Bye-Child

He was discovered in the henhouse/ Where she had confined him. He was incapable of saying anything. Articles in Ireland’s Mourne Observer of September and October 1956 outlined the extraordinary discovery of 7 year-old Kevin Murphy kept in isolation in an outhouse almost since birth and the subsequent conviction of his 45 year-old mother, Margaret Murphy, imprisoned for 9 months for the wilful neglect of Kevin, her fifth child. Kevin had been born illegitimate. ‘Although his short life-time has consisted of continuous physical and emotional deprivation, the child has been able to transcend his kennel prison and achieved a hard and bright lucidity of spirit … He has journeyed ‘beyond patience’ and beyond the limitations of human ‘love’, and identified […]