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

by Mike Milotte

  With so many obstacles in their path, the Burns couple had become deeply frustrated. So much so, they engaged a barrister, William Fitzgerald SC (a future Irish Chief Justice), who contacted the Minister for External Affairs, Liam Cosgrave, in person.14 Cosgrave, in turn, demanded to know from his civil servants what was going on. They explained the background: that the children had been obtained illegally, that the law had been broken by Major and Mrs Burns as well as by the children’s natural parents, and ‘very probably also’ by St Rita’s Nursing Home. They confirmed that the Department of Justice had decided not to prosecute because it had been the American authorities who brought the matter to their attention, and, as we have seen, the American embassy wanted the entire affair hushed up.15

  But it was the religious issue that was the real drawback, the Minister was told. ‘We must feel morally certain that these children will receive a proper upbringing in... the Catholic religion,’ his officials said. ‘It is true that Major and Mrs Burns have submitted a sworn declaration to the effect that they will bring up the children in the Catholic Faith,’ they went on, ‘but this is, of course, not sufficient for our purposes.’ The word of the American couple could not be relied on. By obtaining children illegally, Major and Mrs Burns had already proved themselves to be untrustworthy, raising doubts about their suitability ‘for the adoption of Irish Catholic children’.16

  Mr Cosgrave’s private secretary, however, took a different point of view and strongly recommended to his Minister that he issue passports for the three children involved, even though the Major wasn’t a Catholic and had married in a registry office. Referring to the Burns’ own oath-bound undertakings to bring the children up Catholics, and to their seemingly excellent character references, the secretary concluded, somewhat philosophically: ‘It would be impossible to obtain more satisfactory evidence. To adopt any other standard would be to pursue an impossible perfectionism and to seek for criteria unobtainable in this imperfect world...’ And more prosaically, ‘... moreover, it would be to place an impossible burden on the limited staff of our consular section...’ As for worries that because of their civil marriage Major and Mrs Burns could some day divorce, the private secretary pointed out they could just as easily be killed in an accident or die young, and so ‘we should not concern ourselves with unnecessary and futile speculation about a future which no man can control.’ He ended by reminding his minister of something that no one else had given any thought to: as the children had been in the Burns’ care since birth, one and two years ago, ‘a strong bond of affection’ had been formed and it would be ‘an unbearable hardship’ to break the family up at this point by refusing passports to the children.17

  Mr Cosgrave remained unconvinced and ruled that unless the Major and his wife could produce all the religious proofs demanded, no passports would be issued.18 In the event, they could not produce a Church marriage certificate as they had only had a civil wedding. Nor could the Major turn up a Catholic baptismal certificate since he wasn’t a Catholic. However, Mrs Burns did produce sworn declarations to the effect that her first marriage ended with the death of her husband, and not with divorce. ‘This removes one of the main anxieties which we had,’ noted a Department official.19 But the Burns couple were still far from being in the clear.

  Unable to obtain a recommendation from a Catholic pastor who knew them in America, they produced instead a reference from a London priest, Father Keane. But when this arrived in the Department of External Affairs early in January 1955, on unheaded notepaper, the officials became so suspicious they asked the Irish embassy in London to check out the priest’s credentials. There followed a series of ‘urgent’ and totally bizarre telexes between Dublin and London, desperately trying to confirm that Father Keane actually existed and that his reference was genuine.20 The London embassy found a full entry for Father Keane in the Catholic Directory, but Dublin was still unhappy. ‘The main point,’ they emphasised to their London staff, ‘is that Major Burns is not – repeat not – a Catholic.’ As the whole business had become ‘red hot’, the Irish diplomats in London were told to track down Father Keane as a matter of ‘top priority’ and contact him in person. If they found he really did exist, they were told to avoid implying that they ever doubted the authenticity of his letter and to ‘throw the blame’ for their intrusion ‘on the regulations’. But ‘the main thing’ was ‘we must be absolutely sure that Father Keane recommends these adoptions from the religious point of view’.

  Father Keane may have been surprised to find himself confronted by professional diplomats from a supposedly modern democracy conducting a religious inquisition into the private beliefs of an American citizen, but Keane had no hesitation in standing over his ‘spiritual’ recommendation, expressing himself ‘fully satisfied about the future of the children in that respect’. He had known the Burns couple for three years; Mrs Burns was a regular church attender; the Major was an upstanding man, taking an interest in Catholicism and wishing to start instruction. What was more – although to the Irish inquisitors this was apparently irrelevant – the children were dearly loved and extremely well cared-for.21

  After a six-month-long investigation of the Major and Mrs Burns’ spiritual suitability (and nothing else) it was time to close the file. ‘We have now reached the point where we must decide these applications on the basis of the information and references available to us,’ one official wrote.22 The strong recommendation from Father Keane had encouraged the Department to look at the case more favourably. It hadn’t been mentioned before, but now it helped enormously that the ‘Catholic party in the marriage was the mother since ‘in the nature of things a mother is always more closely connected with the religious education of children than a father’. The couple’s apparent dishonesty, once a barrier to adopting, was now a factor demanding sympathy. They had both told their families back in America that during their British posting Mrs Burns had given birth to three children. To deny passports to these children now would cause the couple severe embarrassment with their relatives. And, as a final seal of approval, it was noted that ‘the Archbishop of Dublin has approved the adoption of a Catholic child by parents of whom one was not a Catholic’. If the Archbishop could do it, why not a mere government minister? Finally, it was noted that a denial of passports would deprive the children of ‘their comfortable home,’ and by splitting up the family, impose ‘a great hardship’ on them.23

  The arguments had all been reassessed in the Burns’ favour and the civil servants concluded that passports should be issued after all. Liam Cosgrave concurred, instructing, ‘please have this done as soon as possible.’24 But, regrettably for the Burns couple, the matter did not quite end there, for before the Minister’s instructions could be acted on, the Department was thrown into turmoil when a startling story found its way into the newspapers.

  Under the headline, ‘50 American Couples Buy Irish Babies Through International Adoption Ring,’ one American paper, quoting a senior Irish police source, said Americans were paying between $600 and $2000 to obtain a child in Dublin (€20,000 to €70,000 at today’s prices). The anonymous Garda officer was quoted as saying that ‘upwards of 100 illegitimate children passed through bogus and other nursing homes in this country and in no case was the birth recorded. At least half of them, we are convinced, are now in the United States’.25 The newspaper report described how American couples first made contact with the baby-sellers’ agents in London, Frankfurt or Paris – each the location of large numbers of US military personnel – and how they were referred from there to Ireland. It also reported, accurately, that no prosecutions were to be taken against either Irish or American citizens.

  ‘At least five nursing homes in Dublin are involved,’ the report said, and two midwives had been questioned and warned by police. One of them, although not named, was Mrs Keating, owner of St Rita’s. ‘To adopt a baby,’ the report went on, ‘the American soldier and his wife would travel to Dublin, where the wife checked in at the nursing
home as an expectant mother. An Irish woman would actually bear the child, but the birth would be registered in the name of the American.’ This was exactly what had been happening repeatedly at St Rita’s nursing home. In an interesting aside, the newspaper quoted an Irish nun’s explanation for the popularity of Irish children among Americans: ‘Irish children are pure-blooded,’ she had said.

  Copies of this newspaper article were forwarded to the Special Branch who responded: ‘Certain highly confidential investigations were already made in this matter... and the results communicated to the Department of Justice. In view of this position it was not considered desirable that further investigations should be made at this stage’.26 Significantly, the only aspect of the American newspaper article the Special Branch called into question was the claim that the story had come from a high-ranking police officer. The Branch claimed that the real source was a private investigator, whom they named as James Ryan of Mountjoy Square, who had stumbled upon the ‘illegal adoption ring’ while inquiring into the completely unrelated theft of a baby, Pauline Ashmore, from her pram on Dublin’s Lower Camden Street. But the police did not dispute in any way the accuracy of the claim that large numbers of babies were being sold to Americans in the manner described.

  When Peter Berry at the Department of Justice was asked by External Affairs to comment on the allegation that ‘an illegal international adoption agency with its headquarters in Dublin is arranging for the removal of children from this country’,27 Berry replied ‘there was some basis for the allegation in question,’ and the story ‘could not truthfully be refuted in full.’28 The Department of External Affairs decided that any attempt at a public refutation ‘would be ill-advised’.29 This was another implicit admission on the part of the State that there was an illegal traffic in Irish babies to the United States. But what is most astonishing and disturbing about the entire business is that while the civil authorities expended huge effort and resources chasing down proofs of religious conformity, they came up with no proposals whatever for putting a stop to the illegal traffic or bringing the traffickers to justice.

  But one thing the authorities could, and did, do, was reopen Major and Mrs Burns’ passport applications. In the circumstances of such adverse international publicity it was going to be much more difficult for the couple to obtain passports for children acquired illegally. Yet, as their alleged criminal behaviour had never been offered to them in the past as a reason for being refused passports, it could hardly be used at this late stage. The documents in the case were given another meticulous going over to find a way out and, ironically, it was something the London priest, Father Keane, had said that provided the answer. Notes taken by Irish embassy staff of their interview with Keane had referred somewhat cryptically to the Major and his wife having to ‘sort out their own matrimonial entanglement’ which, the priest had remarked, would ‘take some time’. With this ammunition in hand, senior officials consulted Cosgrave again before giving a final verdict on the Burns’ case to the American embassy in Dublin.

  ‘I pointed out,’ one of the officials recorded, ‘that we could never be satisfied with vague references to “matrimonial entanglements” and “regularisation of marriage” and that these had never been satisfactorily explained. I said that where there was a background of divorce or an impediment to conversion or marriage in a Catholic Church – or even in the case of a mixed marriage – the Department’s view was that they would not be satisfied that there existed a reasonable chance of the child receiving a proper Catholic education and upbringing’.30

  Liam Cosgrave immediately withdrew his consent to passports for the three children31 and went on to formally ban any future issue of passports to children whose would- be adopters were in a mixed marriage, thereby bringing the regulations on American adoptions more fully into line with domestic adoption law, as dictated by Archbishop McQuaid.32 The Burns case illustrated clearly that the State was perfectly capable of acting on its own initiative when it came to enforcing religious tests. Archbishop McQuaid had not been involved in any way. Almost a year after Major and Mrs Burns had first come to the Department’s attention, their application was rejected,33 notwithstanding the Department’s own previously stated view that this would result in serious hardship for the children.

  In the meantime, Master Sergeant Wesley Autry and his wife Mary had also been refused a passport to take baby Gene to America, and the grounds of refusal were the same as in the Burns case: the Autrys weren’t Catholics. The Hardens, too were refused passports for their ‘twins’ on the same grounds, as were another (un-named) Air Force couple who had acquired one of the St Rita’s babies. But although passports were refused, all the children in question had long since left Ireland for US Air Force bases in the UK, and the Hardens had already returned to the US.34 If the law was complied with the children should have been returned to Ireland, to take up residence in some religious-run institution. But this simply didn’t happen and all the children were able to travel to the United States without passports. When the Department of External Affairs investigated how this was done, they discovered that American law permitted passport requirements to be waived in certain circumstances and allowed the US immigration service to issue entry visas for people without passports. A minor diplomatic row ensued in which the Irish authorities let it be known how angry they were, especially since the US embassy staff in Dublin had been fully appraised on the goings on at St Rita’s and their counterparts in London were also aware of the illegalities in the manner of the children’s original acquisition and registration.35

  These cases also raise doubts about the value of official passport statistics as an accurate indicator of the number of Irish children taken to America for adoption, since a passport was clearly not always necessary. It is impossible to know how many other cases passed undetected by the Department of External Affairs. But given the growing file of uncontradicted newspaper reports, the numbers must have been considerable.

  For baby Gene Autry there was to be a further complication. Because his parents’ efforts to avoid the need for a formal adoption in the US by having him registered as their natural child in Dublin had been frustrated by the Garda investigation, the Autrys – like the Hardens – had to go through the legal process of adoption once they got Gene back to America – a move that was triggered when the Autrys received another overseas posting and discovered they couldn’t take Gene with them unless he was adopted first. But to make this possible, the Autrys required proof that Gene’s natural mother had consented to his adoption. At one point Mrs Autry herself returned to Ireland – along with Major Burns’ wife – to look for the natural mothers of their acquired children, but without success. The Gardai, of course, had obtained the necessary consents from the mothers in the course of their investigation, but when asked by the Autrys to submit proof to the adoption court in Fort Worth, Texas, the Irish authorities refused to do so. Yet, somehow, the adoption went ahead which meant the US court allowed the Autrys to adopt a child whose birth certificate showed he was their natural son, and in the absence of any proof of consent to the adoption from the child’s actual mother. As Gene himself remarked, ‘It’s hard to believe that the courts allowed this to be processed in this manner. How they were able to pull this off is beyond comprehension.’

  As it happens, Gene Autry had a happy childhood in a loving family, although Archbishop McQuaid’s rules, as implemented by the Irish State, decreed that he should never have fallen into the hands of people like Wesley and Mary Autry, who were regarded as ‘unsuitable’ simply because of their religious beliefs. Whatever problems or difficulties there were in Gene’s and his adoptive parents’ future lives, they were related to Mrs Keating’s web of deceit rather than to matters of religion. Mrs Autry suffered stress related illnesses that she later admitted arose from keeping the illegalities around Gene’s acquisition secret from him. In later years Gene also discovered that Mary Keating had added another layer of deception to the entire process:
his natural mother had never been a singer, nor his father a policeman, as Mrs Keating had told Mrs Autry back in 1953.

  The shady goings-on at St Rita’s and its links to the wider illegal adoption black market may have fallen outside the official child export scheme as regulated by Archbishop McQuaid and facilitated by the Department of External Affairs, but the official system, too, as we shall now see, was full of disturbing ambiguities and serious lapses that meant no one in authority really knew – or seemingly cared – what fate befell the children dispatched to America under their auspices.

  6. From Cock-Up...

  ‘If Catholic Charities recommend the couple, we can be quite satisfied that the recommendation is sound.’

  T. J. Horan

  Department of External Affairs, 1952

  ‘I am more and more convinced that many of the homes in which children were placed are undesirable.’

  Monsignor John O’Grady, Head of Catholic Charities, 1955

  The Angel Guardian Home in Brooklyn, New York, is a vast redbrick institution set in its own high-fenced grounds, and surrounded by flower beds and holy statues. In years gone by this imposing orphanage was the most active branch of the Catholic Charities organisation involved in placing Irish babies with American adopters, accounting for almost 300, or one in seven, of all the children officially sent to the USA. But a quarter of a century after the adoption trade ended, other than confirming the numbers, the nuns who ran the home were refusing to discuss their past involvement in organising Irish adoptions. The most basic questions were treated with suspicion, even hostility, and the nuns offered no explanation for their unwillingness to talk.