It was a very emotional moment for Tony when his story was first revealed to the world. Here it is...
Wrestling with Bureaucracy
The personal story of Tony Kelly, who has spent the past 40 years searching for his true identity, told by James Laffrey.
Tony Kelly opens the boot of his car and begins to remove one bulging file folder after another, carefully stacking them on the ground.
It's a process that continues for several minutes, a second pile forming besides the first until finally, Tony closes down the boot with one free hand, the other clasping several plastic bags containing even more folders.
Each folder holds a raft of documents that tell the story of Tony's extraordinary search for his parents and siblings. As he walks from the car - neatly attired in a suit and tie, his arms laden down with the numerous folders he is reminiscent of a solicitor or barrister arriving at court for an important case. One gets the impression that Tony Kelly is not a man to leave anything to chance. And that's just as well because his gift of fastidiousness has proved his most priceless asset in his search for his idenity; a voyage of discovery that began more than four decades ago.
Tony Kelly is a Mayo man who grew up in Swinford in the 1960s. Yet he wasn't born in Mayo; he was born in Holles Street Hospital in Dublin on June 15th, 1946.
Tony was born out of wedlock to a woman called Bridget Kelly who worked as a maid in some of the big houses in Dublin. Bridget Kelly was originally from the Hill of Down in County Meath and she was not a young woman when Tony was born. Just short of her fortieth birthday, Bridget Kelly was forced to give up her nine-month old son for adoption in February 1947.
It would appear that Bridget Kelly had little choice in the matter. She was struggling as a single mother in Archbishop McQuaid's Ireland, trying to work as a maid while raising an infant on her own. The winter of '46/'47 was the most severe in Irish history; it was not a good time to be a working, single mother. Bridget was paying a woman to look after her child while she worked long hours as a maid. It was an impossible situation and it would soon come to an end.
Bridget Kelly's employer, Ms Alice Shaw, who lived on the Templelogue Road in Dublin, soon took matters in hand. She wrote to the Child Protection and Rescue Society of Ireland (CPRSI) - the child care agency run by the Catholic Church - asking that a foster mother be found for the young Anthony Kelly. Ms Shaw - a member of the Church of Ireland wanted to ensure the future wellbeing of Bridget Kelly's infant son. Her letter to the CPRSI - penned in January 1947 - contains a line that is especially telling when one considers the terrible revelations of recent years.
"I would not like him to go into any so-called home or institution," Ms Shaw wrote. "He is such an attractive baby that I am sure anyone would be fond of him, If you cannot get anyone to adopt him, would it be possible to leave him with his foster mother until he is old enough to be put into some school."
Ms Shaw's letter also reveals the tragedy of Tony Kelly's mother who, like many women of that time, was a victim of the harsh, pitiless society into which she was born.
"Bridget Kelly is, I think, a good girl although she has fallen ... She has been paying fifteen a week for the baby hitherto, and has done without warm clothes herself,"
On February 6,1947, Bridget Kelly (right) brought her young son to the offices of the CPRSI, signing a document that effectively relinquished her rights as a mother. She was to have no more contact with the child but was to pay the sum of one pound per month for her son's maintenance in foster care.
Tony was placed in a number of foster homes in Dublin throughout 1947. Records from the CPRSI reveal that he was in three foster homes between February and October, and he spent his first birthday in Loughlinstown Hospital after suffering a bad case of shingles. It was only in late 1947 that some stability came into his life when he was fostered to a home at Greenhills in Tallaght, where he remained until 1952 when he was placed for adoption with the Tansey family in Carracarada in Swinford.
Luke and Winifred Tansey were farmers and they had one daughter, Cora. Tony was taken into the family as one of their own, growing up in an agrarian community that was very different from the urban milieu of his formative years. One of his earliest memories of his time in Swinford is seeing a cow in a field near the Tansey farm. When the cow moved towards him he ran in terror, only to tumble unceremoniously into a pile of dung. It was a fairly unforgettable introduction to country living!
Tony quickly settled into his new home. He was only 10 days in Swinford when his adoptive mother wrote to the CPRSI about her new son's progress.
"Thanks ever so much for sending Tony to me. He is a grand little boy and we are very pleased with him. He is very much at home with us all and is very good at his prayers and figures. I am sending him to school on Monday."
The school Tony enrolled in was Cashel National School where he would remain until his early teens when he left to go working with Mayo Co Council as a water carrier. The job involved carrying buckets of water to a steam crusher. He later worked for McNicholas Contractors before emigrating to Bury in Lancashire, England, at the age of 16. One of his first jobs was with a Mayo-born contractor, Tom Murphy, from Ballyhaunis. Murphy - a hulk of a man - viewed his new 5'5" recruit with some skepticism.
"I remember the first day he picked me up in his truck and we were driving to the job and he looked over at me and said: 'Jaysus, you're awful smaaalll!'''
But Tony compensated for his diminutive height with a broad, stocky frame. He became friendly with the Dunleavy brothers from Charlestown - Mickey and Seamus - who were heavily involved in wrestling in the Lancashire area. Tony, who had been a successful boxer in Swinford, was attracted to wrestling and soon became renowned in professional circles. He spent much of the 1960s and 1970s travelling to televised wrestling tournaments all over England, and became famous for a 'little and large' photoshoot with the legendary Giant Haystacks.
"He was 6'11" and 38 stone. I was 5'5" and 12.5 stone. It made for a good image and it was used all over England to promote wrestling. Giant was a fantastic man and was the leading light in wrestling at that time."
Tony began his search for his parents in 1967 while living in Rotherham, Yorkshire. He wrote two letters to the CPRSI but was rebuffed on both occasions. The society told him that no records existed and said he had no hope of finding his mother.
It was the first of many setbacks Tony would suffer in his long search to establish his true identity. He didn't known then - way back in 1967 - he was embarking on a journey of self discovery that would span four decades and two different centuries.
The boxer turned wrestler was about to face his most formidable opponent yet: Bureaucratic Ireland.
It was the late 1960s and Tony Kelly had already received his first setback in his search for his true identity. The revelation by the Child Protection and Rescue Society of Ireland (CPRSI) that no records existed pertaining to his birth had left him shocked and confused.
It was as if he did not exist.
"I let it lie for a few years and it was not until 1969 that I tried again when a nice landlady I knew encouraged me to write to Dublin Castle for my birth certificate."
After initially receiving a shortened version of his birth certificate - in which the names of his parents were omitted - Tony eventually received the full document. It identified his mother as Bridget Kelly of Killyon, Hill of Down, County Meath. His father's surname was given as 'Joyce', with a note attached stating 'gone, South America'.
"I wrote to a priest, Father Carberry, in Longwood, Co Meath, and he made great efforts to help me. Unfortunately, there were two Bridget Kellys from that area who were first cousins and they had both gone to work in Dublin."
Through the efforts of Father Carberry, Tony came within touching distance of meeting his mother in 1970 but further obstacles were placed in his way. It was to become a recurring theme throughout his long search for his parents, and eventually he would have to take legal proceedings in the High Court to force the CPRSI to release his records. His landmark case was ultimately successful and the CPRSI - now known as Cunamh - was ordered to pay his costs of £7,000 and to provide him with the records in its possession. In May 2006 - almost 40 years after Tony first sought his records from the CPRSI - a letter issued containing everything he needed to know about his birth and early years in foster care.
Ironically, Tony had conducted his own exhaustive investigations in the interim, tracing his roots with the sort of forensic detail that would put to shame the makers of Who Do You Think You Are? Having returned to Ireland in the early 1980s, he made it his mission in life to discover the circumstances of his birth.
After much research, Tony discovered that his mother had become pregnant by the son of a wealthy family for whom she had worked in Dublin. The son had left Ireland in 1946 - the year of Tony's birth - to train as a medical doctor in the United States. He subsequently returned to Ireland and pursued a successful career in medicine. Father and son met in the 1980s in a hospital in Cork where the doctor was now working.
"He readily admitted to being my father. We had tea and sandwiches and we shook hands and left. But before we parted he told me that the year I was born he was awarded a silver medal for surgery at the Laheny Clinic in Boston."
Tony's search for his mother proved a more complex affair. The existence of two Bridget Kellys from Hill of Down created immense confusion but eventually he established that his mother had been born in 1907 and had moved to Dublin in the late 1920s after giving birth to a son, Thomas, who was raised in the family home in Meath. She remained in Dublin throughout the 1930s and married a man called Bill Cantwell in December 1939. The marriage failed when the couple's young daughter died shortly after birth, and Bill Cantwell moved to Wales where he remarried. Incredibly, Tony managed to track down his mother's husband, eventually obtaining the couple's wedding photograph, which is now one of his most prized possessions.
He subsequently learned that his mother worked for the Nicholson family in her native Meath in the 1960s. The Nicholsons owned Enniscoe House, near Crossmolina, and Bridget Kelly worked there throughout the 1960s and 1970s.
Tony had returned to Swinford in 1970 for the funeral of his foster father and, at that stage, was making determined efforts to find his mother. Ironically, the woman whom he so desperately wanted to meet was only a few short miles down the road in Crossmolina, but the obstacles placed in his way ensured he would never get to sit down with her. She passed away in 1981.
"This country has a lot to answer for," he reflects. "I get very annoyed when I think of how men and women like me were treated; the way our births were covered up."
It's 20 years since Tony first learned of the existence of his brother Thomas but his search for him was thwarted time and again.
"I learned that Tom joined the Irish Army and then emigrated to England, like myself, where he joined the British Army. I wrote to the army on a number of occasions but they refused to divulge any information for reasons of confidentiality. I had come up against a block wall."
Last March, Tony decided to make one last attempt to locate the older brother he never had. He knew that Tom had married in Portsmouth and he decided to put an appeal in a "Where Are They Now" column in the local Portsmouth News. It was a total shot in the dark but it set in train a remarkable and truly inspiring chain of events.
I was told that my brother had died but that I should write to his wife Doreen. I did that and she wrote back to me to arrange a meeting with herself and her son. We met last May and as soon as I walked into the room she broke down in tears and said I was the spitting image of Tom.
Last September, Tony attended the wedding of his brother's son, Wayne, in Bolton, and he returned to the UK to spend last Christmas with his new-found relatives. Having never married it was his first traditional 'family' Christmas.
"It was incredibly emotional for me and I cried like a baby on my way over to England. To see your own flesh and blood that you never knew existed and to sit down with them for Christmas dinner was sompthing special."
Tony has been cursed by bureaucratic indifference but blessed by a remarkable series of coincidences. He has run a successful country music record company in Dublin for the past number of years, specialising in copying old vinyl records onto CDs.
Last year, he found himself in the Greville Arms Hotel in Mullingar for the launch of a book on the late Joe Dolan. He got talking to a fellow Mayo man, Reggie Duffy; from Fotish in Crossmolina, and discovered that Reggie had known his mother in Enniscoe House all those years ago.
In the early weeks of 2011, Tony made his first ever journey to Enniscoe (Photo at top of page of Enniscoe House) and Crossmolina, meeting with several local people who knew his mother. These included Reggie Duffy; Rose Farrell, PJ and Bernie Lynn, John and Breda Mulkearns, Sean Queenan and Bernadette Cafferty.
"They were incredibly kind and helpful to me," he told this writer. "We talked and we talked about my mother. And when I eventually looked at my watch it was four in the morning!"
On the suggestion of Reggie Duffy; Tony intends to hold a Mass for his mother in Crossmolina later this year. It will be a fitting and dignified final chapter in his long search for his identity.
Tony's life story is truly astounding and one can only marvel at his courage and determination in facing down the wretched State bureaucracies that tried to hide his identity.
"No person should be put through what I went through. I was told lies, given false details and even ended up knocking on wrong doors at times. At one stage, the hospital sent me a telegram telling me not to come to the hospital or I would be removed. That's a disgraceful way to treat someone.
"I have no doubt that if things were done properly from day one I would have met my mother and that's something I am angry about. But I'm not bitter. I've done well in my life. I've done my best. And I think if my mother were to meet me today she would be proud of how I turned out. And that's good enough for me."
It was a very emotional moment for Tony when his story was first revealed to the world. Here it is...
Wrestling with Bureaucracy
The personal story of Tony Kelly, who has spent the past 40 years searching for his true identity, told by James Laffrey.
Tony Kelly opens the boot of his car and begins to remove one bulging file folder after another, carefully stacking them on the ground.
It's a process that continues for several minutes, a second pile forming besides the first until finally, Tony closes down the boot with one free hand, the other clasping several plastic bags containing even more folders.
Each folder holds a raft of documents that tell the story of Tony's extraordinary search for his parents and siblings. As he walks from the car - neatly attired in a suit and tie, his arms laden down with the numerous folders he is reminiscent of a solicitor or barrister arriving at court for an important case. One gets the impression that Tony Kelly is not a man to leave anything to chance. And that's just as well because his gift of fastidiousness has proved his most priceless asset in his search for his idenity; a voyage of discovery that began more than four decades ago.
Tony Kelly is a Mayo man who grew up in Swinford in the 1960s. Yet he wasn't born in Mayo; he was born in Holles Street Hospital in Dublin on June 15th, 1946.
Tony was born out of wedlock to a woman called Bridget Kelly who worked as a maid in some of the big houses in Dublin. Bridget Kelly was originally from the Hill of Down in County Meath and she was not a young woman when Tony was born. Just short of her fortieth birthday, Bridget Kelly was forced to give up her nine-month old son for adoption in February 1947.
It would appear that Bridget Kelly had little choice in the matter. She was struggling as a single mother in Archbishop McQuaid's Ireland, trying to work as a maid while raising an infant on her own. The winter of '46/'47 was the most severe in Irish history; it was not a good time to be a working, single mother. Bridget was paying a woman to look after her child while she worked long hours as a maid. It was an impossible situation and it would soon come to an end.
Bridget Kelly's employer, Ms Alice Shaw, who lived on the Templelogue Road in Dublin, soon took matters in hand. She wrote to the Child Protection and Rescue Society of Ireland (CPRSI) - the child care agency run by the Catholic Church - asking that a foster mother be found for the young Anthony Kelly. Ms Shaw - a member of the Church of Ireland wanted to ensure the future wellbeing of Bridget Kelly's infant son. Her letter to the CPRSI - penned in January 1947 - contains a line that is especially telling when one considers the terrible revelations of recent years.
"I would not like him to go into any so-called home or institution," Ms Shaw wrote. "He is such an attractive baby that I am sure anyone would be fond of him, If you cannot get anyone to adopt him, would it be possible to leave him with his foster mother until he is old enough to be put into some school."
Ms Shaw's letter also reveals the tragedy of Tony Kelly's mother who, like many women of that time, was a victim of the harsh, pitiless society into which she was born.
"Bridget Kelly is, I think, a good girl although she has fallen ... She has been paying fifteen a week for the baby hitherto, and has done without warm clothes herself,"
On February 6,1947, Bridget Kelly (right) brought her young son to the offices of the CPRSI, signing a document that effectively relinquished her rights as a mother. She was to have no more contact with the child but was to pay the sum of one pound per month for her son's maintenance in foster care.
Tony was placed in a number of foster homes in Dublin throughout 1947. Records from the CPRSI reveal that he was in three foster homes between February and October, and he spent his first birthday in Loughlinstown Hospital after suffering a bad case of shingles. It was only in late 1947 that some stability came into his life when he was fostered to a home at Greenhills in Tallaght, where he remained until 1952 when he was placed for adoption with the Tansey family in Carracarada in Swinford.
Luke and Winifred Tansey were farmers and they had one daughter, Cora. Tony was taken into the family as one of their own, growing up in an agrarian community that was very different from the urban milieu of his formative years. One of his earliest memories of his time in Swinford is seeing a cow in a field near the Tansey farm. When the cow moved towards him he ran in terror, only to tumble unceremoniously into a pile of dung. It was a fairly unforgettable introduction to country living!
Tony quickly settled into his new home. He was only 10 days in Swinford when his adoptive mother wrote to the CPRSI about her new son's progress.
"Thanks ever so much for sending Tony to me. He is a grand little boy and we are very pleased with him. He is very much at home with us all and is very good at his prayers and figures. I am sending him to school on Monday."
The school Tony enrolled in was Cashel National School where he would remain until his early teens when he left to go working with Mayo Co Council as a water carrier. The job involved carrying buckets of water to a steam crusher. He later worked for McNicholas Contractors before emigrating to Bury in Lancashire, England, at the age of 16. One of his first jobs was with a Mayo-born contractor, Tom Murphy, from Ballyhaunis. Murphy - a hulk of a man - viewed his new 5'5" recruit with some skepticism.
"I remember the first day he picked me up in his truck and we were driving to the job and he looked over at me and said: 'Jaysus, you're awful smaaalll!'''
But Tony compensated for his diminutive height with a broad, stocky frame. He became friendly with the Dunleavy brothers from Charlestown - Mickey and Seamus - who were heavily involved in wrestling in the Lancashire area. Tony, who had been a successful boxer in Swinford, was attracted to wrestling and soon became renowned in professional circles. He spent much of the 1960s and 1970s travelling to televised wrestling tournaments all over England, and became famous for a 'little and large' photoshoot with the legendary Giant Haystacks.
"He was 6'11" and 38 stone. I was 5'5" and 12.5 stone. It made for a good image and it was used all over England to promote wrestling. Giant was a fantastic man and was the leading light in wrestling at that time."
Tony began his search for his parents in 1967 while living in Rotherham, Yorkshire. He wrote two letters to the CPRSI but was rebuffed on both occasions. The society told him that no records existed and said he had no hope of finding his mother.
It was the first of many setbacks Tony would suffer in his long search to establish his true identity. He didn't known then - way back in 1967 - he was embarking on a journey of self discovery that would span four decades and two different centuries.
The boxer turned wrestler was about to face his most formidable opponent yet: Bureaucratic Ireland.
It was the late 1960s and Tony Kelly had already received his first setback in his search for his true identity. The revelation by the Child Protection and Rescue Society of Ireland (CPRSI) that no records existed pertaining to his birth had left him shocked and confused.
It was as if he did not exist.
"I let it lie for a few years and it was not until 1969 that I tried again when a nice landlady I knew encouraged me to write to Dublin Castle for my birth certificate."
After initially receiving a shortened version of his birth certificate - in which the names of his parents were omitted - Tony eventually received the full document. It identified his mother as Bridget Kelly of Killyon, Hill of Down, County Meath. His father's surname was given as 'Joyce', with a note attached stating 'gone, South America'.
"I wrote to a priest, Father Carberry, in Longwood, Co Meath, and he made great efforts to help me. Unfortunately, there were two Bridget Kellys from that area who were first cousins and they had both gone to work in Dublin."
Through the efforts of Father Carberry, Tony came within touching distance of meeting his mother in 1970 but further obstacles were placed in his way. It was to become a recurring theme throughout his long search for his parents, and eventually he would have to take legal proceedings in the High Court to force the CPRSI to release his records. His landmark case was ultimately successful and the CPRSI - now known as Cunamh - was ordered to pay his costs of £7,000 and to provide him with the records in its possession. In May 2006 - almost 40 years after Tony first sought his records from the CPRSI - a letter issued containing everything he needed to know about his birth and early years in foster care.
Ironically, Tony had conducted his own exhaustive investigations in the interim, tracing his roots with the sort of forensic detail that would put to shame the makers of Who Do You Think You Are? Having returned to Ireland in the early 1980s, he made it his mission in life to discover the circumstances of his birth.
After much research, Tony discovered that his mother had become pregnant by the son of a wealthy family for whom she had worked in Dublin. The son had left Ireland in 1946 - the year of Tony's birth - to train as a medical doctor in the United States. He subsequently returned to Ireland and pursued a successful career in medicine. Father and son met in the 1980s in a hospital in Cork where the doctor was now working.
"He readily admitted to being my father. We had tea and sandwiches and we shook hands and left. But before we parted he told me that the year I was born he was awarded a silver medal for surgery at the Laheny Clinic in Boston."
Tony's search for his mother proved a more complex affair. The existence of two Bridget Kellys from Hill of Down created immense confusion but eventually he established that his mother had been born in 1907 and had moved to Dublin in the late 1920s after giving birth to a son, Thomas, who was raised in the family home in Meath. She remained in Dublin throughout the 1930s and married a man called Bill Cantwell in December 1939. The marriage failed when the couple's young daughter died shortly after birth, and Bill Cantwell moved to Wales where he remarried. Incredibly, Tony managed to track down his mother's husband, eventually obtaining the couple's wedding photograph, which is now one of his most prized possessions.
He subsequently learned that his mother worked for the Nicholson family in her native Meath in the 1960s. The Nicholsons owned Enniscoe House, near Crossmolina, and Bridget Kelly worked there throughout the 1960s and 1970s.
Tony had returned to Swinford in 1970 for the funeral of his foster father and, at that stage, was making determined efforts to find his mother. Ironically, the woman whom he so desperately wanted to meet was only a few short miles down the road in Crossmolina, but the obstacles placed in his way ensured he would never get to sit down with her. She passed away in 1981.
"This country has a lot to answer for," he reflects. "I get very annoyed when I think of how men and women like me were treated; the way our births were covered up."
It's 20 years since Tony first learned of the existence of his brother Thomas but his search for him was thwarted time and again.
"I learned that Tom joined the Irish Army and then emigrated to England, like myself, where he joined the British Army. I wrote to the army on a number of occasions but they refused to divulge any information for reasons of confidentiality. I had come up against a block wall."
Last March, Tony decided to make one last attempt to locate the older brother he never had. He knew that Tom had married in Portsmouth and he decided to put an appeal in a "Where Are They Now" column in the local Portsmouth News. It was a total shot in the dark but it set in train a remarkable and truly inspiring chain of events.
I was told that my brother had died but that I should write to his wife Doreen. I did that and she wrote back to me to arrange a meeting with herself and her son. We met last May and as soon as I walked into the room she broke down in tears and said I was the spitting image of Tom.
Last September, Tony attended the wedding of his brother's son, Wayne, in Bolton, and he returned to the UK to spend last Christmas with his new-found relatives. Having never married it was his first traditional 'family' Christmas.
"It was incredibly emotional for me and I cried like a baby on my way over to England. To see your own flesh and blood that you never knew existed and to sit down with them for Christmas dinner was sompthing special."
Tony has been cursed by bureaucratic indifference but blessed by a remarkable series of coincidences. He has run a successful country music record company in Dublin for the past number of years, specialising in copying old vinyl records onto CDs.
Last year, he found himself in the Greville Arms Hotel in Mullingar for the launch of a book on the late Joe Dolan. He got talking to a fellow Mayo man, Reggie Duffy; from Fotish in Crossmolina, and discovered that Reggie had known his mother in Enniscoe House all those years ago.
In the early weeks of 2011, Tony made his first ever journey to Enniscoe (Photo at top of page of Enniscoe House) and Crossmolina, meeting with several local people who knew his mother. These included Reggie Duffy; Rose Farrell, PJ and Bernie Lynn, John and Breda Mulkearns, Sean Queenan and Bernadette Cafferty.
"They were incredibly kind and helpful to me," he told this writer. "We talked and we talked about my mother. And when I eventually looked at my watch it was four in the morning!"
On the suggestion of Reggie Duffy; Tony intends to hold a Mass for his mother in Crossmolina later this year. It will be a fitting and dignified final chapter in his long search for his identity.
Tony's life story is truly astounding and one can only marvel at his courage and determination in facing down the wretched State bureaucracies that tried to hide his identity.
"No person should be put through what I went through. I was told lies, given false details and even ended up knocking on wrong doors at times. At one stage, the hospital sent me a telegram telling me not to come to the hospital or I would be removed. That's a disgraceful way to treat someone.
"I have no doubt that if things were done properly from day one I would have met my mother and that's something I am angry about. But I'm not bitter. I've done well in my life. I've done my best. And I think if my mother were to meet me today she would be proud of how I turned out. And that's good enough for me."
Tony was such a great guy and sadly missed. Had a shocking start to his life but made good!!! R. I. P. Tony.
Very unusual story and so sad. Wrestled with all the best.