All the congregational records pertaining to Bessborough were sent to the HSE in 2010 and are now held with Tusla, the nun’s leader said in the letter.

“None of the Congregation still living has any recollection of a baby being buried in the grounds of Bessborough in the 1970s. The responsibility for the burial of infants who died in Bessborough mother and baby home from the later 1920s onwards has rested with the state.”

The congregational leader said they have given their “fullest cooperation on all matters to the Mother and Baby Homes Commission of Investigation” and recall just one child being buried in the nun’s cemetery on Bessborough grounds in the 1990s.

The Papal Nuncio expressed his “sincere and profound sense” of sympathy to Mrs O’Gorman for all she has suffered and continues to endure, and added: “Borrowing a leaf from the thoughts of Pope Francis in circumstances such as this I would like to say this. You know Evelyn….is surely in heaven in glory. That is great spiritual consolation. For Mrs Ann to meet her there would be the greatest joy ever.  “Obviously it was a grave error not to give the due honour of a decent burial ground to this child and too many others in similar situations. 
“That negligence should not have happened at all. On the other hand it would be worthwhile to look ahead with hope and joy to the fullness of divine grace.”

But Ms O’Gorman says she doesn’t want prayers - she wants the Bessborough estate thoroughly investigated for potential mass burials of children, especially her Evelyn.

The CSSA has expressed outrage and concern over developers MWB Two’s plans to build 246 apartments on a privately owned 3.7-acre parcel of land in the south-eastern corner of the Bessborough estate in a residential development called Gateway Views.

The earmarked site runs parallel to the Blackrock Passage West greenway, which is also earmarked as part of the route of the proposed Cork light rail system. The developers have applied to Cork City Council for permission to build 67 apartments in an eight-storey building on the southern portion of the landbank, and separately, because of land zoning issues, to An Bórd Pleanála through the fast-track strategic housing development (SHD) process, for 179 residential units in three buildings ranging in height from five to seven stories, on the northern portion of the landbank.

The closing date for public submissions on the SHD application is today (January 12) - the same day the final report of the Mother and Baby Homes Commission of Investigation is due to be published. A planning decision on the SHD is due by the end of March.

The CSSA, which represents more than 50 Bessborough survivor families, has an Ordnance Survey (OS) map of the estate, dated 1950, which identifies an area immediately west of the development parcel, and close to the estate folly, as a “children’s burial ground”. The map makers drew a circle around this area to indicate what they thought might be the extent of the burial site. Part of the site earmarked for the SHD apartments overlaps part of this circle. The CSSA said construction just cannot be allowed to happen in this area until a thorough and detailed investigation of what may be buried there is conducted.

A day after campaigners posted a video on social media explaining the significance of the OS map, Ms O’Gorman visited Bessborough with a friend who recalls a child being buried in this area in the 1970s.

Both women, who have given evidence to the Commission, are very concerned about the location of the proposed apartment development.

They, and the CSSA, are also highly critical of the timing of the planning application, coming just weeks before Christmas, which gives them little time to prepare a submission for the various planning authorities, and just ahead of the publication of the Commission’s final report.

Historian and campaigner, Catherine Corless, whose research uncovered the mass burial scandal at the former mother and baby home Tuam, told the Irish Examiner in November that she believes Bessborough could hide similar horrors.

Ms Corless, who visited the estate in August 2019, said she believes most of the 900 children must be buried near the former mother and baby home itself. 
“Those babies at Bessborough, like the babies of Tuam, were just discarded. They were not seen as human beings at all. They were just seen as things to be discarded, not treated with any dignity or respect, and it’s time to turn the tables to give healing back to all the survivors,” she said.

Bessborough is one of 14 former mother and baby homes which are the subject of the Commission’s investigation. In its fifth interim report, published in March 2019, it devotes an entire chapter of the 529-page report to Bessborough.

The Commission says it has established that more than 900 children died in Bessborough or in hospital after being transferred from Bessborough but despite “very extensive inquiries and searches”, it says it has been able to establish the burial place of only 64 children in various city cemeteries. 
The Congregation of the Sacred Hearts of Jesus and Mary has told the Commission that they do not know where other 800-plus children are buried.

The Commission said it finds it very difficult to understand that no member of the congregation was able to say where the children who died there are buried given that the congregation was still providing services to mothers and children right up to the end of the period covered by its investigation, up to 1998. 
The congregation was unable to explain why there were designated child burial grounds in Castlepollard and Sean Ross mother and baby homes, but not in Bessborough. 

The congregation provided the Commission with an affidavit about burials generally but the Commission said the affidavit was, “in many respects, speculative, inaccurate and misleading”.

“The affidavit states that all of the children buried in the burial grounds of these two institutions were accorded the rites of the Catholic Church and the congregation “did not bury infants in unapproved cemeteries”,” the Commission’s interim report says. 
“These assertions may well be true but the congregation provided no evidence to support them. The congregation was unable to elaborate on what the rites of the Catholic Church in relation to child burials were. 
“As the congregation accepts that it does not know where most of the Bessborough children are buried, it cannot definitively state that they were not buried in unapproved burial places.”

One member of the congregation who was in Bessborough for most of the period from 1948 to 1998 told the Commission that she did not remember any child deaths during her time there but she implied that the children who did die there were buried in the nun’s burial ground. The Commission says that between 1950 and 1960, 31 children died in Bessborough “so it is rather surprising” that this nun does not remember any deaths.

The nun’s burial ground on Bessborough lands was opened in 1956 but the Commission said it has seen no evidence that the approval of the Minister for Local Government for the opening of this burial ground was sought or granted as was required by law.

It said it has been assumed by former residents and advocacy groups that all the children who died in Bessborough were buried in this cemetery.

But the Commission said just one child, who died in 1994, is buried in this plot, and that while there are some individual memorials to other children who died in Bessborough here, it is unlikely that they are buried in this plot. It said it is possible that dead children were buried within the 60-acre grounds but it said it has found no physical or documentary evidence which indicates that this actually happened.

It also said it is possible that burials took place in the grounds that no longer form part of the Bessborough estate, an area that could extend up to 200 acres. 

As part of its extensive work, the Commission engaged forensic archaeologists to carry out a cartographic and landscape assessment of possible unrecorded burial arrangements on Bessborough grounds.

The forensic archaeologists and the Commission’s researchers reviewed all available cartographic sources and aerial images, and a site survey was conducted. The Commission said it is clear that there are a number of locations where burials could have taken place but it said it has found “no significant surface evidence of systematic burial” anywhere except for at the nun’s burial ground.

One witness told the Commission that he had personally undertaken excavations in the area marked on the 1950 OS map as a “children’s burial ground”, and that he had to dig six to eight feet deep across this area and found no evidence of human remains or any evidence to suggest that the site was formerly used as a burial ground.

The Commission also examined vertical aerial photography taken by the Irish Air Corps in 1951, which included high-resolution aerial photos of the Bessborough estate.

It said given that over 700 child deaths at Bessborough occurred before 1951, it would be reasonable to expect that if there were burials at this location near the folly, an aerial photograph taken in February 1951 would show some ground disturbance.

The aerial photographs were examined by forensic archaeologists who determined that there were no visible features on the landscape to indicate an obvious mass burial site.

The Commission said it is clear that there are a number of locations within the Bessborough grounds where burials could have taken place but there is no significant surface evidence, and that while it is likely that some of the children are buried in the grounds, it has just been unable to find any physical or documentary evidence of this. 

It underpins its belief by suggesting that during the 1940s, when many of the deaths occurred and when petrol was scarce, it would have been very expensive to arrange off-site burials.

The CSSA point to the nuns’ questionable statements and the Commission’s own belief that burials are likely to have taken place on Bessborough lands and say that makes it all the more painful that the Commission did not consider it feasible to excavate 60-acres at Bessborough, not to mention the rest of the former 200-acre estate. 

As the developers were preparing their apartment plans, archaeological investigations were carried out on their behalf in December 2019.

In the early years, expectant mothers living in Bessborough usually gave birth in Cork District Hospital but in 1930, a maternity ward was created in Bessborough house and in 1935, the Sacred Heart Maternity Hospital was built alongside the property. From 1930 to the 1980s, most expectant mothers resident in Bessborough gave birth in this unit. 

An estimated 6,000 births were registered at the home between 1929 and 1987. The mortality rate for children born there was around 50% for extended periods, especially during the 1940s and 50s. The congregation told the Commission that a portion of land adjoining the estate was bought in 1930 to bring the total acreage of the estate to about 200 acres. About 100 acres were sold in 1973 for the building of the N25 and for social housing. More land was sold off in more recent years.

A 3.7-acre of privately-owned land in the southeastern corner of the former estate, running parallel to the former Blackrock to Passage West railway line, now a popular amenity walk and part of the city’s proposed light-rail route, is earmarked for the controversial housing development.

Take the figures for 1939 to 1941: For the year ended March 31, 1939, the DLGPH inspector was told 38 infants died. This is also what is reported in the death register.

However, for the following two years, the order informed Litster of higher numbers of deaths. For example, for 1940, Ms Litster was told 17 children died. The register records only eight. Similarly, for 1941, the DLGPH was told 38 children died, whereas the register records just 22.

For every other year cited by Ms Litster, the figures given to the DLGPH are significantly higher than what is recorded in the order’s own death register. This is particularly the case for the year ending March 31, 1943, and 1944. In these years, Litster reports that 70 and 102 infants died, respectively. In the latter figure, this amounted to a death rate of 82% in that year.

However, again, these figures differ greatly to the order’s death register, which records 55 and 76 infant deaths in these years. For 1944, this brings the death rate from 82% down to 62%.

This 82% death rate had caused such concern at Government levels that it was in regular contact with the head of Bessborough on the issue. So, why was the order content for a DLGPH report to publish higher numbers of deaths than it was recording itself?

Perhaps there is another death register for the same period where the order logged the other deaths.

However, the order is on the record that the register is the only one in existence. It confirmed this to Tusla via its solicitors, when it stated that “all records” it held were transferred to the HSE in 2011 and that it “does not hold any other death register”.