National Maternity Hospital

The National Maternity Hospital, referred to in the memoir as Holles Street, is the Dublin maternity hospital where Susan McGahern gave birth to her seventh child, on November 4, 1943. Its place in the narrative is defined not by institutional detail but by the choice to go there: Susan insisted on her own plan for the birth despite her husband’s objections and the uncertainty surrounding her health.

Setting and medical context

During the pregnancy, Susan travelled to Dublin to see Dr Corcoran and make arrangements for the birth. Her husband, Francis (Frank) McGahern, had previously written to a doctor asking whether she should give up teaching and what her chances of recovery were. The correspondence establishes that her pregnancy unfolded against the background of her cancer and concern about her prognosis, though the memoir does not identify the hospital as the site of her cancer treatment.

A contested choice of care

Francis wanted Susan to give birth at the Boyle nursing home, where their daughter Dympna had been born, because it would cost less than Dublin. Susan refused. Maggie accompanied her to Dublin, and Susan recorded that she had discussed going to Holles Street only with Dr Corcoran; Maggie did not know until Susan asked her to come as far as the hospital. After feeling unwell during a holiday in Cootehall, Susan decided she would not stay there for the birth. Her choice thus involved both a practical judgment about where she felt able to give birth and an assertion of authority over a decision Francis had tried to direct.

The 1943 birth

While waiting to enter the hospital, Susan stayed at the small Cumberland Hotel in Westland Row. She remembered that it was almost exactly nine years since she had been in Dublin, at Percy Place, expecting her first child, and worried that the birth might be delayed and prolong her stay. The wait ended on November 4, 1943, when she gave birth to a healthy son, her seventh child.

The naming dispute continued the conflict over the birth. Francis wanted the baby christened Jude, after the patron saint of hopeless cases, because of Susan’s cancer. Susan stood firm against the unusual name, concerned that it would single the child out. He was christened Frances Jude Anthony and grew up as Frank, although Francis continued to call him Jude in his early years.

Narrative significance

The National Maternity Hospital marks a moment when Susan’s decisions about her body and care could not be reduced to her husband’s preferences or the family’s finances. The contrast between his cheaper proposal and her insistence on Holles Street, followed by her resistance over the child’s name, makes the birth part of a wider pattern of contested choices. The memoir also places this episode within the limits of what the family knew and said about illness: Francis had sought medical advice, while Susan continued to face the possibility of cancer returning.