Kathy Lavelle

The Baby in the Biscuit Tin Kathy Lavelle

This is Kathy's story written in the first person. It is a tale of strength and courage, endurance and survival. Kathy is a sixteen-year-old girl in the 1950's, who has been sexually abused by her uncle and eventually becomes pregnant and gives birth to a baby boy. To avoid the disgrace of an illegitimate child, the family claimed the baby was stillborn, although Kathy is convinced that he was born alive. They put him in a biscuit tin and buried him in the dark of night in an un-consecrated graveyard. Kathy was removed to a mental asylum on the strength of a doctor who had never seen her but only on the word of Father Lynch, the local parish priest who in those days had all the authority to speak. The birth of the baby was kept secret outside the family. There are many twists and turns in the story and later we find out a lot about Father Lynch's own personal life. Over the fifteen years of her incarceration, Kathy witnesses the violence and various mental illnesses of other inmates. In the asylum, "The Manor", the enormous, rambling building high in the mountains, Kathy was completely cut off from the rest of the world. She was befriended by Meg, an inmate herself who had also been wrongly incarcerated. Meg had been a teacher in the outside world and taught Kathy to read and write and eventually encouraged her to write her story. The old doctors had been harsh and unhelpful playing along with the system but along came Charles, a younger psychiatrist who was determined to see justice for those who had been wrongly incarcerated. He had a particular interest in Kathy's situation and discovered some vital new evidence regarding the birth of the baby.