Banished Babies: The Secret History of Ireland's Baby Export Business (6 page)

The Church’s overwhelming concern for preserving the faith was no more nor less than was to be expected, particularly in the pre-Vatican II era, when Catholicism was held to be the only true Christian doctrine, the ‘one true faith’, and when it was believed that a child ‘lost to Protestants’ was doomed. The affidavit swearing to bring the child up a Catholic was the key document in the McQuaid package, yet it is difficult to imagine that it could carry much legal force. Persuading an American court to hear a case on such a matter would have been difficult enough, even if the Archbishop were in a position to discover that the terms of such an affidavit had been broken in the first place. And if he did so discover, it is hard to imagine that he would take the errant parents to court and seek the child’s return to the nuns in Ireland, possibly years down the road.

In comparison to the minutely detailed religious and financial proofs required by McQuaid, the method of establishing a couple’s suitability
as parents
was somewhat imprecise. What McQuaid asked for was a ‘recommendation’ from Catholic Charities, but he laid down no standards of his own in this regard, content, it seems, to trust the entire process to the Americans. But when the Diocesan Directors of Catholic Charities met for their national conference in November 1950, they expressed great reluctance to get involved. They did not favour the transatlantic adoptions at all, and only agreed to co-operate because nothing could be done to stop the importations. O’Grady told the conference, ‘I should make it clear once more that we are not trying to encourage people to bring Irish children into this country. We are simply trying to do what we can to protect the faith of the children when people insist on bringing them in.’
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A couple approved by Catholic Charities would be approved primarily as good Catholics. But was a two-paragraph letter from a priest an adequate recommendation, or was a full social worker’s report required? These matters were left vague.

And there was another problem, for while Catholic Charities might recommend a couple as ‘suitable’ adopters on the basis of their religion and material wealth, they had no way of recommending them as parents for a particular Irish child about whom they knew nothing and in whose selection they would play no part. McQuaid cannot have been ignorant of the pitfalls of his scheme since his closest adviser, Cecil Barrett, knew precisely what contemporary adoption theory said was required for a successful adoption – including very close matching of child and parents, something that was totally impossible in the Irish-American mail-order adoption scenario.

Nevertheless, the half-hearted agreement from Catholic Charities made it possible to reopen the door for Americans to again take children from the two main Dublin ‘orphanages’. From now on the standard procedure required the American couple to write to the orphanage of their choice, enclosing all the religious and financial proofs. The nuns would then forward the papers to Chris Mangan, McQuaid’s secretary, who might consult Cecil Barrett if there were any obvious peculiarities, such as if the applicant were a single male, an elderly couple, or a couple with very many children already. When Mangan was satisfied all was in order, he put the papers before the Archbishop for formal approval, and if McQuaid said yes, the nuns proceeded to apply for a passport for the child they had selected for the successful couple. That at least was the theory, but it didn’t always work like that. Loopholes were found.

While the Church authorities – on both sides of the Atlantic – had been quick to identify their concerns and take the steps they thought best to protect the faith, the civil authorities in Dublin had simply marked time as they awaited Archbishop McQuaid’s final decision. Peter Berry, of the Department of Justice, gave a candid explanation for official inactivity. ‘We might’, he wrote, ‘lay ourselves open to accusations from high places that we were facilitating the adoption of a child by a person not of the religion in which the child was being reared... Very delicate questions might arise and it was felt that Departments of State should keep clear.’
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But ‘keeping clear’ meant abdicating civil responsibility for the social welfare of minors, something that could not simply be equated with their religious welfare.

McQuaid had finally laid his cards on the table, putting it up to the State to play its hand, something it did only after the Department of External Affairs received a copy of McQuaid’s new requirements from Sister Frances Elizabeth of St Patrick’s Guild. ‘Very satisfactory’ was how McQuaid’s scheme was described within the Department.
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Copies of McQuaid’s regulations were sent to Irish diplomats in the United States with a request that they be treated as ‘confidential, private and secret, and not… used officially under any circumstances.’
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At the same time, however, Irish diplomatic staff in America were told that the Department had ‘independently’ reached the same conclusion as the Archbishop.

In practice this meant passports would be issued only to children whose intending adopters had been endorsed by Catholic Charities; who had sworn affidavits saying they would rear and educate the child a Catholic; who had produced proofs of religious devotion and, ultimately, who had provided ‘clear certificates from their doctor that they are not avoiding natural parentage’.
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In other words, the State’s ‘independently’ crafted conditions mirrored McQuaid’s requirements in every detail, right down to precluding people who practiced artificial contraception. Joe Horan, who was now personally handling each application for an ‘adoption passport’, even took it upon himself to advise the religious superiors of ‘various Catholic institutions throughout the country… that the Conference of Catholic Charities is at their disposal.’
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For an official body that did not want to be seen to be promoting child exports, the Department of External Affairs was certainly doing a great deal behind the scenes to ensure the smoothest possible passage for children whose dispatch across the Atlantic was approved by the Archbishop.

There could be no doubt that the State had simply followed where the Church had led, yet the Department of External Affairs clearly felt it could not be seen to be taking its cue from the Archbishop. And there were good reasons for that, for the new arrangements came into force at the very moment in 1951 when Church interference in the conduct of the affairs of state had led to an unprecedented political crisis that brought down the inter-party government, enabling Fianna Fail to return to office. The crisis erupted when Minister for Health, Dr Noel Browne, attempted to introduce his ‘Mother and Child’ scheme, offering free medical treatment to all expectant mothers and all children up to age 16. The Hierarchy was vehemently opposed, fearing, among other things, secular intrusion into matters such as birth control that were considered ‘moral’ as opposed to simply medical issues. The bishops told the government in no uncertain terms that such legislation was unacceptable to them. The government – including Noel Browne’s party leader, External Affairs Minister Sean MacBride - told the Dáil that ‘all of us in the Government who are Catholics are... bound to give obedience to the rulings of our Church and our hierarchy.’
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The whole affair led
The Irish Times
to conclude that ‘the Roman Catholic Church would seem to be the effective Government of this country.’
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Such a judgment could equally have been applied to the regulation of the transatlantic adoption traffic.

3. Me Tommy, You Jane

‘Ireland has become a sort of huntingground today forforeign millionaires who believe they can acquire children to suit their whims.’

8 Uhr Blatt
(German newspaper)
13 December 1951

No sooner had Church and State concluded their supposedly independent but in practice identical arrangements for controlling the flow of ‘illegitimate’ babies to America when another scandal broke – this time on a much bigger scale than the McDowell case of 1949.

Tommy Kavanagh was 15 months old when he left for America, where he enjoyed a wealthy and privileged lifestyle. But how he came to be in the United States in the first place was an issue that scandalised Ireland, Britain and America, leading to questions in the Dáil, the House of Commons and the American Congress. Tommy Kav- anagh’s adoption was the most sensational and notorious of all the Irish-American adoptions, yet his name has long been forgotten. The same, however, cannot be said of the woman who adopted him: millionaire Hollywood actress and 1950s pin-up, Jane Russell, whose death in February 2011 inspired obituaries around the world.

In October 1951, Jane Russell, then 32 years old, flew to London to take part in the Royal Command performance. But she had other business to see to as well. As she announced to the media on her arrival, she had come to acquire a little boy for adoption, a brother for the four- month-old baby girl she had already adopted. As one British paper put it, ‘Americans like Miss Russell are constantly besieging adoption society offices in this country. They seek British children because of the possible “colour taint” in their own country.’
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As a result of all the publicity, Russell was inundated with letters from British mothers offering their children to her. But as she quickly discovered, British adoption law prohibited her, as a foreign national, from taking a child who was not a relation from the UK to the US for adoption. But she was not deterred, and she soon let it be known she would not be going home empty handed. ‘I have been advised to try Ireland,’ she told reporters. ‘If it is possible I would like to fly to Dublin this week to pick out a child and make all the arrangements for bringing him to America.’
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It was almost half a century later when another US idol, Madonna, created a similar uproar when she swooped not on Ireland but on Malawi in search of children to take back home for adoption. In the event, however, Russell did not have to go to Ireland. The Irish came to her.

Florrie Kavanagh came from Derry and her husband Michael was from Galway.
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They had both emigrated from Ireland to the UK to get work in the munitions factories during the Second World War. They met at a hostel dance in Coventry and were soon married. Later they moved to Lambeth in south London where they lived in a small council flat. Michael worked on the building sites and earned six pounds ten shillings a week. They had three children of whom Tommy was the youngest.

Florrie claimed to be a big fan of Jane Russell and to have seen all her films. When she heard that Russell was looking for a little boy to adopt she thought Tommy would be ideal for the actress, and would get a great opportunity in life that she and Michael could never provide for him. Shortly afterwards she noticed Tommy kissing a picture in a newspaper and when she looked she saw it was a picture of Jane Russell. Florrie Kavanagh had ‘a strange feeling’ and resolved to make contact with the American actress so she could offer Tommy to her for adoption.

After finding the name of Jane Russell’s London hotel in the newspaper, Florrie bundled up her children, and went out to the telephone box. Russell’s mother answered the call and Florrie told her she had a baby boy to give up for adoption. Mrs Russell remarked that there were difficulties in adopting British babies. ‘But my baby is an Irish baby,’ replied Florrie. That made all the difference. She was invited to bring him to the hotel at 4.30pm that afternoon. It was Saturday, 3 November.

When Florrie arrived with Tommy, Jane Russell was in bed, resting between rehearsals. Tommy crawled up to her and hugged her. That, it seems, was all it took. Florrie was given tea and shown photographs of Russell’s Hollywood mansion which made her gasp. Back home in her Lambeth flat that evening, Florrie discussed the matter with Michael. They agreed Tommy would have a ‘better life’ with Jane Russell. All that was needed now was for the actress to accept the offer.

On the morning of Tuesday 6 November, the Kavanaghs were told to come immediately to Russell’s hotel. She wanted Tommy, but there had been a change of plan, to keep on the right side of British adoption law. Instead of taking Tommy for adoption, Russell would take him for ‘a three-month holiday.’ That afternoon Tommy was issued with an Irish passport and that night he was on the plane, bound for the USA. He never came back. Florrie Kavanagh’s last words to Jane Russell were, ‘I would like you to have him for always.’ Russell squeezed her hand and replied, ‘Sure’.

‘I don’t care what the neighbours are saying,’ said Florrie. ‘My Tommy has been given a chance in a million. And I know in my heart that Miss Russell is a good woman who will give my baby a mother’s love and so much more than I could ever give him.’ She denied she had received any money from Jane Russell, but there was no doubt the child was going to the States for something other than a holiday.

Many years later Tommy Kavanagh’s elder brother, Michael, gave this account: ‘At home... we had an outside toilet and kept things in orange boxes. We didn’t even know what a cushion was. All of a sudden, all these decorators arrived with expensive paintings and furniture. Jane Russell had paid a fortune for them to do the house up. As soon as the decorators finished, though, my mum sold the whole lot down Wilcox Street Market. We got our orange boxes back, we were happy, and we all had a big laugh.’
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When news of Jane Russell’s easy acquisition of young Tommy Kavanagh became public, it sparked an international controversy. One British newspaper wondered if it really was a good thing ‘for a child who was born perhaps from a stock accustomed and inured to hardship and struggle’, to be ‘transplanted to a life of comparative ease.’
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Others asked how it was possible for a mother and father to just give away one of their children. But questions were also asked about the legality of it all.

Had Tommy’s parents applied for a British passport to enable him to travel to America for adoption, their application would have been turned down automatically. British law prohibited the adoption of British children by foreign nationals unless the foreigners were resident in Britain or related to the child in question. That was why Russell decided on an Irish child. Tommy Kavanagh, of course, was an Irish citizen, and left Britain on an Irish passport. But British adoption law also prohibited the removal for adoption abroad of children who were citizens of the Irish Republic resident in Britain, a clause presumably designed primarily to protect Catholic children in Northern Ireland who had availed of Irish citizenship. The law, of course, applied not only to Florrie and Michael Kavanagh, but to Jane Russell and the consular staff at the Irish embassy in London as well. Yet an Irish passport was issued without difficulty allowing Tommy Kavanagh to leave the country with Jane Russell.