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Death of 25-year-old Peggy McCarthy of Listowel, 1946

13567

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  • #62
    Sweetemotion
    Registered Users Posts: 2,497 ✭✭✭Sweetemotion


    Odhinn wrote: »
    To speak against the Church was to invite the church to speak against yourself. Having been there and done that I can safely say that had I known how much damage that was going to do to me in terms of work opportunities in particular I would have kept my gob shut.


    The same thing is still happening today but it's not church this time. Go against this msm liberal bull and you could see your work opportunities severely damaged also.

    The same people keeping their gobs shut back then, would be the same as the people keeping their gobs shut now. No difference.


  • #63
    markodaly
    Registered Users Posts: 13,897 ✭✭✭✭markodaly


    Deleted User wrote: »
    Who are the pariahs of Irish society in 2018


    The church

    and who are the thugs and bullies of Irish society in 2018?

    The media


  • #64
    markodaly
    Registered Users Posts: 13,897 ✭✭✭✭markodaly


    gozunda wrote: »
    Don't kid yourself.

    The rcc had absolute spiritual and temporal power over its congregations

    The rcc could damn you to hell

    The rcc could have your children removed by the organs of the state with the flick of a finger

    The rcc demanded a weekly and yearly tax off each and every family

    Only the church could marry and bury you if you were a Catholic

    The rcc controlled the availability of contraception with the conivence of the state

    If anyone stood against the rcc - it had the ability to destroy those peoples lives, careers and reputations

    We were taught about the power of the landed gentry and landlords in school

    Once the landlords left - the rcc clergy stepped in and took their place. The priests lived in the biggest houses and had fine horses and the big motorcars. They had housekeepers and servants whilst the majority of the population lived in poor houses with few if any conveniences.

    Above all they could not be questioned and were unquestionably believed by the Gardai and state bodies

    What power did any citizen have to stand up against denizens such as these?

    A lot of this is not true in fairness.


  • #65
    uck51js9zml2yt
    Closed Accounts Posts: 18,268 ✭✭✭✭uck51js9zml2yt


    I love all the mock indignation from people about how Peggy was treated by people who didn't know of her existence 25 hours ago.

    What's the motives of the OP who never told us this story in the last 8 years of their presence on Boards?

    As shocking as the story is, it's just another attempt to have a go at God, who btw never condoned what the RCC did but everyone has free will.
    As another poster said, what happened her family and the families not all the women sent to laundries. They allowed it and agreed with the system.


  • #66
    WinnyThePoo
    Closed Accounts Posts: 3,417 ✭✭✭WinnyThePoo


    I have to laugh at little people getting offended. Your institution is malignant. Own it at least.


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  • #67
    Sweetemotion
    Registered Users Posts: 2,497 ✭✭✭Sweetemotion


    WinnyThePoo wrote: »
    I have to laugh at little people getting offended. Your institution is malignant. Own it at least.

    And I laugh at people like you. Thinking you're so enlightened when all you are is an NPC acting progressive when in reality all you're doing is just keeping the status quo.


  • #68
    WinnyThePoo
    Closed Accounts Posts: 3,417 ✭✭✭WinnyThePoo


    Sweetemotion wrote: »
    WinnyThePoo wrote: »
    I have to laugh at little people getting offended. Your institution is malignant. Own it at least.

    And I laugh at people like you. Thinking you're so enlightened when all you are is an NPC acting progressive when in reality all you're doing is just keeping the status quo.
    Npc?

    National primary school council?

    This is amazing. Tell me more.


  • #69
    [Deleted User]
    Posts: 0 ✭[Deleted User]


    Wheeliebin30 wrote: »
    They had taxis in 1946?

    Learn something new everyday.

    Oh yes, as far back as the 1800s the taxi model was intriduced to ireland by a man named Charles Bianconi. These were horse drawn carriages which had established routes and a person could reserve a place by throwing their overcoat down on a seat. I'm not sure though if they asked the rider what were they busy tonight and what time were they on till.


  • #70
    Sweetemotion
    Registered Users Posts: 2,497 ✭✭✭Sweetemotion


    WinnyThePoo wrote: »
    Npc?

    National primary school council?

    This is amazing. Tell me more.

    All you want is for people like you and you conformed into the new radical mainstream. If you were born in Nazi Germany you'd be a Nazi. If you were born in communist Russia you'd be a communist, if you were born in South America during Jim crow you'd be a kkk member.

    You're a conformist nothing more or nothing less.


  • #71
    Gimme A Pound
    Closed Accounts Posts: 3,482 ✭✭✭Gimme A Pound


    "Every single person" did not know what was going on.

    There were definitely some non clergy who held a level of responsibility (e.g. the parents who shoved their daughter into a laundry) but certainly not all (e.g. the impoverished widow or widower whose children were taken off them "for their own good").


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  • #72
    Gimme A Pound
    Closed Accounts Posts: 3,482 ✭✭✭Gimme A Pound


    Graces7 wrote: »
    Very revealing post on many levels
    It reveals that they stood up to the church in some capacity and it backfired. What are the many other levels?


  • #73
    Suckit
    Registered Users Posts: 11,215 ✭✭✭✭Suckit


    Did anything else happen in 1946?


  • #74
    hatrickpatrick
    Registered Users Posts: 17,797 ✭✭✭✭hatrickpatrick


    Honestly, does anyone else think that at least some of the utter contempt for humanity displayed by members of religious orders is tied to the celibacy thing? That either (a) they're so bitter and jealous that they have to suppress their own sexuality that it fills them with rage to see others enjoying theirs, or (b) that prolonged sexual frustration (assuming many of them followed the church's ridiculous prohibition on masturbation as well) just leads to chronic cranky c*ntishness?

    I genuinely find it so, so bizarre trying to wrap my head around how any of these people managed to go from the word of Christ to the twisted ideology they ended up inflicting on society. Sure, there are always a certain number of psychopaths, sadists and assholes in every group of humans, but these people ostensibly became members of religious orders specifically because they believed in that religion.

    It makes no sense to me that anyone could genuinely believe in the religion, while simultaneously genuinely believing that this sort of behaviour towards their fellow humans was acceptable. Jesus himself literally condemned it outright in not one but several different parts of the gospels - not the apostles, not a pope, not a prophet, but Jesus himself. The man whose words are supposed to take absolute primacy over anyone else's when it comes to what counts as a Christian belief and what does not.

    It genuinely makes no sense to me at all. It's as utterly ridiculous as if someone founded a movement specifically dedicated to being teetotal and abstaining from alcohol, and then thousands of years later, hundreds of people claim to follow that movement and hold the word of its founder sacred above all else, while being raving alcoholics who are never seen without a drink in their hand.

    How did it happen? How did any of these people believe that their actions were a faithful representation of the ideology they supposedly held sacred? Or is it simply the case that many priests and nuns didn't actually give a sh!t about religion and joined their orders because their families pressured them, or they couldn't get another job and it seemed like an easy lifestyle, or something else?

    Can anyone offer an insight at all into how such a huge disconnect manifested between the belief system and the horrific actions of those who ostensibly cared more about that belief system than anything else?


  • #75
    markodaly
    Registered Users Posts: 13,897 ✭✭✭✭markodaly


    gozunda wrote: »
    There was only ONE state religion at that time and it's power was absolute.

    This followed by..
    You really don't have a clue ...

    ..this

    I hope you are talking about yourself. :rolleyes:


  • #76
    markodaly
    Registered Users Posts: 13,897 ✭✭✭✭markodaly


    Charles Babbage wrote: »
    One small observation. If Peggy McCarthy came from a family of 10, then Breda McCarthy must have had 9 aunts and uncles. Her remaining in an institution isn't entirely due to the church.

    This is the most important post in this thread.

    It suited society to have the 'undesirables' taken away from view. Be the morally, mentally or physically corrupt, for use of a better word.

    I think this all went back to the famine times when the country was literally torn apart at the seems both economically and socially. You don't shrug off losing 25% of your population in a ten year period and move on as normal.

    The famine was arguably and still is the most defining moment of modern Ireland and we are still suffering the consequences of it.

    It crystallized us politically, where movements like the land league and Home Rule movement was renewed with new energy, leading to the IRB and violent Irish Republicanism.

    It also defined us morally and culturally, where movements like the GAA and conradh na Gaelige were established.

    Out of this stemmed a need, almost an obsession to cleanse the soul of Ireland from anything that did not resemble the norm, especially anything Anglo or god forbid English.

    Land is still an Irish obsession (just look at the issue surrounding evictions ala Stokestown) and having unwed pregnant mothers were seen as a threat to inheritance and the rights of property.

    In other words, we are still working out why Ireland, took such an extremist view to people who were seen as 'not normal'. Pretty much every other country in the world had similar homes and institutions for these unwanted people, but we took it further. As I said, this, in my opinion, comes from the Irish Famine and the huge repercussions that had on the Irish psyche


  • #77
    The Crowman
    Banned (with Prison Access) Posts: 991 ✭✭✭The Crowman


    Wheeliebin30 wrote: »
    They had taxis in 1946?

    Learn something new everyday.

    No, early man was living in caves up to 1980 and dinosaurs could be seen in the midlands in the mid 60's


  • #78
    Kidchameleon
    Closed Accounts Posts: 5,482 ✭✭✭Kidchameleon


    hatrickpatrick wrote: »
    ..

    It has nothing to do with celibacy. The church was a place where already sick individuals were able to gain trust, power and access to victims


  • #79
    tretorn
    Closed Accounts Posts: 1,800 ✭✭✭tretorn


    The Protestants had their own homes, it wasnt just the Catholics who wanted rid of illegitimate children as they referred to these unwanted children. Some of these children, probaby a good number were born through incest and this may be another reason why the deaths in Tuam were high, many of the infants probably had congentital disabilities and their mothers may have been raped continously by relatives. For some of the families it may have been thought the only way to stop the abuse was to send the women to institutions, I suspect many of the women may have been special needs themselves and so vulnerable to abuse.

    Anyway, enough already, its now almost 2019 and we are talking about something that happened in 1946.

    We cant afford to spend millions excavating infants remains, we need to look after the needs of living children first.

    We could establish a garden where these infants lie, they were failed by everybody and not just the religious. Their families failed them, their community failed them, the State who knew exactly what was going on failed them and the media failed them too.


  • #80
    gozunda
    Registered Users Posts: 18,996 ✭✭✭✭gozunda


    markodaly wrote: »
    A lot of this is not true in fairness.

    Unfortunately it's all true. If you choose to believe otherwise you are playing ostrich...


  • #81
    hatrickpatrick
    Registered Users Posts: 17,797 ✭✭✭✭hatrickpatrick


    Kidchameleon wrote: »
    It has nothing to do with celibacy. The church was a place where already sick individuals were able to gain trust, power and access to victims

    That may be true of sexual exploitation and paedophilia, but it doesn't account for non-sexual straight-up scumbaggery - extreme corporal punishment for example, or the kind of thing being discussed by this OP in which human beings were treated like sh!t by people who were supposed to place compassion above all other virtues. That's what I don't understand. Take the paedophilia and sexual abuse out of the equation for a moment - I'm simply wondering if the hatred of anyone seen to be enjoying a sex life was born out of jealousy and frustration on the part of those who had idiotically pledged never to have one.


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  • #82
    gozunda
    Registered Users Posts: 18,996 ✭✭✭✭gozunda


    markodaly wrote: »
    This followed by.. ..this I hope you are talking about yourself.

    Your comment makes no sense and you have failed to make any refutation of anything of what I posted whatsoever.

    Emoticons dont count as an argument btw


  • #83
    gozunda
    Registered Users Posts: 18,996 ✭✭✭✭gozunda


    tretorn wrote: »
    The Protestants had their own homes, it wasnt just the Catholics who wanted rid of illegitimate children as they referred to these unwanted children. Some of these children, probaby a good number were born through incest and this may be another reason why the deaths in Tuam were high, many of the infants probably had congentital disabilities and their mothers may have been raped continously by relatives. For some of the families it may have been thought the only way to stop the abuse was to send the women to institutions, I suspect many of the women may have been special needs themselves and so vulnerable to abuse.Anyway, enough already, its now almost 2019 and we are talking about something that happened in 1946.
    We cant afford to spend millions excavating infants remains, we need to look after the needs of living children first.We could establish a garden where these infants lie, they were failed by everybody and not just the religious. Their families failed them, their community failed them, the State who knew exactly what was going on failed them and the media failed them too.

    Your message is "move on - nothing to see here"

    I call bull****.

    Your various suppositions about 'incest' 'congenital disabilities' 'continual rape by relatives' being the root cause are at best purile conjecture.

    Until there is a full forensic investigation is to explain why there was such a horrendous death rate of young children and babies coupled with the fact that the records so far released reveal that some children even died as a consequence of marasmus.

    That this happened within living memory is why this genocide needs to be fully and openly investigated and not buried beneath mealy mouthed words and sods of grass.


  • #84
    Graces7
    Registered Users Posts: 32,634 ✭✭✭✭Graces7


    tretorn wrote: »
    The Protestants had their own homes, it wasnt just the Catholics who wanted rid of illegitimate children as they referred to these unwanted children. Some of these children, probaby a good number were born through incest and this may be another reason why the deaths in Tuam were high, many of the infants probably had congentital disabilities and their mothers may have been raped continously by relatives. For some of the families it may have been thought the only way to stop the abuse was to send the women to institutions, I suspect many of the women may have been special needs themselves and so vulnerable to abuse.

    Anyway, enough already, its now almost 2019 and we are talking about something that happened in 1946.

    We cant afford to spend millions excavating infants remains, we need to look after the needs of living children first.

    We could establish a garden where these infants lie, they were failed by everybody and not just the religious. Their families failed them, their community failed them, the State who knew exactly what was going on failed them and the media failed them too.

    I think you need to read very carefully all the Tuam reports and committee findings, as the situation is far more complex in every way than you seem to understand.

    They have indeed been failed enough without any more.

    google will help you. There are so many as there has been so much deep caring and work Catherine Corless is an amazing person.

    The initial forensic investigations revealed that there are a number of different burial sites for these little ones. Just scattered around like so much rubbish. In one case a chamber under a road that is in use. The council who were in on all of this, even paying the Srs £5 per burial were then very careful where they built the housing estate which folk always thought was an odd shape, to avoid the risk of builders finding tiny bones.

    They built the childrens' playground atop one burial area, covering ot with layers of rock. There are graves spilling out at the side.

    To just leave these scattered dead babies is as bad as the original event.

    also these little ones had families who had no idea what had happened to them. eg siblings who had no idea they had existed until all this came out. . Who need the closure of the DNA findings.

    It will be a harrowing time indeed, but the alternative is unthinkable. The experts are skilled in mass graves from war zones... never before anything like this in peacetime in a country like Ireland.

    and there are other mass graves at other mother and baby homes. Bessborough is just one. These will follow after Tuam .

    Thankfully the firm decision has been taken.


  • #85
    sdanseo
    Registered Users Posts: 9,233 ✭✭✭sdanseo


    Religions in general should just be banned.

    Freedom of expression by all means. Freedom to preach fairy tales which are utterly baseless by any competent scientific measure, and which are known to cause division and hate crime through their followers' devotion, really has to be questioned.


  • #86
    corks finest
    Registered Users Posts: 8,615 ✭✭✭corks finest


    Saw that,hard going


  • #87
    HandsomeBob
    Closed Accounts Posts: 1,977 ✭✭✭HandsomeBob


    I'm more surprised that people are surprised. Its just another scandal for some to be indifferent about and others to get on their high horse wagging their finger at modern day RCC followers.

    The RCC is a fading power in this country evident by recent referendums so I think people need to remember that. I understand people's anger given their remaining influence in education but tbh, the ball is in the government's court. They know what they have to do and that's to pony up to get the RCC out. I wouldn't expect them, like I see people often suggest, to just release their influence out of shame. Shame hasn't made them do a whole lot after all.


  • #88
    WinnyThePoo
    Closed Accounts Posts: 3,417 ✭✭✭WinnyThePoo


    Sweetemotion wrote: »
    WinnyThePoo wrote: »
    Npc?

    National primary school council?

    This is amazing. Tell me more.

    All you want is for people like you and you conformed into the new radical mainstream. If you were born in Nazi Germany you'd be a Nazi. If you were born in communist Russia you'd be a communist, if you were born in South America during Jim crow you'd be a kkk member.

    You're a conformist nothing more or nothing less.

    So I'm a communist, a nazi and in the kkk. Have you ever considered writing my biography.

    I honestly don't think I've got a heartier laugh on boards this year.


  • #89
    Odhinn
    Registered Users Posts: 7,940 ✭✭✭Odhinn


    WinnyThePoo wrote: »
    So I'm a communist, a nazi and in the kkk. Have you ever considered writing my biography.

    I honestly don't think I've got a heartier laugh on boards this year.




    Just means you like meeting people, working with groups and have a thing for uniforms.


  • #90
    Mrs OBumble
    Registered Users Posts: 25,651 ✭✭✭✭Mrs OBumble


    wakka12 wrote: »
    You shouldnt have to be married to get medical attention, is the point


    Of course you shouldn't! But for some reason, Irish society organised it so that you did.

    My guess is that the first "hospitals" Peggy was taken to where in fact maternity homes, without any doctors in them most of the time. That would be why it was nuns, not doctors, who made admission decisions.


    markodaly wrote: »
    This is the most important post in this thread.
    It suited society to have the 'undesirables' taken away from view. Be the morally, mentally or physically corrupt, for use of a better word.

    ....

    Land is still an Irish obsession (just look at the issue surrounding evictions ala Stokestown) and having unwed pregnant mothers were seen as a threat to inheritance and the rights of property.

    Another mightily important point.



    I've been thinking about this case some more. Peggy was at home with her mother and a local midwife when she went into labour. She hadn't been shunted off into a mother-and-baby home. They were able to get a taxi when one was needed. So clearly it was possible for unmarried mothers to exist in Irish society without the family name being destroyed.

    Then the child was born, and raised by the grandparents - not send away to an industrial school. Yet another way in which this story bucks the evil-church-stole-our-children narrative. When the grandmother died, the parish priest allegedly rang the doorbell out of the blue, and abducted the now-adult child to a laundry. But it's at least equally likely that the family had actually asked him for help with a long-term position for her and he got a place.

    Which really contracts to the situation today, where parents of disabled children ask over and over again for someone to take over the care of their children, but are repeatedly refused. Here's one example: https://www.irishtimes.com/life-and-style/health-family/minding-my-disabled-daughter-i-don-t-want-to-do-this-any-more-1.2872341 - and there are many others.


    The past was most certainly not perfect. The church (Catholic and protestant alike) - with the approval of the mover and shakers of Irish society did much that was inexcusably evil. But it's not nearly as simple or all-bad as some believe, and all isn't roses in the present.

    And I still think it's totally wrong that the boyfriend gets a free pass: if he's been man enough to take responsibility for the consequence of his action, Peggy would possibly not have died.


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  • #91
    Church on Tuesday
    Registered Users Posts: 3,858 ✭✭✭Church on Tuesday


    hatrickpatrick wrote: »
    Honestly, does anyone else think that at least some of the utter contempt for humanity displayed by members of religious orders is tied to the celibacy thing? That either (a) they're so bitter and jealous that they have to suppress their own sexuality that it fills them with rage to see others enjoying theirs, or (b) that prolonged sexual frustration (assuming many of them followed the church's ridiculous prohibition on masturbation as well) just leads to chronic cranky c*ntishness?

    I genuinely find it so, so bizarre trying to wrap my head around how any of these people managed to go from the word of Christ to the twisted ideology they ended up inflicting on society. Sure, there are always a certain number of psychopaths, sadists and assholes in every group of humans, but these people ostensibly became members of religious orders specifically because they believed in that religion.

    It makes no sense to me that anyone could genuinely believe in the religion, while simultaneously genuinely believing that this sort of behaviour towards their fellow humans was acceptable. Jesus himself literally condemned it outright in not one but several different parts of the gospels - not the apostles, not a pope, not a prophet, but Jesus himself. The man whose words are supposed to take absolute primacy over anyone else's when it comes to what counts as a Christian belief and what does not.

    It genuinely makes no sense to me at all. It's as utterly ridiculous as if someone founded a movement specifically dedicated to being teetotal and abstaining from alcohol, and then thousands of years later, hundreds of people claim to follow that movement and hold the word of its founder sacred above all else, while being raving alcoholics who are never seen without a drink in their hand.

    How did it happen? How did any of these people believe that their actions were a faithful representation of the ideology they supposedly held sacred? Or is it simply the case that many priests and nuns didn't actually give a sh!t about religion and joined their orders because their families pressured them, or they couldn't get another job and it seemed like an easy lifestyle, or something else?

    Can anyone offer an insight at all into how such a huge disconnect manifested between the belief system and the horrific actions of those who ostensibly cared more about that belief system than anything else?


    To be a true follower of the RCC you have to be a hypocrite of the highest order I have found.


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