Family Fortunes: The stigma of illegitimacy lasted generations

This photograph was taken just before the outbreak of the second World War. The boy is my father, aged about five. With a very strong sense of avuncular propriety, two of his uncles rest a hand on his shoulder and clasp his hand, respectively. His parents are conspicuously absent from the photograph, because he was born out of wedlock and reared by his aunt, a sister of the two men in the picture.

The alternatives to this not uncommon rural Irish “arrangement” were the mother-and-baby homes , Magdalene laundries or other institutions for so-called “fallen women”. My grandmother was rescued from this status by handing over her eldest son to her older and as yet unmarried sister, and later marrying the father after becoming pregnant for a second time.

There were four children of the marriage but a combination of skewed moral convention and guilt contrived to keep my father from ever taking his place back in that natural family unit. Once the “arrangement” was in place there would be no rehabilitation. Any sense of rejection must have been compounded on learning that his parents later adopted an English boy as “company” for their youngest son.

Their financial ability to do that hints at a level of wealth generated through success in the licensed trade. It’s in marked contrast to the downbeat apparel, replete with hobnail boots and waders, of the labourers flanking my father. There is certainly no sense of “dressing up” for the camera, although efforts by the little boy’s substitute mother to have him as well-presented as possible are evident. In the lean and hungry 1930s that was probably no mean feat, given her modest means garnered from domestic service and a labourer husband.

The powerful stigma of illegitimacy extended to the next generation. Myself and my siblings never enjoyed any meaningful relationship with our natural grandparents as we were an embarrassing reminder of earlier youthful indiscretion. This photo is a reminder of a sense of loss caused primarily by the imposition of a draconian moral code by the Catholic Church. It also tells of the strength of the wider Irish family collective to achieve a pragmatic solution to what was a common enough “problem”.

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