by Mike Milotte
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.5 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’.6
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.7
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.8
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’.9 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.10 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 investigati
on 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.11 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.’
Marie Keating went on to explain what this could mean. ‘Of course if that happens,’ she wrote, ‘we will not be able to get the baby as in the hospital she would be under the authorities, the same as in England as we now have an adoption law here. In our home we would register the baby in your name, but in the hospital the babies are registered in their Mothers (sic) name.’ This was a clear and unambiguous acknowledgement that St Rita’s operated outside the law by falsely registering the details of children born there. Marie Keating also revealed the utterly haphazard nature of matching children with would-be adopters: ‘Mammy said to tell you,’ she assured Mrs Autry, ‘if you do not get this Baby, that the very next one you shall have, and when she comes out of hospital she will see about it for you... we will get you one very soon.’12 And so they did.
Before the end of the month Mrs Keating called Mrs Autry and told her to come immediately: a baby had become available, a boy whose unmarried mother, Mrs Keating said, was a singer, and whose natural father was a policeman. But when Mrs Autry arrived it turned out that ‘her’ baby was too sick to travel. She had to spend the next week residing at St Rita’s while the baby, whom she named Eugene (Gene), was kept in a box next to a heater. In the meantime, Mrs Keating registered the baby’s birth, giving Wesley and Mary Autry as his parents’ names. And to make it appear that Gene was born after Mrs Autry entered Ireland – which was essential if the deception were to work – Mrs Keating also falsified Gene’s birth date, entering 24 March 1953 in the register when, as the Garda investigation later discovered, he had actually been born on 7 March. In later years Mrs Autry told Gene she paid nothing to Mrs Keating other than the fees associated with her own and the natural mother’s stay at St Rita’s.
When baby Gene was well enough he was baptised at the Sacred Heart Church in Donnybrook as though he were the natural child of the Autrys – just as the Harden babies had been before him – but whether or not the Parish Priest, the Very Reverend Timothy Condon, was party to the deception is unclear. During Reverend Condon’s time at the Donnybrook Church (1950-1962), virtually all the falsely registered babies from St Rita’s were baptised there. And in 1954, the year of the (first) Garda investigation into St Rita’s, Donnybrook Sacred Heart Church had got a new Sacristan, Joe Doyle, then just 18 years old but in later life a Fine Gael TD, Senator, and Lord Mayor of Dublin. Joe Doyle remained as Sacristan in Donnybrook for 28 years, relinquishing the post only when he was elected to the Dáil in 1982. Mr Doyle developed a close friendship with Mrs Keating but, when approached by this author, he angrily refused to discuss what he knew of her illegal business.
Although they had baptised baby Gene a Catholic, neither Wesley nor Mary Autry were Catholics and, according to the Garda investigation, both were divorcees from previous marriages. The Garda investigation also revealed that baby Gene Autry’s natural mother used a false name – Power – during her stay at St Rita’s, and although they quickly discovered her real name, no one in authority saw fit to correct the false information in the Register of Births where, by law, the natural mother’s name must appear. Instead, the name ‘Autry has been allowed to remain indefinitely on the public record. And this was done not just in the Autry case but in all eight cases investigated by the Gardai in 1954.
Within days of baby Gene’s false birth registration and baptism, Mrs Autry took him back to the UK, where she and her husband were subsequently interviewed by officers from the Irish Special Branch. They lived in constant fear that their baby would be taken from them and sent back to Ireland, and they spent the next two and a half years in the UK desperately trying to resolve the mess their association with Mrs Keating had got them into. Although the Irish authorities never issued a passport so Gene could be taken legally to the United States, as we will see, the Autrys – along with the other Air Force couples involved in the Garda investigation – found a way around this obstacle, to the great annoyance of Irish officialdom.
Another of the cases that Detective Inspector Flaherty investigated involved a Major Burns of the US Air Force. Major and Mrs Burns had acquired no less than three children from St Rita’s, a boy and twin girls. The American couple appear to have met the expectant Irish mothers of these children in England, through the Crusade of Rescue and Homes for Destitute Catholic Children. An English priest attached to this organisation provided them with an introduction to another priest in Dublin, and he in turn put
Mrs Burns in touch with Mrs Keating at St Rita’s. Mrs Burns then arranged the repatriation and confinement of the unmarried women concerned and paid all their expenses, including Mrs Keating’s bills. The whole operation had the appearance of a well worked-out system based on an intricate network of contacts in Ireland and Britain. Major and Mrs Burns acquired their three children on two separate visits to St Rita’s – in October 1952 and November 1953. As with baby Gene Autry and Lynda and David Harden, all three children were registered as the Burns’ own natural children, eliminating the real mothers from the record. They took the children back to the American Air Force base at Ruislip in West London where Major Burns was stationed.
Once the conspiracy was uncovered by the American embassy in Dublin, and when the Special Branch had completed their
investigation, Major and Mrs Burns, like all the other couples involved, were told not that they faced prosecution for potentially serious criminal offences, but that they had to apply in the normal way for Irish passports for their illegally acquired children. It was the beginning of a long and sometimes bizarre religious inquisition for the Major and his wife in which the Irish State acted – aggressively and with seeming relish – as the thought-police of the Catholic Church.
The Irish natural mothers of the three Burns children were Catholics, and so the Department of External Affairs undertook to satisfy itself that the Burns couple would bring the children up in the Catholic faith. The new Adoption Act made no reference whatever to such conditions being met by intending foreign adopters before passports would be issued to their selected children. This was a condition inserted entirely by the Department. But the manner in which the Department dealt with the Burns’ application for passports indicated that the Irish civil servants, and their Minister, Liam Cosgrave, were determined to apply Archbishop McQuaid’s religious tests as though they had the force of law – while, bizarrely, ignoring the actual breaches of law.
When the Department received the required documents from the Major and his wife in support of their passport applications, the officials immediately rejected their marriage certificate because it was a civil document, not a Church one. They also demanded Major Burns’ baptismal certificate and a reference from the couple’s Catholic pastor in America recommending the adoption of the three children ‘from the religious point of view’.13 The ‘problem’ was that Major and Mrs Burns were a mixed-marriage couple. She was a Catholic, he a non-Catholic. And there was another obstacle: Mrs Burns had been married previously and had failed to produce evidence of how her first marriage ended, leaving open the possibility that she had been divorced. What relevance this had for the future well-being of the children was not specified, but it was seen by Department officials as a fundamental obstacle in the way of the Burns’ application.