THE SEAN Ross Abbey mother and baby home opened in 1931 and closed in 1969. According to official government records, during that time, 6,414 women were admitted there and 6,079 children were born or admitted there. It was owned and run by the Congregation of the Sacred Hearts of Jesus and Mary.
The Angels Plot at Sean Ross Abbey is shrouded by greenery, with access down a dark, overgrown shrubbery tunnel and a thin bridge across a stream.
Only people with a purpose, who know it is here, would find it.
There’s a peace and a sadness both about the little plot. Memorial plaques are adorned with faded plastic toys and tiny knitted caps and booties hung about them.
The plaques don’t mark the exact resting place of the little ones. They are buried everywhere beneath the grass plot, and maybe elsewhere beyond this space, in an adjoining field with nothing to mark the passing of their short lives.
Anyone who spends a while here listening to the silence, broken only by the sounds of nature, will be assured that the little souls in this plot are at rest.
The only phantoms walking here are the ghosts of broken promises and broken hearts.
Michael Donovan from Roscrea and Ann Connolly from Limerick are two of the many people involved in the campaign to get answers for the survivors of the Sean Ross Abbey mother and baby home.
Michael founded the ‘We’re Still Here’ group, whose members are determined not to allow the redress scheme obscure the fact that there are women and children still searching for each other and concerns that babies are lying in unmarked graves at the abbey.
He and Ann brought the Limerick Post to the Angels Plot, where the compassionate current owner leaves a key hanging from a tree for those drawn here.
‘I noticed lots of small bones on top of the clay’
Michael says owner Tony Donnellan has been “very good to our group and to all the survivors”.
“He makes it possible for people to visit here and to visit the abbey. There’s hardly a week goes by when people don’t turn up. He gives us access. Anything he can do he does.”
When Michael first came upon the abbey to work as a gardener in the mid 1980s, it was no longer a mother and baby home. But the stories and the physical legacy survived.
“We were sent down to clean up a piece of land,” he told the Limerick Post. “I didn’t know then it was a children’s plot. We used a tractor. We dropped the plough and as it dug I noticed lots of small bones on top of the clay.”
Years and much campaigning later, a test area was dug, Michael said.
“It was around around one tenth of the plot. They dug up 32 remains and enough bones to make up 10 more individuals.
“The nuns handed in 269 death certs in to the inquiry (Commission of Investigation into Mother and Baby Homes, 2015) but we have proof that 1,090 babies died here plus 23 adults,” Michael told this reporter.
The records of those deaths, which have been seen by the Limerick Post, make grim reading. There are dozens of references to “marasmus” as cause of death.
The clinical definition of marasmus is “a condition of chronic undernourishment occurring especially in children and usually caused by a diet deficient in calories and protein”. Starvation to you and I.
At lest two deaths are listed as being due to “sunstroke”, one referring to a baby boy just eight days old.
‘Most of the babies were buried by the gardeners’
“Some (babies) were buried without coffins. It wasn’t uncommon for them to be buried in just shrouds or in lime – lime would literally dissolve the bones,” Michael says.
“The issue of burials was raised by Martin Browne, a local Sinn Féin TD, and the nuns wrote a reply to say that all the babies were buried at a significant depth and in coffins, but that’s not true. Most of the babies were buried by the gardeners.”
“People were telling us things about the area just outside of the Angels Plot, and we asked Roderic O’Gorman if he would scan it, which he did.
“The scan found four ‘anomalies’ – they refused to dig because they don’t think they are graves. But we want to rule it out or in. Someone in Dublin saying they think they aren’t graves is not good enough.”
Another known practice was to bury unbaptised babies in “a big hole behind the area of the cross where baptised babies were buried,” said Michael.
“We know there is a tank or a chamber 20 metres long by two meters wide. We, as a group, want the lid taken off that chamber.
“We want the anomalies dug, we want the tank or the chamber opened up to tell us what’s in it – if anything. We want the council map rectified.
“The nuns handed in 269 death certs – we have proof that 1,090 babies and 23 adults died here. Those are the ones we know about. Where are the other 900? We deserve answers. We’ve been asking long enough.”
Michael has no connection with the home, other than his time working there. But he has fought for the answers because he is haunted by what he saw and heard.
“It’s when I saw those small bones – the small bones stayed with me.”
