The Baby Farms of Tallaght

The Baby Farms of Tallaght

For many years in the first half of the twentieth century, much of the agricultural hinterland around Tallaght was commonly referred to as “The Baby Farms”- notably the hills above Tallaght- around Mount Pelier (or Pelia), Bohernabreena, Piperstown, Ballinascorney, Glassamucky and Killinarden Hill. Baby Farms were not unique to Tallaght, to Dublin, or indeed to Ireland. Nor were they new.  The practice had been common in the previous century, and was from the 1860s subject to regular criticism, scandal and outrage, though perhaps not robust enough legislation, reform or inspection.

Baby Farming, involved the ‘fostering’ (and sometimes trading) of other people’s children for a fixed upfront fee, a regular payment, or occasionally both.  It routinely involved ‘registered’, and ‘unregistered’ children or infants.  Under The Children Act, one was legally obliged to register a child taken in, within 48 hours, with the Local Union (South Dublin Union for Tallaght) and later the local authority.  Registered Children under the age of seven years were typically ‘put out to nurse’, while older registered children between seven and sixteen  years were ‘boarded out’.  These homes were, in theory at least, subject to occasional inspection.  Many children were unregistered.  Unregistered children could, and indeed often were, traded.  One could take an unregistered child with an upfront payment of £10, and then pass the infant or child to someone else who was willing to take it in, for a payment of £5.  Birth mothers, wanting assurances that their child had gone ‘to a good home’ might take comfort in a higher price, though few in reality could afford it.  And those in greatest poverty, had the lowest price.   Invariably the unregistered child could end up with the person least capable of providing for it.  It is a profoundly sobering thought.

The proliferation of unwanted or uncared for children in Dublin, rather tragically, was nothing new. In the 1700s the Foundling Hospital, on James’s Street in Dublin, gradually became “one of the largest Baby Farming Institutions’ and found ever more imaginative and inventive ways of responding to the issue.  In October 1730 they ordered “That a turning wheel, or a convenience, be provided by the gate, so that at any time day or night, a child may be laid in it, to be taken in”.  It was supposed to provide for unwanted children.  However the children were not much wanted in there either.   A hospital nurse in the Foundling Hospital, giving testimony to a committee of inquiry, informed it that children were given a medicine, appropriately called “The Bottle”, at regular but indiscriminate intervals.  Once they had received their medicine, the children ‘became easy for an hour or two after it’.  Nobody seemed quite sure as to what exactly the medicine was.  Of five thousand children admitted to the Foundling ‘Hospital’ in the five years between 1791 and 1796, only one solitary child reportedly ‘recovered’.  When the facts were put before the House of Commons, it unhesitatingly recommended the closure of the hospital.

Widespread poverty, a shortage of housing, overcrowding, no birth control, and a conservative moral environment, made the giving-up, or abandonment of infants and children a far more common occurrence than you might expect, or indeed historical or contemporary reports might reflect.

It was a time when expectations were low, regulations poor and inspections inadequate.  It was also a time when ‘turning a blind eye’ was common place and suited most parties, and accountability often sacrificed for expediency.

The more families in a community who engaged in the practice of unregistered Baby Farming, the less likely it was that anyone in the community would report it to the authorities. Even where children had been registered, in the days when inspectors routinely travelled by bicycle or horse and trap, if they travelled at all, the hills and agricultural hinterland, was not so easily or conveniently accessible, and did not lend itself to, or encourage regular inspection or routine visits.  The demand for cheap agricultural labour and the anonymity that relative seclusion provided for unregistered children, was seductive.  And it generally only came to light, if the child was involved in a serious accident that demanded external involvement or attention.

Over 20 years ago, in 1998, I interviewed some of Tallaght’s oldest residents, for a small local history publication “Since Adam was a Boy: An Oral Folk History of Tallaght.”   Many of them remembered and spoke openly about the baby farms and the children some local people called “rearers”- the children reared on the farms.   Memories and reports varied widely.

An elderly resident who had lived at the Four Roads, on Killinarden Hill in the 1940s, Esther McCabe, spoke candidly:

“Everyone around here fostered kids, everyone.  Some of them were very cruel to them, those poor kids that were fostered.  It was mostly boys, because they could work harder and people would be afraid to foster girls in case they would be going off and having babies.  The people would only be paid until the child was sixteen, and after that the child would have to go off and get work. But if they couldn’t get work, some of the families around here wouldn’t want to know, wouldn’t feed them or anything”.

“God tonight, I saw some cruelty in my day!   A lot of people around my way would keep hens and fowl, and the leftovers from the dinner- the vegetables and potatoes would be kept in a bucket out the back to feed the hens.  It might be there a week or two.  I remember some of those poor children that were fostered, only after turning sixteen, and they asking if they could have the leftovers for to eat, they would be that hungry.  They would eat the vegetables cold and whatever else was left out the back for the hens.  People would call the foster kids rearers, because they were reared on the baby farms  They would be fostered out of the South Dublin Union.  Many of the farmers up in Bohernabreena fostered four, five, maybe six kids.

Another older resident who lived in Bohernabreena from the 1930s recalled:

“All that country above and below that area (Bohernabreena), was known as the Baby Farms.  It was called that because every family up there, bar one or two, had children taken in from the institutions to be reared.  The families would get so much a week or a month, from the institution, for keeping the children.  Some families would have three maybe four, maybe five children taken in.  It seemed like a handy way to make a few bob.  Then when the child reached sixteen, that was it!  The allowance would be cut.  The families didn’t like them being called Baby Farms, but that is what they were I suppose.  Hundreds of kids were reared up in those hills above Bohernabreena.  They were reared well, went to school with the rest of the children, well dressed and had plenty to eat, as well as anyone else.

Matt Dunbar, in an interview in 1998

Children had been officially “boarded out” or “sent to nurse” to the hills above Tallaght since at least the 1880s.  In 1885, 13 year old Julia Cummins and 12 year old Julia Ward, were placed from the workhouse in South Dublin, to a farm at Ballymorefin, Tallaght Co. Dublin.  One might have assumed their change in circumstance, would be a welcome improvement on their time in the workhouse. But less than two weeks later they both absconded from the farm. Police and others “requested to endeavour to discover the whereabouts of the girls, and assist the Board of Guardians to recover custody of the girls”.  The public were cautioned against harbouring the girls or taking them into service, without acquainting or obtaining the consent of the Board of Guardians.  Offenders would be prosecuted.

“More through carelessness than neglect”

In November 1912 Sarah Mc Donald was only 4 months old, when she was placed ‘at nurse’ with Mrs Mary Lawlor in Oldcourt, Tallaght.  Several weeks later, on the 23^rd November, Mr Joseph Brown, an Inspector with the N.S.P.C.C., visited the home and found the infant in a back room lying on a sack of chaff, covered with an old jacket. The baby was very emaciated, with parts of the body red and scalded. He visited again two days later, and found the baby still lying on the sack of chaff, but clean.  He noted the scalds on the child’s body and neck and advised Mary Lawlor on how to treat the scalds. The child was delicate and vomited up its food- Neave’s Food and Swiss Milk.  Brown directed Lawlor to take the baby to the doctor.  Lawlor failed to take the child to the doctor, and when Brown visited some days later he again directed her to take the baby to a doctor. He made an official report to the Society, who directed him to remove the child to the South Dublin Union on the 13^th December.

Lawlor had also been visited by Mary Donnelly, an inspector under the Infant Life Protection Act.  She told Donnelly she had been feeding the infant bread and milk.  Donnelly advised that that was not an appropriate diet for a four month old baby.  She instructed Lawlor to get powder to treat the scalds on the baby, and also instructed her to take the child to a doctor.  When Donnelly visited again, Lawlor had not carried out her instructions.   Sarah McDonald was removed to the South Dublin Union on the 13 December.  A couple of days before she was removed, Mary Lawlor had finally brought the baby to the local dispensary.  Dr P.J Lydon examined the child and found it “delicate,  in an advanced stage of marasmus while its hands twitched frequently as if it were suffering badly from colic pains.  There was also a little scalding”.  He held out little hope for the child’s recovery.

Little Sarah McDonald died of malnutrition days later in the South Dublin Union.  Miss Mary Donnelly, gave evidence that Mrs Lawlor had failed to carry out her instructions but this was ‘more through carelessness then neglect’.  The verdict held that the child died of malnutrition due to its failure to assimilate its food.  Many children were extremely delicate and vulnerable, when being put out to nurse. 

 

Slept in a Pigsty 

Being incapable of looking after your own children, was no bar to adopting others. The Lawlor’s next door neighbours in Oldcourt, Patrick and Eileen Dunne were brought up on charges of wilful neglect the following year.  The Dunne family had three children of their own- Daniel (7), Thomas (9) and Peter (12) and had adopted a young girl, Mary Boland.  Mary Boland, while adopted by the Dunnes, slept in Lawlor’s pigsty next door.  Inspector Brown found Mary in a shocking state- starving and with barely any clothes.  When the Dunnes were evicted from their cottage in April 1913, they went to stay with Patrick Dunne’s sister in Firhouse, but were put out after Eileen Dunne quarrelled with her sister-in-law.   Patrick Dunne worked fairly consistently, but had reportedly given his wife only 4d in five months for food for the children.   When brought before the court Eileen Dunne, presented with a black eye, which she claimed was caused by her husband.  He claimed she had been drunk and had fallen over.  Dunne’s children were left to wonder the roads of Tallaght, begging for food, saying they were starving.  Dunne was sent to jail for three months with hard labour.  His adopted daughter, little Mary Boland, who had been sleeping in the neighbours pigsty, was sent back to the South Dublin Union, pending her removal to an Industrial School.

Child Neglect was by no means confined only to Nurse Children, Boarders or “Rearers”.  In 1911, Edward and Catherine Hughes of Oldcourt were prosecuted, at the instance of the Society for the Protection of Cruelty to Children (NSPCC), before Tallaght Petty Sessions on charges of Neglect and Cruelty to their seven children. Together the couple lived in a house, which was described in court as ‘practically a ruin’.  Five of the seven children were under ten years of age.  When visited by Inspector Brown, “The condition of affairs in the house was absolutely disgraceful. The house was in a most filthy condition, part of the roof tiles were missing entirely, and the rest of the roof had several holes in it.  There was no door or window in the ruin, and old sacks hung in their place. There was only one bed, which was covered with straw and old sacks, and the floor was strewn with straw and rags on which a dog was lying. Some of the children said they slept on the floor, and indicated some stones on which they used as pillows. The children were nearly naked and there was no food in the house”.

Inspector Brown, visited at least four times, sometimes bringing clothes from the NSPCC for the children.  On his final visit he found the clothes scattered and trampled in the straw on the floor.  Dr Caleb Powell also visited the house on several occasion, and bore witness to Inspector Browns findings.  He said in all his experiences he had never seen anything to equal the awful conditions in the house.  The children were in a filthy condition and one little girl aged three was entirely naked.  Mr Moran for the Society requested the magistrate to issue a warrant for the arrest of Mr Hughes and also for Mrs Hughes, and that an order be made to have the children sent to the South Dublin Union.  The Bench agreed to Mr Moran’s request, but released Mrs Hughes out on bail until the next court sitting.

A Family Matter

It was a time when people kept themselves to themselves.  Family matters were private matters, and an unregistered child could easily be passed off as a niece, a nephew or distant relative who had come to stay, as was often a reality, where many large families inhabited confined and inadequate housing.  Raising concerns about the welfare of other people’s children, and in particular children either sent ‘out to nurse’, or simply taken in, was not always appreciated.

In 1916, Miss Mary Shields from Clondalkin, was brought up before Tallaght Petty Sessions, on charges of having assaulted a nurse child, Patrick Doyle.  Extraordinarily, Patrick was in the care of another woman- Mrs. Doran, who had a number of children, “boarding-out” with her.  Ms Shields, with good intentions, brought a very reluctant Patrick Doyle to the local barracks, and reported that he was being mistreated in the care of Ms. Doran.  In evidencing her claim, she stripped the child in the barracks.  The child bore ‘only a slight mark’ of being mistreated, and it was Ms Shields who subsequently found herself charged with assault, for having undressed the child.  She was bound to the peace for the assault, and reprimanded for interfering with Mrs. Doran.

On the same day that Mary Shields was charged in Tallaght, a verdict was delivered on the death of an unregistered Nurse Child in Dublin.  Four month old Mary Donnelly died from malnutrition after being brought to Patrick Dunns hospital in Dublin City.  Mrs H Connor of Townsend Street, only had the child four weeks and received 12s a week for its care, when it took ill and expired.  She had been aware that a nurse child should be registered, but claimed she didn’t realise it should be registered within 48 hours. 

Enough is Enough

Thomas Cahill was only a small boy when he was sent from the South Dublin Union ‘out to nurse’ with Margaret Miley and her husband on their farm in Ballinascorney, where he stayed until he was 16 years old.  As such he was a ‘registered’ boarder.  He worked hard on the farm during the day, and liked to read ‘Penny Dreadful’ comic books and cheap and exciting literature, by candle light in the evening.  On Friday evening the 24^th November 1910, Thomas Cahill and Mrs Miley (42) were alone on the farm. Her 59 year old husband and gone to town.  Cahill (16), had had enough of Ballinascorney and enough of the Mileys. He approached Mrs Miley and demanded money, saying either she give him a pound or he would go upstairs and take it himself.  Mrs Miley refused to give him any money and went out to the dairy.  A few moments later Cahill followed Mrs Miley, meeting her as she returned out of the dairy shed.  He drew a revolver from his pocket, pointed it at Mrs. Mileys head and fired it, from a distance of only two feet.  The bullet struck her on the forehead, glancing off it.  Margaret Miley slumped to the ground, unconscious.  When she regained consciousness, she managed to walk the half mile to her sister’s house.  Cahill fled across the fields, before later being picked up by Constable Humphreys from Brittas.  Cahill was arrested, and returned to the farm.  He showed Sergeant Farrell where he had hidden the six-chamber revolver in a rabbit burrow, with 33 cartridges.  Only one of the six chambers was empty.

Sixteen year old Cahill was charged with attempted murder.  Cahill claimed Mrs Miley was in the habit of abusing him and that he had told her and her husband, that someday he “would make them pay for it”.  On the day in question, Cahill claimed he had been threatened by Mrs Miley with a spade.  He noted that Margaret Miley “Must have a head like iron to still be on her feet”.  Cahill was remanded in custody, while Mrs Miley “progressed favourably”.

Census Returns 1911

A cursory glance at the 1911 census returns for Tallaght give some indication as to the scale of officially “boarded out” children, or infants “At Nurse” in Tallaght.  The 1901 Census returns are not dissimilar.  These are of course only the ‘official figures’, and give little indication as to the scale of ‘unregistered’ children, taken in in the district.  Children could be variously identified as nurse child, boarder, lodger or visitor.  Their ages, names and place of birth can give some clue as to their status.

Almost all the children registered as ‘boarded out’ were from Dublin City.   Many families of modest means had ‘servants’, often boarded out children, who had come of age and stayed on with the family.

Margaret Smyth, a 65 year old widowed farmer, in Corrageen, Tallaght, lived with her two sons and a daughter.  She had 2 boys, boarding, and a 9 year old male ‘visitor’ from Dublin City.

Patrick Saul, a 38 year old Farmer in Glassamucky, his 60 year old brother and 50 year old widowed sister, had four young girls taken in from Dublin City, all aged between ten and fourteen years.

Ellen Walsh, a 72 year old spinster in Piperstown had three boarders all under thirteen years of age, all from Dublin City.

Elisabeth Conlon, a 69 year old farmer in Corbally, had three young boarders, all male between ten and twelve years.

Jane Flood, of Cunard, a 73 year old, had four boarders between the ages of nine and fourteen years.

James Corcoran, a 70 year old Widower and farmer had three young boarders, between nine and twelve years, all from Dublin City.

Esther Carthy in Tallaght Town, a 29 year old, had four ‘nurse’ children under seven years.

Mary Loughlin, a blind and illiterate spinster and farmer in Killinarden, had two girls taken in from the city, aged 11 and 12.  Mary was assisted by her cousin who lived with her.

John Lawless in Killininny, an illiterate sand contractor and his wife, had two infant girls, both nine months old, at nurse.

Susan Ford in Kilnamanagh, a 62 year old Widow, had three children taken in, two boys, six and eight and a six month old infant girl. (Ten years earlier in 1901, she had four boarders and a 10 year old ‘visitor’ from Dublin city)

The Doyles in Mountpelier had three Boarders under thirteen years of age.

Anne Carty in Mountpelier, had two male boarders, both under twelve years.

Peter Grant and his wife, both 70, had two boys taken in, both under thirteen years.

The Ledwidge Family in Old Bawn, in addition to their own seven children had two young boarders.

Teresa Walsh, an 87 year old widow in Piperstown had two boys, thirteen and eleven years.

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Get Rid of the Boy

In 1924 Mary Kilbride, of Allagower, Tallaght, was charged at Rathfarnham District court of having failed to send  a young boy, who had been sent to nurse with her, to school.   The Justice noted that children should only be sent to nurse, to people who would care for them properly. Kilbride responded that she would be glad to get rid of the boy.  The Justice said he would bring her remark to the attention of the commissioners, and promptly sent the boy to an industrial school.  He “hoped” that the department of finance would make proper provision for the maintenance of children sent to industrial schools, under the School Attendance Act. Mary Kilbride, the youngest of three spinster sisters, had been rearing nurse children from Dublin City for over 20 years.

Nobody's Child 

In 1932, Bridget Clarke and James Curley, both from Longford, abandoned their infant child in Tallaght, Co. Dublin.   They abandoned the infant in the hope that it would be found and taken to a house, by a kindly Samaritan.   Their defence solicitor, Mr. J Barrett, claimed that the young pair were in a state of panic and had no friends to consult.  Curley was sentenced to six months with hard labour while Clarke was let out on the condition that her parents took her back in. What became of the infant was not reported.  It was a common story for the time.

In late October 1934 on a Saturday evening, a Tallaght man was walking down the Cookstown Road, when he heard what sounded like a baby crying in a hedge. On investigating the cry, he found a two month old male infant abandoned, lying concealed in a straw fish basket under a bush by the side of the road. The infant was taken to the Garda Barracks in Tallaght, before being transferred to the South Dublin Union.  It was an unremarkable incident, that merited less than eight lines in the paper.

It was by no means a new phenomenon.  Seventy years earlier concern was expressed about the increasing number of children being abandoned.  When Margaret McDonnell pleaded guilty to abandoning her child on a Tallaght road in 1860, Mr. Justice Hayes, sentencing her to four months imprisonment, observed that the crime of child desertion was becoming increasingly common in the county.

Acknowledgement of widespread Baby Farming- 1939

The Department did not seem to mind

The problem of abandoned and neglected children, continued on well into the 1940s, as did arrangements, both formal and local.

In 1939 “Baby farming was being practiced extensively and the department did not seem to mind”, according to Mrs Mulvey at Rathdown Board of Assistance.  It was more convenient, and expedient, for the department to simply turn a blind eye to the practice of Baby Farming.  It suited rate payers, administrators, guardians- at times the birth parents and foster parents.  In fact it suited almost everyone but the infants and children.

Families could unofficially ‘adopt’ a child and pocket between £5 and £10, but then later apply for relief from the union or Board of Assistance for their maintenance. Often families could take four or more children, on such terms.  The death of a “board-child” in 1941 gave rise to the first suggestion that perhaps babies put out to board should also be provided with a “paid for cot”.  Patricia Ardiff, a two and a half year old child died from hemorrhage, likely caused by a fall.  The child had been placed sitting up in a large drawer placed on two chairs, and fell back striking her head.  Several days earlier the same child had struck her head on a fender. 

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In recent decades much attention and inquiry has focused on defined institutional settings- Industrial Schools, Mother and Baby Homes and the Magdalene laundries.   It is perhaps easier and more comfortable for a society, to explore and investigate the actions and behaviors of large institutions, of the more easily defined “Them”,  rather than of “Us”.  The Baby Farms kept no files, no records and no notes.

But the Baby Farms were very close to home indeed.  They were not hidden behind the tall and ancient enclosures of institutional walls, or run by veiled and faceless characters with assumed names, who had taken vows of silence and obedience.

The Baby Farms were run by your neighbours and mine, perhaps your great-grandparents or mine. And they were hidden behind nothing more than a cloak of silence, an Irish Omerta.  Like the institutions, they reflected at various times, the very best and the very worst of the communities they constituted and the communities they served.  For the most part, they were run by people living in difficult conditions through difficult times, trying to help others and themselves, as well as they knew how, in accordance, though not always, with the changing standards and expectations of the day.

In every community the brightest light as the candle fades, can sometimes cast the longest shadow.  Some only remember the warmth of the flame, and some the darkness around it.

I will leave the final word, to one who remembered so vividly, The Baby Farms of Tallaght:

“I remember one fellow that had been fostered and very hard reared, and went off and got three jobs- killed himself with the work, to give to his children what he never had himself.  Though his mother-in-law got the drop of her life when her young-one went off and married him, he made Kings and Queens of his children.  All those lads, when they got married, by God they treasured their children.  They all went off and had big families of their own and treated their children like Lords and Ladies”.

(Mrs Esther McCabe, in an interview in 1998)

Albert Perris