[Read the blurb] [Read reviews] [Read an extract] The Siobhan Dowd Trust
Two
true stories that inspired A
Swift Pure Cry…
I'm often asked
what inspired A
Swift Pure Cry.
There were many sources of inspiration:
the way my cousins in Ireland talk, my mother's tales of having to pick
up stones in her back field when she didn't know the reason why, the girls that
fell pregnant as teenagers in my school class in South London, and George
Eliot's Adam Bede to name but a few.
But some
readers with long memories may also find echoes in A Swift Pure
Cry of two tragic cases that really did rock Ireland in
1984. Read on to find out more…
The first case was that of Anne Lovett, a young girl of 15 who
tragically died of exposure and haemorrhaging while trying to give birth on her
own in a grotto to the Virgin Mary in the village of Granard, County Longford.
Her child also died. Members
of her community had failed to help or counsel her through her predicament.
They pleaded in their own defence that they had been unaware of her
pregnancy.
The second case was that of 'the Kerry Babies', which occurred before
the era of DNA testing. A baby boy was found with multiple stab wounds,
abandoned on a beach out on Kerry's Dingle Bay. The Gardai accused Joanne Hayes, a woman in her 20s who had
been having an affair with a married man, of having murdered him.
She admitted to having been pregnant but said she had buried her own baby
boy, who had died, in a local field. However,
when she and members of her family were taken into custody and questioned, they
signed various confessions indicating that Joanne had indeed stabbed her baby
and that other members of the family had driven out the Dingle Peninsula to
dispose of it.
Then a second baby was indeed found on the Hayes's land, in line with
Joanne Hayes's original claim. A
pathologist's report declared that the two dead babies had different blood
groups. Members of the Gardai next
hypothesized that Joanne Hayes had given birth to twins, conceived by two
different men.
A national controversy over the affair led to an independent tribunal
being set up to investigate matters. The
Hayes family later retracted its various confessions, saying they had been
produced under duress. The
tribunal concluded that there was insufficient evidence to prosecute the Hayes
family but also exonerated the Gardai of improper behaviour. Nonetheless, following the affair, the Irish authorities set
up a Gardai Complaints Commission.
To date, the case of the stabbed dead baby found on the beach remains
unsolved.
I would like to stress that
the real people who were involved in these two episodes form no part at all of
the make-up of any of my characters in A
Swift Pure Cry,
who are entirely fictional.
[Read the blurb] [Read reviews] [Read two true stories] The Siobhan Dowd Trust