‘Graves kept secret… but we paid respects to dogs’
CHILDREN at Aberlour Orphanage were not told about the youngsters buried in unmarked graves – but they were asked to pay respects to a former warden’s dogs.
The Scottish Sunday Express revealed last week that at least 236 children from the home are buried in common ground at St Margaret’s Church in the Morayshire village. It led to a promise by the chief executive of the Aberlour Child Care Trust, now the country’s largest children’s charity, to consider installing a fitting tribute. The children were buried between 1892 and 1947 with only temporary wooden crosses to mark their graves.
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Although a small memorial stone was unveiled in 2005, when a similar common grave at an orphanage in Lanarkshire first hit the headlines, it provided no details about the children buried there.
Following our revelations, a former resident of the orphanage got in touch to pass on further information about the lack of recognition given to the tragic youngsters.
The man – who asked not to be identified – said: “I was there in the early Sixties and there were no wooden crosses in the churchyard then. This business of a memorial, that was purely because other institutions had been in the news and they knew the mess was going to hit the fan eventually.
“The most galling thing was you were shown Canon Jupp’s tomb and these headstones to his dogs. The fact there were all these children also buried there was kept utterly secret. I laid a poppy wreath every year at the war memorial but I never, ever knew that any children were there.”
Canon Charles Jupp was the founder of the orphanage and he was considered a visionary figure in the Victorian era.
After his death in 1911, he was buried in an ornate sarcophagus in St Mary’s churchyard, which is next to two broken stone crosses – one inscribed “Our Willie” and the other “Dear Jamie”.
The caller added: “There were no internments of children after 1950 but I remember there was a big storeroom where the handymen – the joiners and painters and so on – kept all their equipment and they still had the funeral gear there, including a handcart for carrying the child’s coffin.”
He also shed further light on one of the incidents described to the Scottish Child Abuse Inquiry when a witness described how a child had drowned after falling into a pool below a waterfall.
He said: “The boy who died at the Linn Falls was called Michael Mutch, I remember he drowned after he became trapped in an underwater cave. The divers recovered his body the next day.”
According to the National Records of Scotland, the eight-year-old was “last seen alive” at 2.40pm on August 1, 1962. He was “found dead in a pool” at 11.40am the following day and the cause of death given as drowning.
The incident was investigated by the Procurator Fiscal’s Office in Banff but it appears that no Fatal Accident Inquiry was ever held.
Yesterday, Scottish Conservative MSP Alexander Burnett said: “It was a serious and sad oversight not to give these children some kind of
recognition and grace in death.
“A fitting memorial to the kids who tragically died at Aberlour would be the right thing to do.
“While it seems a small gesture, it would be very poignant and go some way to helping the community at this time.”
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Sally Ann Kelly, chief executive of the Aberlour Child Care Trust, urged any former residents or relatives of the children to get in touch to discuss a memorial.
She said: “Most clearly, we’d wish to include ex-orphanage residents in that conversation to make sure they are content with any proposals to honour their friends and relations.
“We have put a notice on our website asking anyone who wishes to discuss this matter to get in touch with us.
“We are in touch with In Care Abuse Survivors Scotland (Incas) to discuss how this specialist organisation could help us to make contact with ex-residents and their families.”
Anyone wishing to get in touch should call 0800 0856 150 or email sallyann.kelly@aberlour.org.uk
