Son reunited with mother and baby home survivor ‘desperate’ to buy her home

By Lynn Rusk, PA

A man who was reunited with his birth mother, a survivor of one of Ireland’s most notorious mother and baby homes, has launched a fundraiser to help her buy her house.

Patrick Naughton, 70, from Ealing, west London, was taken from his mother, Christina “Chrissie” Tully, from the Tuam mother and baby home in Co Galway, in 1954, just weeks after she gave birth to him aged 24.

Mr Naughton, who moved to the UK with his adoptive parents aged 13, was reunited with Ms Tully, now 93, in 2013.

Ms Tully, who had given birth to another boy in 1949, when she was 18, via caesarean section, was told by doctors at the time that he had died.

But she believes her son, whom she named Michael, is still alive.

In a bid to help his birth mother, whom he said “never had anything in her life”, Mr Naughton has set up a fundraiser to help her buy her council home, so her son Michael will “always have a home” to which he can return.

“I am terribly sorry for the raw deal that Chrissie has got,” Mr Naughton told the PA news agency.

“I came out all right, I wasn’t put in with a bad family. I was put in with a good mum and dad that cared, but Chrissie lost.

“Chrissie has had no life from the age of 15 onwards and she has suffered.”

As many as 68,000 people went through the religious-run mother and baby homes. Women’s babies were forcibly taken from them and adopted.

Up to 9,000 children died in institutions across the country, in appalling conditions.

Mr Naughton, who visits Ireland regularly, spoke of his mother’s experience under the care of the Bon Secours nuns as an unmarried mother in 1950s’ Ireland.

“Chrissy was put in the Tuam home because nobody wanted her,” he said.

“Her mother didn’t want her. There was nobody she had to return to.

“The local priest took her and put her in the Tuam home because she was a disgrace to the village.”

When she was due to give birth to her first child, aged 18, she was taken into hospital as she needed to have a caesarean section.

“When her time was right to go to the hospital they couldn’t do the birth in the home, so they had to take her into Galway Central Hospital,” he said.

“She gave birth to a baby. The doctor came in and said ‘the baby’s dead’. I don’t know how long after the child was born, but she never saw it.”

Mr Naughton said he and his mother have searched “high and low” in recent years for records of her first child, but have been unable to find anything.

He said Ms Tully received a record from a Freedom of Information request that said the baby had been “returned to Tuam home” after he died.

In 2014 it was revealed that hundreds of babies had been “indecently buried” in a sewage tank at the Tuam mother and baby home.

The research by local historian Catherine Corless found that 796 babies and young children had died and been “indecently buried in a defunct sewage system” at the home between 1925 and 1961.

Ms Tully, who said “he could be in that pit in Tuam, but he could also have been adopted”, said she wanted to keep her home for after she had died, in case he came looking for her, like Mr Naughton.

She said her wish was for the house to remain her family home so Michael knows that “she waited for him”.

Mr Naughton said: “I am desperate. She’s never had anything in her life, and nobody has ever helped her.

“I’ll never make up the lost time if I lived to be a million. I’m trying to give her what she hasn’t got. I try to do everything.”

To learn more about Patrick Naughton’s fundraiser you can visit: https://www.gofundme.com/f/last-of-the-tuam-survivors.