IRELAND
Daily Mail (UK)
By ALISON O’REILLY
PUBLISHED: 7 June 2014
One woman who knows the truth of how nuns in Ireland of the late 1950s handled the children entrusted to their care is Mary Lawlor, who was adopted out by the nuns at Sean Ross Abbey, Co. Tipperary.
Letters she obtained from her adoptive parents detailing how she was given to them also sheds light on the nuns’ attitudes towards children of poorer single mothers.
The nuns cautioned the prospective parents not to pick a child of the ‘wrong class’, and to take a young child as ‘the better class girl has to leave here quickly so as not to be detected in her sorrow’.
In a letter dated July 26, 1961, sent to the adoptive parents of Mary Lawlor, the sister in charge of the Roscrea institution reads:
‘We had a wonderful reference from your priest and we think you should take a baby over six months… the baby will be brought up just as you would bring your own child up and a child of two years has been too long in an institution to fall easy into your ways. We have a very nice little girl Mary Margaret who is of good background and very intelligent,’ the nun wrote.
Speaking to the Irish Mail on Sunday, Mary Lawlor said the nuns also gave her adoptive parents a book detailing how to look after a baby.
‘They were picking and choosing babies, so the older ones – who would have needed a bit more
support – ended up being left there because the nuns were putting people off them.
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