Banished Babies: The Secret History of Ireland's Baby Export Business

by Mike Milotte

  Tommy Kavanagh and Mary Theresa Monaghan spent their troubled childhoods in California, but for much of the 1950s, the real locus of questionable adoptions remained Chicago. A couple of years after Father Brogan’s revelations concerning Irish children being handed over to unvetted adopters in the city by visiting Irish priests, Chicago was back in the limelight when the city was at the centre of a full-scale US Senate inquiry into an international baby adoption racket where infants were changing hands for $3,000 each (€100,000 today). According to one report, adoption law in the state of Illinois was so lax that people came to Chicago from all over the United States to procure babies without any investigation of their suitability.33 The report did not say if any of the children in question had originated in Ireland. But it is known that almost 300 Irish children were sent to Illinois during the course of the American adoption programme, making it second only to New York as a favoured destination.

  With stories like these now surfacing fairly regularly, it was little wonder that Joe Horan in the Department of External Affairs was so obsessed with protecting the Department from prying journalists and questioning politicians. But Horan was certain that his dilemma would soon be resolved by the introduction of an Adoption Act which he believed would ‘put an end to the taking of illegitimates and orphans out of the State by non-nationals’.34

  He was wrong.

  4. A Hard Act to Follow

  ‘The Episcopal Committee had in mind the danger of proselytism in the six counties if there were no restrictions on sending children across the Border’

  Department of Justice letter, 1952

  At a time when the Catholic Church seemed to have no difficulty permitting children to be sent abroad for adoption, it had vehemently opposed the introduction of adoption law within Ireland. This seeming contradiction, however, had a simple explanation. The Church was in a position to exercise control over the foreign adoption programme, but the hierarchy feared they might not enjoy such untrammelled power if adoption law were introduced at home. They were not opposed to adoption in principle, only to an adoption system that might result in the children of Catholic mothers falling into the hands of non-Catholics, and particularly of Northern Irish Protestants. But in January 1952, in the immediate aftermath of the Jane Russell affair and under some pressure from a multi-denominational lobby group called the ‘Legal Adoption Society’, the Irish bishops announced their willingness to countenance adoption legislation provided the ‘faith and morals’ of the children involved could be safeguarded.

  Shortly after the bishops had given this green light, Joe Horan of the Department of External Affairs noted that the officials of the Department of Justice, whose job was drawing up new legislation, had been ‘working day and night’ to ‘bring their draft Bill into line’ with the bishops’ new position.1 But it was not simply a matter of state functionaries doing their best to draft a law that would meet the approval of the Church. The Church – in the person of Archbishop John Charles McQuaid – was playing a direct role in shaping the legislation. Horan recorded that ‘the AB called twice on the M for Justice’, while two of the Minister’s senior officials ‘went twice or more to the AB in connection with the whole business.’ Horan’s source for this revealing piece of information was the Secretary General, Peter Berry, right at the heart of the Department of Justice. Indeed, Archbishop McQuaid himself was to reveal in later years that, along with Father Cecil Barrett, he ‘went over every clause’ in the Bill.2 What this meant was that when the Adoption Act was eventually published, the Archbishop’s imprimatur was firmly stamped upon it.

  Joe Horan mistakenly believed the new legislation was being designed to put an end to the transatlantic baby shipments and he was not the only one. This was a view that was held widely and aired publicly. The German paper 8 Uhr Blatt., for example, had made the same claim in the midst of its exposé of Ireland’s adoption rackets, and no one had seen fit to contradict it. Even in distant Australia, Ireland’s decision to legislate for adoption was seen as essential for bringing the American adoptions – and particularly the more dubious ones – to an end. An article in the Sydney Sun stated: ‘The Government of Eire is rushing through a Bill to curb an extensive baby black market. Irish babies are allegedly sold to childless American couples for about £900 each...’ (or close to €86,000 in today’s money). The Adelaide Mail, under a headline ‘Eire to end Baby Sales,’ quoted an official of the Legal Adoption Society as saying Irish babies were selling in the United States for $2,000 each (nearly €70,000). The new law, it was stated, would prohibit non-nationals from adopting Irish children, just as the law in Britain did.

  The same point of view prevailed in the Department of Justice where the Bill was being drafted. An assistant secretary there had been asked to check and authorise a letter to the Irish ambassador in Washington explaining to him the thinking behind the forthcoming adoption legislation. The approved text stated: ‘There has been a demand in certain quarters for the enactment of such legislation during the last few years, particularly as a result of the activities of certain aliens who wish to adopt Irish children and held out the inducement of large sums of money to induce Irish parents to allow their children to be taken away by these people.’ It was precisely ‘to deal with this situation’ that the Government decided to legislate.3

  What is more, it seems the nuns who were sending the children abroad also believed the new law would put an end to their entire lucrative business, for there was an apparent rush to dispatch as many children as possible before the door closed. The number of children legally sent abroad for adoption in 1952, the last year before the Adoption Act came into force, was 193, an increase of nearly 60% on the previous year, and the highest figure recorded for any year.

  Although there seemed to be near unanimity, not only on the need to end the American traffic but also on the belief that the forthcoming Adoption Act would do so, Archbishop McQuaid had different ideas. When the new Bill was finally published it fell far short of a ban on the export of Irish children. What was outlawed, under section 39 of the Bill (becoming section 40 of the final Act), was the export of legitimate children, but it remained perfectly legal to dispatch ‘illegitimate’ children overseas for adoption – precisely the children under Church control.4 The only other restriction related to age: children earmarked for export would in future have to be at least one year old and no more than seven, where previously they could be of any age. The Adoption Act also required the child’s mother or legal guardian to consent to the sending of the child abroad for adoption. In addition, it made it an offence generally to charge fees for arranging an adoption but it did not preclude adopters from making ‘donations’ to adoption societies. Nor did it prohibit the religious orders who ran the societies from soliciting ‘donations’.

  The clauses in the Act relating to child exports were extremely hard to follow. They were written in such convoluted language that anyone reading the relevant section might not immediately grasp the fact that it was there to regulate the practice of exporting ‘illegitimate’ children. Whether that was the intention or not, it is equally hard to know. (The Act’s distinction between legitimate and illegitimate was eventually found to be unconstitutional.)

  The main thrust of the Adoption Act, however, had nothing whatever to do with foreign adoptions. The Act was brought in primarily to establish legal adoption within Ireland. To this end it set up an Adoption Board to oversee the whole business and, in particular, to approve each individual adoption. In line with the hierarchy’s requirements, the Act prohibited inter-denominational adoptions: only Catholic couples could adopt Catholic children, a child’s religion being defined as that of its parents, or of its mother if she was unmarried. Mixed-marriage couples were not allowed to adopt at all, nor could orphaned children of mixed marriages ever be offered for adoption. Believing Catholicism to be the only true religion, the Catholic Church would have had no problems in allowing Catholic couples to adopt Protestant children, but permit
ting this while prohibiting the reverse would have been too blatantly sectarian, even in the early 1950s.

  The Adoption Act also required all organisations and societies engaged in placing children for adoption to be registered with the Adoption Board, but the law laid down no conditions that had to be met by such societies before or after registration. Any individual or any group of people could constitute themselves as an adoption society, register under the Act, and engage in acquiring and disposing of babies. There was no requirement that the nuns, who continued to dominate the Irish adoption business, should have any qualifications, professional or otherwise.

  One other aspect of the Act deserves mention. It instituted a regime of ‘closed’ adoptions: the natural parents of the child surrendered for adoption were expected to never want contact with their child again, and they were told nothing of the identity of the adopters, while children given up for adoption were denied any legal entitlement to their birth certificate (even though it is a public document) where their pre-adoption Christian name and their mother’s full name (and possibly address), would be recorded. Instead, if they asked for their birth certificate, they would be given an adoption certificate instead, recording only their adopted name and adopted parents’ details. (Ironically, if they knew their actual date and place of birth, they had a very good chance of finding their birth certificate in the public register, and with it, their natural mother’s name.) In years to come, when many natural mothers would try to trace their adopted children, and those children when grown would likewise look for their natural mothers, the ‘closed adoption’ dogma, and the denial of information or meaningful assistance in tracing and reuniting would become an issue of enormous controversy, and source of deep anguish for a great many people.

  As for the failure of the Adoption Act to outlaw the transatlantic baby traffic, this can be attributed directly to the influence of the Church. The relevant part of the Bill,

  Section 39, was shaped by the hierarchy, a fact that was acknowledged by the Department of Justice. ‘Section 39,’ the Department stated in a contemporary paper, ‘was inserted in the Bill as one of the safeguards suggested by the Episcopal Committee in a memorandum that was handed to the Minister for Justice by his Grace the Archbishop on the 3rd of January this year (1952)’.5 But Section 39 was not a safeguard against transatlantic adoptions. The bishops’ concerns lay closer to home. ‘There is little doubt that in suggesting this safeguard,’ the Department of Justice revealed, ‘the Episcopal Committee had in mind the danger of proselytism in the six counties [i.e. Northern Ireland] if there were no restrictions on sending children across the Border’.6

  Even though there were far fewer would-be adopters in the Irish Republic than there were babies in ‘orphanages’, McQuaid and his fellow bishops, in effect, wanted to stop Catholic babies from being taken across the border and placed with Northern Irish Protestant families. Section 39 was aimed against Protestant adoption societies in the Republic who were believed to be engaged in this sort of ‘proselytising’ practice. Under Section 39 of the new Bill, no child could be dispatched in this way without the prior approval of its mother. McQuaid assumed the unmarried Catholic mothers of Ireland, for all their sinfulness, would still have sufficient faith in the ‘one true church’ to refuse to allow their offspring to fall into the hands of Six County Protestants. But at the same time he clearly intended that these mothers should continue to consent to the shipment of their children thousands of miles across the sea to American Catholics.

  The ban on the removal from the State of children under one year of age was also aimed at the Protestant adoption societies. They did not have the same resources as Catholic institutions to house women and their babies for a full year before the children would be old enough to be exported from the Republic, and if they could not provide such places, they would not be able to get their hands on the babies. But of course one potentially very damaging consequence of this was that the children who were destined for America would have bonded with their natural mothers for at least a year before they were separated and shipped off to new parents. Severing this bond at such a late stage in its evolution would do incalculable damage to both mothers and children.7

  So while Section 39 of the Adoption Act sought to close off the cross-border route and further curtail proselytising Protestants, it did nothing whatever to close the route across the Atlantic. Joe Horan, and everyone else who thought the legislators would put an end to the American traffic, must have been sorely disappointed that the new law left the door wide open for it to continue. All they had to fall back on now was Catholic Charities: in its hands lay the future well-being and happiness of hundreds, even thousands, of Irish children. But those who placed their trust in Catholic Charities were in for a shock. And what was more, the ‘little rackets’ that Horan had described with such concern continued to flourish, uninhibited by the new law or those charged with enforcing it.

  5. A Major Inquisition

  ‘50 American couples buy Irish babies through international adoption ring.’

  New Haven and Connecticut Register,

  2nd February 1955

  ‘There was some basis for the allegation in question.’

  Peter Berry, Department of Justice

  Confidential memo 325, dated 8 June 1954 from the US embassy contained an unusual request to the Department of External Affairs: assistance in investigating eight mysterious births in Dublin. The eight babies in question had been born in 1952 and 1953, ostensibly to the wives of American servicemen stationed in Britain who came to Ireland to give birth.1 To the American consular officials it seemed strange that so many military wives should have travelled from the UK to Dublin to have their babies, and they wanted to know what lay behind it. Before the matter was finally resolved, the Minister for External Affairs, and future Taoiseach, Liam Cosgrave, was to become personally involved.

  ‘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’.2 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.’3 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 forc
es 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.4 Whether the officers Anne Phelan encountered were among the ones now being investigated by the American embassy, it is impossible to tell.