Banished Babies: The Secret History of Ireland's Baby Export Business

by Mike Milotte

  There could be no doubt that the State had simply followed where the Church had led, yet the Department of External Affairs clearly felt it could not be seen to be taking its cue from the Archbishop. And there were good reasons for that, for the new arrangements came into force at the very moment in 1951 when Church interference in the conduct of the affairs of state had led to an unprecedented political crisis that brought down the inter-party government, enabling Fianna Fail to return to office. The crisis erupted when Minister for Health, Dr Noel Browne, attempted to introduce his ‘Mother and Child’ scheme, offering free medical treatment to all expectant mothers and all children up to age 16. The Hierarchy was vehemently opposed, fearing, among other things, secular intrusion into matters such as birth control that were considered ‘moral’ as opposed to simply medical issues. The bishops told the government in no uncertain terms that such legislation was unacceptable to them. The government – including Noel Browne’s party leader, External Affairs Minister Sean MacBride - told the Dáil that ‘all of us in the Government who are Catholics are... bound to give obedience to the rulings of our Church and our hierarchy.’44 The whole affair led The Irish Times to conclude that ‘the Roman Catholic Church would seem to be the effective Government of this country.’45

  Such a judgment could equally have been applied to the regulation of the transatlantic adoption traffic.

  3. Me Tommy, You Jane

  ‘Ireland has become a sort of huntingground today forforeign millionaires who believe they can acquire children to suit their whims.’

  8 Uhr Blatt (German newspaper)

  13 December 1951

  No sooner had Church and State concluded their supposedly independent but in practice identical arrangements for controlling the flow of ‘illegitimate’ babies to America when another scandal broke – this time on a much bigger scale than the McDowell case of 1949.

  Tommy Kavanagh was 15 months old when he left for America, where he enjoyed a wealthy and privileged lifestyle. But how he came to be in the United States in the first place was an issue that scandalised Ireland, Britain and America, leading to questions in the Dáil, the House of Commons and the American Congress. Tommy Kav- anagh’s adoption was the most sensational and notorious of all the Irish-American adoptions, yet his name has long been forgotten. The same, however, cannot be said of the woman who adopted him: millionaire Hollywood actress and 1950s pin-up, Jane Russell, whose death in February 2011 inspired obituaries around the world.

  In October 1951, Jane Russell, then 32 years old, flew to London to take part in the Royal Command performance. But she had other business to see to as well. As she announced to the media on her arrival, she had come to acquire a little boy for adoption, a brother for the four- month-old baby girl she had already adopted. As one British paper put it, ‘Americans like Miss Russell are constantly besieging adoption society offices in this country. They seek British children because of the possible “colour taint” in their own country.’1

  As a result of all the publicity, Russell was inundated with letters from British mothers offering their children to her. But as she quickly discovered, British adoption law prohibited her, as a foreign national, from taking a child who was not a relation from the UK to the US for adoption. But she was not deterred, and she soon let it be known she would not be going home empty handed. ‘I have been advised to try Ireland,’ she told reporters. ‘If it is possible I would like to fly to Dublin this week to pick out a child and make all the arrangements for bringing him to America.’2 It was almost half a century later when another US idol, Madonna, created a similar uproar when she swooped not on Ireland but on Malawi in search of children to take back home for adoption. In the event, however, Russell did not have to go to Ireland. The Irish came to her.

  Florrie Kavanagh came from Derry and her husband Michael was from Galway.3 They had both emigrated from Ireland to the UK to get work in the munitions factories during the Second World War. They met at a hostel dance in Coventry and were soon married. Later they moved to Lambeth in south London where they lived in a small council flat. Michael worked on the building sites and earned six pounds ten shillings a week. They had three children of whom Tommy was the youngest.

  Florrie claimed to be a big fan of Jane Russell and to have seen all her films. When she heard that Russell was looking for a little boy to adopt she thought Tommy would be ideal for the actress, and would get a great opportunity in life that she and Michael could never provide for him. Shortly afterwards she noticed Tommy kissing a picture in a newspaper and when she looked she saw it was a picture of Jane Russell. Florrie Kavanagh had ‘a strange feeling’ and resolved to make contact with the American actress so she could offer Tommy to her for adoption.

  After finding the name of Jane Russell’s London hotel in the newspaper, Florrie bundled up her children, and went out to the telephone box. Russell’s mother answered the call and Florrie told her she had a baby boy to give up for adoption. Mrs Russell remarked that there were difficulties in adopting British babies. ‘But my baby is an Irish baby,’ replied Florrie. That made all the difference. She was invited to bring him to the hotel at 4.30pm that afternoon. It was Saturday, 3 November.

  When Florrie arrived with Tommy, Jane Russell was in bed, resting between rehearsals. Tommy crawled up to her and hugged her. That, it seems, was all it took. Florrie was given tea and shown photographs of Russell’s Hollywood mansion which made her gasp. Back home in her Lambeth flat that evening, Florrie discussed the matter with Michael. They agreed Tommy would have a ‘better life’ with Jane Russell. All that was needed now was for the actress to accept the offer.

  On the morning of Tuesday 6 November, the Kavanaghs were told to come immediately to Russell’s hotel. She wanted Tommy, but there had been a change of plan, to keep on the right side of British adoption law. Instead of taking Tommy for adoption, Russell would take him for ‘a three-month holiday.’ That afternoon Tommy was issued with an Irish passport and that night he was on the plane, bound for the USA. He never came back. Florrie Kavanagh’s last words to Jane Russell were, ‘I would like you to have him for always.’ Russell squeezed her hand and replied, ‘Sure’.

  ‘I don’t care what the neighbours are saying,’ said Florrie. ‘My Tommy has been given a chance in a million. And I know in my heart that Miss Russell is a good woman who will give my baby a mother’s love and so much more than I could ever give him.’ She denied she had received any money from Jane Russell, but there was no doubt the child was going to the States for something other than a holiday.

  Many years later Tommy Kavanagh’s elder brother, Michael, gave this account: ‘At home... we had an outside toilet and kept things in orange boxes. We didn’t even know what a cushion was. All of a sudden, all these decorators arrived with expensive paintings and furniture. Jane Russell had paid a fortune for them to do the house up. As soon as the decorators finished, though, my mum sold the whole lot down Wilcox Street Market. We got our orange boxes back, we were happy, and we all had a big laugh.’4

  When news of Jane Russell’s easy acquisition of young Tommy Kavanagh became public, it sparked an international controversy. One British newspaper wondered if it really was a good thing ‘for a child who was born perhaps from a stock accustomed and inured to hardship and struggle’, to be ‘transplanted to a life of comparative ease.’5 Others asked how it was possible for a mother and father to just give away one of their children. But questions were also asked about the legality of it all.

  Had Tommy’s parents applied for a British passport to enable him to travel to America for adoption, their application would have been turned down automatically. British law prohibited the adoption of British children by foreign nationals unless the foreigners were resident in Britain or related to the child in question. That was why Russell decided on an Irish child. Tommy Kavanagh, of course, was an Irish citizen, and left Britain on an Irish passport. But British adoption law also prohibited the removal for adoption abroad of children
who were citizens of the Irish Republic resident in Britain, a clause presumably designed primarily to protect Catholic children in Northern Ireland who had availed of Irish citizenship. The law, of course, applied not only to Florrie and Michael Kavanagh, but to Jane Russell and the consular staff at the Irish embassy in London as well. Yet an Irish passport was issued without difficulty allowing Tommy Kavanagh to leave the country with Jane Russell.

  The issuing of the passport in London was a cause of deep embarrassment because it could have been interpreted as condoning, encouraging, and even committing a criminal offence under a law that was designed to protect the interests of vulnerable children. Anyone guilty of assisting in the removal of a child for adoption abroad faced up to six months in prison and a £50 fine, a substantial amount in the early 1950s – around €4,800 today.

  As the scandal unfolded, the British authorities came under pressure to explain how a wealthy and flamboyant Hollywood actress could so easily procure a child in broad daylight, as it were, and in the middle of London. The British police even followed Tommy’s father, Michael Snr, around London – surreptitiously but fruitlessly – to see if he would collect money from Jane Russell’s agents in return for his son. By contrast, the only question asked of Frank Aiken, Minister for External Affairs in the Irish Parliament concerned whether he seen the newspaper reports, and ‘what precautions were taken to protect the religious life of the infant?’6 The questioner was Waterford Labour TD and future party chairman Tom Kyne, and his curious question was no doubt prompted by the fact that Russell was a devout and practising Protestant while Tommy Kavanagh was, by birth if not by choice, a Catholic.

  Aiken sidestepped the religious issue but did tell the Dáil that newspaper reports of the case ‘were not correct in stating that the passport was granted to enable the child to be adopted in the United States.’ It had been granted, he said, so the child could go to America on holiday with his new friend, Jane Russell. But Aiken knew the explanation he had given was a fiction, and if opposition deputies had known the full background to the case they might have accused the Minister of deliberately misleading the Dáil.

  A detailed memo had been prepared for Mr Aiken before he answered Kyne’s question.7 It gave the complete background to the case, from the point of view of the passport staff in the Irish embassy in London. In so doing it left no doubt at all that Tommy Kavanagh was given a passport so he could travel to the States to be adopted. Had this come out, of course, it could have caused a diplomatic incident and could have led to the prosecution of Irish embassy staff.

  On 5 November 1951, the day before the passport was issued, one of Russell’s London agents, George Routledge, telephoned the Irish embassy in London to enquire about passport regulations. In the course of his conversation with embassy staff Routledge referred to Russell’s intention of adopting an Irish child – an intention that had been widely reported in the newspapers, including The Irish Times. The consular staff explained the legal position to Routledge – it would be unlawful to remove an Irish child from the UK for adoption in the US. On the next day, Routledge came in person to the embassy along with Michael Kavanagh, Tommy’s father. They completed the application form, giving ‘holiday’ as the reason for the child’s visit to America. They were issued there and then with a passport for the infant.

  Although the application form made no mention of adoption, the Irish officials clearly knew this was the real intention behind the request for a passport, and just two days after the passport was issued, the embassy telexed the Department of External Affairs in Dublin to inform them that ‘a passport had been granted to enable an Irish child to travel abroad for adoption.’ The telex didn’t name the child or the adopters, but when Dublin asked for particulars, the embassy replied that the passport had been for the child in ‘the Jane Russell baby case’.

  This exchange of correspondence was quoted in the memo to Frank Aiken, to inform him fully of the position before he spoke in the Dáil. It made it absolutely clear the embassy staff in London knew Tommy Kavanagh was to be taken to America for adoption, regardless of what was said on the passport application about a ‘holiday’. Officials in the Department of External Affairs were also very clear on the significance of the deception. Had it been ‘admitted that adoption was contemplated’, an internal memo noted with considerable emphasis, ‘ourpassport officer would be liable for 6 months!!’8

  The Irish denial of culpability was helped a little when the British Home Secretary, Maxwell Fyfe, in reply to questions in the British Parliament, repeated the formula that Mr and Mrs Kavanagh had officially consented only to Tommy travelling to America for a three-month holiday, not for adoption.9 But the British authorities later showed that they themselves were not convinced when they charged the Kavanaghs with the offence of ‘unlawfully permitting the care and possession of the said infant to be transferred to one Jane Russell Waterfield, a person resident abroad, namely in the United States of America.’10

  The Irish authorities were also clearly unconvinced by their own public pronouncements. Just the day before Aiken spoke in the Dáil, instructions were rushed to Irish embassies and legations around the world that no passports were to be issued to children under the age of 18 without prior clearance from the head of mission. It was an exces- sive measure if all they were concerned with was Irish children having innocent holidays abroad with friends approved by their parents.

  Back in Hollywood, Jane Russell soon let it be known that she had every intention of adopting Tommy Kavanagh, once the ‘fuss’ had died down.11 But when the Kavanaghs were subsequently brought before the courts, they were reported as accusing Jane Russell of ‘keeping in the background’ while they took all the blame.12 The Kavanaghs pleaded guilty at Bow Street Court and were each given a twelve month conditional discharge. As they left the court they were jeered and jostled by a hostile crowd. They had told the court they received photographs and regular letters from Russell, and when the Magistrate read these he remarked that Russell ‘must be a very very nice woman’. Eventually the adoption went ahead.

  In fact, Jane Russell’s interest in adoption went far beyond Tommy Kavanagh. With her American-football star husband, Robert Waterfield, Russell set up a full-scale professional adoption service – WAIF – which subsequently handled around 40,000 American adoptions.13 But Russell’s activities were not always welcomed by Catholic agencies in America. The National Catholic Welfare Conference, which handled scores of requests from Americans looking for Irish babies to adopt, wrote to Archbishop McQuaid’s adoption advisor, Father Cecil Barrett, in 1958 warning him that ‘there will be trouble’ should Ms Russell and her associates ‘engage in bringing over Catholic orphans’ from Ireland, for despite their claims to be ‘non-sectarian’, they were in fact connected to the Young Women’s Christian Association – a wholly Protestant outfit.14

  The Russell/Kavanagh affair also had a more immediate sequel when a mass-circulation German evening newspaper, 8 Uhr Blatt, published a long article on December 13, 1951 under the heading ‘1,000 children disappear from Ireland’.

  ‘A wave of resentment sweeps Ireland at present,’ the paper stated, ‘after American film-star Jane Russell flew to the USA with 16-month old Tommy Kavanagh, because she wanted so much to have a child.’ The case simply highlighted ‘a regular export in children to the USA’ which had reached such a pitch, the paper said, that the government in Dublin was planning a new law ‘to put an end to the traffic’.

  An Irish child welfare organisation was quoted by the German paper as saying that Ireland ‘has become a sort of hunting ground today for foreign millionaires who believe they can acquire children to suit their whims just in the same way as they could get valuable pedigree animals. In the last few months more than one hundred children have left Ireland without any official organisation being in a position to make any enquiries as to their future habitat.’

  The article quoted examples of children being sent to the USA with no further news of what
became of them. It claimed that ‘altogether almost a thousand children have been taken abroad from the Green Isle during the course of the past year.’ And with 80,000 couples queuing up to adopt children in the United States, there was plenty of scope for this traffic to grow. But where demand outstripped supply to such an extent, people would inevitably pay to get a baby, thus ensuring ‘a regular black market’ in babies in the USA.

  The German paper pointed out that baby-selling enterprises had recently been broken up in New York, Maryland and Massachusetts and the operators arrested. One lawyer alone had already sold 100 children at the lucrative rate of $3,000 apiece before he was caught. $300,000 in 1951 is the equivalent of a business with a turnover well in excess of €10m today

  This was a hard-hitting article that made Ireland look like a pathetically backward Third World country where stray or unwanted children could be acquired at will. Not surprisingly, the Chargé d’Affaires at the Irish legation in Bonn, Aedan O’Beirne, read the 8 Uhr Blatt article – which he described as ‘sordid’ – with a growing sense of anger. His immediate reaction was to seek permission from the secretary of the Department of External Affairs to demand of the paper’s editor that he ‘publish a rebuttal of the story’.15