Cork mayor to welcome German charity to gates of Bessborough today

This afternoon (Tuesday), at the gates of the former Bessborough mother and baby institute, the Lord Mayor of Cork, councillor Fergal Dennehy, will welcome to Cork a group of 20 members of the German charity Sportler 4 A Children’s World.

Led by Scottish children’s rights campaigner John McGurk MBE, the group is running and cycling through six nations to raise funds for charity.

While in Ireland they will visit Bessborough to honour the 923 infants known to have died in the mother and baby institution or after discharge from there.

In February, Cork City Council’s planning department granted permission for the building of 140 apartments on the Bessborough site, a decision which is currently being appealed.

Between 1922 and 1998, the Sisters of the Sacred Hearts of Jesus and Mary ran Bessborough as a mother and baby home and, in 2021, the Mother and Baby Homes Commission reported 923 child deaths relating to Bessborough. 

Burial records for just 64 children

Burial records exist for only 64 of those children, with the commission concluding it was “highly likely” that some of the remaining 859 children were buried on Bessborough’s grounds.

The Sportler 4 A Children’s World group will also travel to Tuam, where an excavation is currently underway at the former site of the Tuam Home.

In 2014, historian Catherine Corless revealed that 796 children had died in the Galway mother and baby institution, which was run by the Bon Secours religious order between 1925 and 1961.

Subsequent excavation proved that many of those children were buried illegally in a disused Victorian sewerage system.

Last week, Ms Corless told The Echo she was “absolutely horrified” that planning permission had been granted to build apartments on the site of the former mother-and-baby institution at Bessborough.