Headstone for little boy (6) will honour Laois workhouse dead

A MEMORIAL headstone for a six-year-old boy, who was among many destitute people buried in an unmarked pit in Abbeyleix, will be erected thanks to a fundraiser that surpassed its target within days.

The headstone and a limestone seat will be installed at the former workhouse burial ground known as the ‘Gate to Heaven’, which is located behind the Abbeyleix Community Nursing Unit (CNU), formerly the district hospital where the workhouse was located.

The natural limestone seat will invite people to reflect and remember the short life of John Fitzgerald, a little boy who was among many babies, children and adults interred in the unmarked burial site at Abbeyleix workhouse, between 1842 and 1962.

A funding appeal set up on 15 March by local historian Noel Burke, on behalf of the Tonduff Cillín committee, almost reached its €500 target within a day and collected €638 by 18 March.

A very grateful Noel said he couldn’t believe the generous response to the online crowdfunder, which was launched on idonate.ie for a memorial headstone and natural limestone seat at the tragic site. The excess will be used to plant wildflower seeds and maintain the burial ground into the future.

The Tonduff Cillín committee and the Fennelly family from Rathmoyle , who look after the ‘Gate To Heaven’ graveyard on the Carlow Road, came together in an effort to honour those who lie in the burial wasteland that is adorned only by native Irish trees, some of which blew down in the recent winter storms.

Noel said: ‘After 183 years, the time has surely come to recognise and remember that all these people who lie in the workhouse burial ground were all God’s family and are entitled to be remembered, respected and prayed for.’ 

The name of John Fitzgerald, who died in 1886, was chosen for the memorial headstone to symbolise and honour all those buried at the site because, like them, he was not treated with dignity either in life or in death.

The little boy, his sibling and their parents John and Mary Fitzgerald were destitute but chose to move from place to place around Abbeyleix, sleeping in ditches and hedgerows rather than surrender to the misery of the workhouse, where they would be separated. The Fitzgeralds had been evicted from their local farm in the mid-1880s.

In researching the site, Noel found a newspaper report dated 5 June 1886, with the headline ‘Strange Death Of A Child At Abbeyleix’, which outlined an inquest into little John’s death which was held at the workhouse by coroner Dr Higgins.

Abbeyleix head constable Bernard King told the inquest that he found the little boy lying dead in his mother’s arms on 31 May, on the roadway leading from Abbeyleix to Palin’s Cross. He forcefully removed the child’s body from her arms so that it could be viewed by the inquest jury in the workhouse, despite the mother’s protests. Workhouse medical officer Dr H. Stoney said that John’s body was extremely emaciated and covered with sores and vermin.

The jury found that the boy’s death was accelerated by want of proper care and nourishment and by the ‘criminal negligence’ of his parents, who had refused to enter the workhouse. They were later arrested.

John’s body was disposed of in the graveyard pit or ‘shank yard’ at the rear of the present day Abbeyleix CNU, which is believed to contain up to 2,000 workhouse paupers.

John was one of four small children transported from the mortuary at Abbeyleix workhouse to the adjoining burial ground in 1886 alone. A century later, the burial ground was renamed Gate To Heaven by Martin Fennelly, just before he died in December 1986. The first Mass at the burial site was celebrated on 11 September 1994.

With funding in place, plans are now underway to purchase and erect a headstone and a reflection seat at the site, with suitable inscriptions in both Irish and English.