Mother told dead baby `only a child'

The mother of the child who died after suffering burns in the Goldenbridge orphanage in 1955 said she learned only from her neighbours of the baby's death. Mrs Christina Howe also said that when she and her husband later went to the orphanage to seek an explanation about how 11month-old Marion had died, they were told she was "only a child" and they were not allowed farther than the front door.

Speaking on RTE radio's Liveline yesterday, Mrs Howe spoke of the circumstances of her daughter's death.

"I had four younger children than Marion and I was attending the Meath Hospital and the almoner suggested to me that I would have to go to convalescence," she said.

"Some of the neighbours minded my other younger children and I wouldn't leave Marion with nobody, because the almoner said she'd get her into Goldenbridge for me and that she would be well cared for by the nuns.

"So of course I agreed to it, thinking I was doing the best."

Her husband had been working in England at the time and it was there he received the news of Marion's death.

"He didn't know whether he was on his head or his feet when he got the telegram. It said in the telegram that Marion had died. Don't bother coming over, we will do the necessary arrangements. So he said, Oh God, I have to get out of here immediately and he came home by boat.

"He came home and went to an aunt in York Street and they went up to St Ultan's Hospital and the sister there said: `It was far too late when we got Marion. We could do nothing . . . ' The sister said both of her legs were burned, badly burned. "My husband went into the mortuary and he unwrapped the bandages off our daughter's legs and saw for himself. He could put two fingers right through both of her legs.

"It said in the paper `leg' but it's not `leg'. Both legs were burned."

The first Mrs Howe heard of it was when two of her neighbours called for her in Bray and said she was "wanted at home". When she got there, "they said Marion had died.

"I said `What?' And I was screaming like a lunatic . . . I said how was it the nuns in Goldenbridge didn't send to Bray for me? I was her mother.

They never sent one word out there. "Only for the two neighbours came out I wouldn't have been any the wiser until my husband came out."

Three weeks later, they went to the orphanage to seek an explanation.

"When our baby was buried, my husband and myself went up to Goldenbridge.

"We had to walk up and we had to walk back. We knocked at the door and Sr Xaviera opened the door and she looked at us and I said: `What did you do to my baby? What happened my baby?'

"So she turned around and said: `It was only a baby.' I said: `That was my daughter, that was my child.'

"But she had no sympathy, no compassion or nothing. She never even let us step inside the door, never even gave us a glass of water. She just closed the door and we walked off, didn't we?"

Mrs Howe said her husband had demanded a post-mortem, which was carried out at the hospital. "But we never got nothing, no results or nothing. When we went to look for her chart, there wasn't a trace of nothing." Her husband also went to the gardai, "but they took no notice: they didn't want to know."