A two-month-old baby was rescued from the violence that engulfed Belfast on Tuesday night, as rioters set fire to homes, buses and foreign businesses after an anti-immigration demonstration spiralled out of control. Chief Constable Jon Boutcher told the BBC: ‘Last night we rescued so many families. Taking families – a baby as young as two months – out of their address to safety, taking them to police stations.’ He stressed that those caught up in the ‘vile behaviour’ were not just from ethnic minority communities but ‘families from across communities’. The disorder followed a stabbing attack that left a man in his 40s with serious eye injuries. The suspect, a Sudanese national aged in his 30s who entered the UK from Paris via Dublin, remains in custody after his first court appearance. Sinn Féin leader Mary Lou McDonald condemned the ‘racist intimidation and violence’, which she said was ‘orchestrated by loyalist and far-right thugs’.
While one baby was rescued, a new report has revealed that sick babies considered unsuitable for adoption were allowed to die at a Church of England-run mother and baby home in Cumbria. The 80-page study by Dr Michael Lambert, a lecturer in medical humanities at Lancaster University, examined surviving records of St Monica’s Maternity Home in Kendal. It concluded that Judith Hindley’s son Stephen, born with spina bifida and hydrocephalus in January 1964, died 11 weeks later after being denied hospital treatment because his disability made him an unattractive proposition for adoption. ‘It is clear that according to the standards of the day, he was denied access to modern medical care because his mother was unmarried, he was illegitimate, and his short life was contained in an institution whose culture was centred on secrecy and providing desirable children for adoption,’ the report states. Lambert’s research, now handed to Cumbria Police, found that other infants were also left to die because they were ‘unadoptable’. Judith, who became pregnant after being raped, never recovered from the trauma; her husband Steve Hindley said she ‘genuinely thought she was a wicked person’. After Stephen’s death, she vowed to become a nurse and devoted her life to caring for sick and terminally ill children.
“A two-month-old baby rescued from Belfast riots; report reveals disabled infants left to die at Cumbria home.”