IRELAND
Irish Independent
Denise Calnan
March 7 2017
A woman has told of how nuns at a mother and baby home forced her to change her baby son’s name “so he would be easier to sell”.
Bridget, who rang RTE Radio One’s Liveline today, told of how her son William was born in 1961 in Bessborough, Cork and died just six weeks later. Bridget, aged in her seventies and who now lives in England, described how she sensed something was wrong the moment she arrived at the mother and baby home.
She also described how nuns were “delighted” when they saw she gave birth to a baby boy, as he would “be easier to sell” and insisted that he be given the Catholic name of Gerard for the same reason.
She said she believes her baby would have survived if he received the medical attention he needed at the time.
Bridget was working in Ireland when she fell pregnant aged 17. She joined a work agency to get a travel fare to the UK where she continued to work until the summer before her due date.
“They paid my fare so I went to London and was working away, but I had it in the back of my mind, ‘what am I going to do?’,” an emotional Bridget told Liveline.
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