Limerick native Ann O’Gorman was the first woman to come forward as a survivor of the home, in which she gave birth at the age of 17 to her daughter Evelyn, who died just 20 minutes after birth.
In 2019, she filed a missing person’s report with gardaí to trigger an official investigation into her daughter’s exact burial site, which she had campaigned for almost 40 years to try and establish.
In 2021, Ann, alongside other members of the Cork Survivors and Supporters Alliance (CSSA), was awarded the ‘Spirit of Mother Jones Award’ by Cork City Council for the group’s efforts in protecting a site that they believed contained infant graves from being developed, following an appeal to the then Bord Pleanála.
However, the 72-year-old, who suffers from Parkinson’s disease, COPD and emphysema, among other ailments, now says that her understanding is that, due to decay, her daughter’s remains will never be truly identified.
Ann says that the most recent development, on a different site at the grounds of the former convent, which the group doesn’t believe contains infant remains, presents the best opportunity for a memorial to be established.
“I was okay about it,” said Ms O’Gorman about the planning permission. “My thing was that my daughter is buried down there, and I don’t know whereabouts exactly, but I know it’s in the children’s graveyard because I saw her going out in the box,” said Ann about her traumatic stay at the home in 1971.
“At the very start, I wanted her to come up out of the ground, because I actually have a grave now in her memory in Sixmilebridge (County Clare), and that’s where I’d be going to.
“But when I learned the facts, and that it would take years to figure out… I’ll be 73 in September, I’ve serious health issues, and I want to see it made into consecrated ground. This is my only hope.”
The decision by Cork City Council to grant planning permission for a strategic development on the site of the former Blackrock Heritage Park drew condemnation from fellow survivors’ groups, who said that no development should be allowed on any ground in which infants may have been buried, given that no undisputed records of the exact location of burial grounds have been found.
Carmel Cantwell, whose brother died shortly after he was born at the institution in 1960, submitted an objection to the development as part of her role as Chair of the Bessboro Mother & Baby Support Group, and vowed she would object to the decision from city planners to An Coimisiún Pleanála.
Ann said she, and other mothers who gave birth to children at the institution but have kept their anonymity, support the project, with developers Estuary View Enterprises 2020 having previously engaged with survivors and offered a parcel of land on which to establish a memorial, should the project be given the green light.
“I know there’s a [group], and they’re going against everything that I’m saying, and they’re going to have a meeting down there with teddy bears and everything. A teddy bear doesn’t represent my baby. Never has,” said Ms O’Gorman, who says the site of the ‘Bon Secours’ Mother and Baby Home in Tuam is ‘totally different’ to Bessborough, in that children buried there were not only older, but efforts were made to preserve their bodies.
“There’s babies buried out by where I’m on about, and there’s 28 mothers. I’m fighting this a long time along with Catherine (Coffey O’Brien, fellow survivor) and Maureen (Considine, historian), and we’re respectful and mindful of everyone’s thoughts, but I am the actual mother who had my baby.
“My baby is buried down there, I have the death cert and the birth cert. I don’t care about the deaths anymore, that’s behind me.
“I don’t know how long more I’m going to be in this world, but I want to see it happening for my daughters and my sons. They know they have a sister down there, and I’d like a memorial down there for them to be able to go to,” said Ann, who says she understands the arguments made by other groups but, like her fellow survivors in the CSSA, fears that time will have run out if anything is to ever happen on the site, which is currently lying largely idle.
“All I know is that when my baby died, I was three days out cold, I was haemorrhaging, and the day that she was being buried I saw her going out in a box. They asked me if I wanted to see her, and I said no, because I was only a child.
“I was frightened, I had never seen a dead person, never mind a dead baby. I saw the two men going out with a shovel, and the other man with an orange box on top of his shoulder.
“I know which way they went down to bury her, and that’s how I know where she was buried. I saw it on the day, so I don’t know what to think,” said Ann, who says other mothers feel hurt and feel that their opinion isn’t being heard among the reaction to the controversial development, which included both Taoiseach Micheál Martin and Tánaiste Simon Harris.
Last week, Mr Harris said he felt “deeply uneasy” about the thought of the site housing new apartments, while the Taoiseach said that he believed Cork City Council should have purchased part of the Bessborough site as a memorial.
The Taoiseach also told the Irish Independent last week that he didn’t believe a Compulsory Purchase Order, called for by Ann and Catherine, was necessary in order to establish a local memorial on the site.
The Taoiseach also said he was ‘open to meeting’ the group.
But the group stated it had been contacting his office since last July in order to establish a meeting.
Ms O’Gorman said she has been left ‘frustrated’ by the sudden reaction by Government to the decision, despite not having heard from Taoiseach Micheál Martin since he visited the institution in July 2021.
“We showed him the land and everything, and at that time he was very sympathetic...and said he understood where I was coming from, but I haven’t heard anything about it since, so it’s very frustrating.
“Even the Pope got in touch with the nuns, and they still wouldn’t tell him where the babies were buried.
“Everything I’ve done, I’ve done it right. I took everything into consideration, and I always said right from the start to speak the truth to get answers, and it’s still not happening.
“It’s heartbreaking.”
Regardless of the decision regarding the apartments, which may indeed be challenged by the developers themselves, having had a substantial chunk of the apartments removed in the planning permission, Ann said she hopes the issue will break the inertia on the site, which lies largely derelict and is plagued by anti-social behaviour.
“The year before last, we put down a plaque belonging to me on a road that runs next to it as a small personal memorial. We made sure it was secure and everything, and when we went down to check it, it was gone. The land isn’t being protected or anything.
“I was told the other day that my heart valves are getting very narrow, the weight is falling off me with worry, including with Bessborough.
“It needs to happen now.”