Another piece of nursing history and family life

Another piece of Nursing history and family life

This is about three women, it is a story about life, a story about how the life of someone we never knew can influence our lives. It is a story of courage, and strength and determination, and because it is a story about life it is also a story that has some tragedy. It is about the decisions we make and how those decisions have consequences we cannot imagine, beautiful consequences, sad consequences and also very happy endings. It is a story about three women and a goose, it is difficult to know where to start, at the beginning or the end. The women were my mother, my aunt and another mother. In Ireland in the 1940’s it was not uncommon for families to have a ‘girl’ living in the house. It was a time when there were big families and a girl was employed to help with caring for the children and household work.

My aunt Agnes worked as a girl for a family in Loughrea, she moved to Co. Kilkenny with them in the 1940’s. My mother was the local midwife in the Bullaun District.  As children there was always a ‘girl’ in our house, we were closer to her than our mother, she was the one who held us and minded us and cared for us. My aunt Agnes while working in Kilkenny fell in love. We have a photograph of her with her boyfriend. She was with child and he refused to marry her, so she moved to Dublin with her baby. She got a job as a maid in a guest-house on the North Circular Rd. She had her baby in September 1944 and she kept her baby, he was named Phillip. Six months later she committed suicide and the child was put into care. Not all of her family were told or knew what happened, her parents were told she died of TB.

In 1947 my mother Nurse Sweeney put an ad in the Irish Press or the Evening Press looking for ‘a girl’ A young girl named Mairead from Co. Wicklow applied and got the job. I cannot imagine what the journey must have been like for her from rural Wicklow to Loughrea in Co. Galway. When Mairead arrived, my mother being a midwife was aware that she did not come alone. Because of what happened to her sister my Aunt Agnes, my mother was even more concerned to make sure they were both ok. In 1948 the baby boy was delivered at the Tuam Mother and Baby Home and Mairead went to Dublin with the child she loved and the child she would not part with.

There must have been a genuine caring relationship between my mother and the girl. Later that year she sent my mother a goose for Christmas, it is sent on the train and it was collected at the Railway Station in Loughrea. Mairead was still a single mother and caring for her child and the expense of the goose and its transport was not cheap. In response my mother wrote her a letter to thank her for the goose and to enquire for the baby, it even mentioned one of our neighbours also asking her and for the baby. It is a story about three women, a goose and a letter.

The letter my mother sent, signed B.A. Sweeney was found in 2006 after Mairead died. Enquiries were made about B.A. Sweeney. I was contacted and I met the Wicklow family and learned that their mother Mairead went on to marry the father of her child and had six more children.    They treasure the letter from my mother and are always so grateful for the care and support their mother received.    It is also about a different world but also about compassion and caring and how even we can build a more inclusive, tolerant and caring society. A story about a mother’s love for her child and for her husband. In 2018 I was invited to the baby’s seventh birthday in Carlow

Remembering our Community Midwives & Nurses

Bridget Ann Sweeney (nee Broderick)