens – and subsequently found themselves in the sights of the Special Branch – were Master Sergeant Wesley Autry and his wife Mary.
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It was on Mrs Harden’s advice that Mrs Autry contacted Mary Keating to ask if she could find her a baby. Mrs Keating took her details, and a series of telephone conversations and letters ensued. On 13 March 1953, after Mrs Keating become unwell and had gone into hospital, her daughter, Marie Keating, wrote to Mrs Autry, ‘The girl whoes
(sic)
baby you are to get is not so very well... The doctor thinks he may have to send her into hospital yet.’