Holles Street is the Dublin maternity destination Susan McGahern selected for the birth of her seventh child, Francis (Frank) McGahern. In the account of the family’s preparations, the address marks both a practical choice about where to give birth and a point at which Susan maintained authority over decisions that her husband sought to direct.

The choice of a birth place

Susan’s husband wanted her to go to the nursing home in Boyle, where Dympna had been born, because it would cost less than going to Dublin. Susan refused that option. During a week’s holiday in Cootehall, she had felt very much out of sorts and decided she would not stay there for the birth. Her choice of Holles Street followed her own assessment of her condition rather than her husband’s preference for the cheaper arrangement.

Arrangements and discretion

Susan discussed going to Holles Street with nobody but Mr Corcoran. Maggie did not know of the plan until Susan asked her to accompany her as far as the street, explaining that she had to call there. The account presents this as a decision Susan kept closely controlled: even with Maggie accompanying her, Susan had not first sought her advice. Earlier preparations also brought the family’s competing expectations into view. Susan had gone to Dublin to see Dr Corcoran and arrange for the coming birth, while writing to her husband from the guest house where she was staying. She tried to accommodate his wish that Mary Ellen Kilboy visit Aughawillan, but suggested the visit would probably be better after the birth.

Birth and significance

While waiting to go into Holles Street, Susan stayed at the small Cumberland Hotel in Westland Row. She recalled that it was almost exactly nine years since she had been in Dublin at Percy Place, expecting her first child. Afraid that the birth might be delayed and that she would have to remain at the hotel until the middle of the month, she was relieved when her son was born on November 4, 1943, healthy and well. The naming then became another disagreement: her husband wanted to call the child Jude, after the patron saint of hopeless cases, because of Susan’s cancer. Susan objected that the unusual name would single him out. He was christened Frances Jude Anthony and grew up as Frank, although his father insisted on calling him Jude in his early years. Holles Street is thus remembered not simply as the place of delivery, but as the destination Susan chose while navigating illness, cost, and her husband’s attempts to shape family decisions.