Bodies of five infants from mother and baby home used for research at Queen’s university

The bodies of five infants from a mother and baby home run by the Salvation Army in Belfast were used by Queen’s University Belfast for research purposes.

Representatives from the university told a Stormont committee on Wednesday that the remains, which were received from Thorndale House between 1927 and 1962, were the only body donations the institution had received from mother and baby homes.

“Three of these five infants were buried, for the remaining two, this is not recorded,” Prof Alan Smyth, dean of the school of medicine, dentistry and biomedical sciences, told the executive office committee.

He also said a total of 451 adult bodies had been donated to the university from the Belfast Union Workhouse between 1927 and 1948.

Under the 1832 Anatomy Act, the use of bodies of “unclaimed deceased residents” from workhouses and psychiatric hospitals for research purposes in medical schools was legal and was “common practice” in Ireland and the UK until the mid-1960s.

In 2019, the Commission of Investigation into Mother and Baby Homes in the Republic found that more than 950 children who died in those homes were sent to medical schools at UCD, Trinity and the Royal College of Surgeons for dissection for anatomical study between 1920 and 1977.

The appearance by Queen’s followed a previous session in June, when campaigner Eunan Duffy from Truth Recovery NI told the committee that the remains of 1,980 adults, children and babies had been used for research at Queen’s, and in the case of 1,824, it was not known what happened to their remains and body parts thereafter — a claim which was rejected by the university.

Prof Smyth told the committee that, since 1927, “2,464 donors have given their body for anatomical examination” and, of these, 1,155 had been buried, 1,010 cremated and one returned to the family before dissection, with six donor bodies currently undergoing dissection.

“In 292 cases there is no record of either burial or cremation and we believe these bodies were returned to the family to make funeral arrangements, however, we cannot be sure,” he said.

He said the university possesses complete records for the last 40 years, so the 292 cases where records are missing date from before that time.

“I can find no evidence to support the claim that the whereabouts of 1,824 bodies is unknown,” he said, adding that “I can’t speak to where that particular figure came from.”

From 1927-1973 “the university received the bodies of 49 children, mostly infants under a year”, he said.

Prof Smyth also addressed previous evidence to the committee that children in an unidentified children’s residential institution were subjected to a drug and vaccine trial in 1962, saying the university believed it had identified the trial.

“We think the trial in question was published in the Lancet in 1962 … [it] looked at adding an activated polio vaccine to the routinely used diarrhoea, tetanus and pertussis vaccine.

“Participants were aged between six and 19 months and the paper records that nine of 44 infants were residents of a children’s home, without stating which one.

“All of the children remained well and developed good immunity to polio,” he said. “There was no record in the paper of what ethical approval or consent was obtained.”

Prof Smyth said that throughout its history, Queen’s adhered to the legislation in place at the time.

He also outlined the university’s plans for further research and the appropriate remembrance of donors and their families, including the erection of memorials and an annual ceremony of commemoration.

During the session, Alliance MLA Connie Egan raised “a really sensitive one … throughout the course of this committee meeting I’ve had two people message me, one of them was one of the MLAs in this building who has been affected by this.

“Both are adamant that there are babies in Milltown cemetery who were put in a mass grave that were from Queen’s, their parents were told that their babies were at a Belfast cemetery … and they weren’t told and they had no consent, and this is a very upsetting issue for them.”

University secretary Alistair Finlay said: “It would be good to get any more information regarding that, particularly if it is suggested that the body came from Queens or via Queens.” He added that the institution would follow up on the query.