Fifty years on, Patrick Berrigan can joke about being a 'miracle child', he tells Joe Humphreys
Not surprisingly, Patrick Berrigan has no memory of the day 50 years ago when he was snatched from his pram on Dublin's Henry Street. He does, however, recall the media attention which followed the event, and lasted for many a year afterwards.
"In those days, if a bicycle was stolen in Ireland it was big news," says the man dubbed a "miracle child" because of the fortuitous nature of his discovery. "Every few years we'd get a call from the Press to do another photograph. When I started school the Irish Press sent a photographer out, and when I was 21 the newspaper got the three of us [Berrigan, Elizabeth Browne, and Pauline Ashmore, all of whom were snatched as babies] together for a picture." It was a classic good-news Christmas story, which people never tired of hearing.
"I remember we had black sacks full of cards and telegrams with 'best wishes' and other greetings written on them from all of the world," says Berrigan. Like other memorabilia relating to the event, including photographs, and press cuttings, the cards have since been dumped. Berrigan's parents, Matthew and Theresa, both of whom are in their 70s, chose not to dwell on what was a painful time.
"My mother was devastated - they both were - like anyone would be," he says. "In those days you didn't expect things like that to happen."
It was outside Woolworths that Berrigan was spotted by Margaret McGeehan.
"My ma had left me there and ran in for a second to get something, and when she came back I was gone," he says. He wonders what happened to McGeehan after she was convicted of the crime.
He never met her again, nor Louisa Doherty, the woman who spotted him on the train to Belfast, although he believes Doherty may have met his family at some stage.
Louisa Doherty died almost 20 years ago. But the two people who accompanied her on the train - her son, Danny, and niece, Louise - are still living in Co Antrim, and haven't forgotten that last Saturday before Christmas 1954.
"I'll never forget the crowds coming into Dublin. All of humanity was there," recalls Danny, a postmaster in Randalstown. He had gone to the city with his mother and cousin to visit his cousin's brother, Michael Curran, then aged just 15 and starting out as a trainee with the Christian Brothers in Baldoyle.
Curran, who spent much of his life with the Brothers working with Irish emigrants in London, recalls: "There was a huge storm that year. The whole place was devastated."
Because of damage to the railway bridge over the River Tolka, trains stopped at Clontarf and passengers were bussed to and from town.
Danny Doherty takes up the story: "On the return trip we went to the station and got the bus to the train, and just before the train was due to go this woman came in and sat down on the spare seat next to us.
"She was very wet. The water was coming out of her, and she was carrying what looked like a bundle of clothes. But then the baby started to cry. The woman looked nervous, but it didn't mean anything to me at the time.
"I remember during the trip we went up for some minerals and the kid was looking up at us. The poor thing, he was probably dying of thirst. Eventually, my mother got some milk and fed it to him. My mother had a bit of a chat with the woman, and asked 'what age is the baby?', that sort of thing. The baby was very disturbed for a while - until he got the milk."
"My mother remembered this woman said she lived in White City," adds Danny, and it was this piece of information which led to Berrigan's discovery.
Danny recalls the letters of congratulations which poured in to his mother's home after the event.
"I remember one night you couldn't get through the door, there was so many," he says. So Berrigan was reunited with his parents at their home in Dublin city. The family later moved to Ballyfermot, in west Dublin. The eldest of four children, Patrick got married in 1978 and now lives in Lucan.
He has two daughters, Nicola (22) and Sinead (18). One might have thought his abduction would colour his approach to parenthood, but not so.
"I would never have married the two [his abduction and parenthood]. I would be like any other parent," he says. "I wouldn't leave them outside the shops in this day and age. But, at the same time, I wouldn't be over-protective or extra scared."
Does he ever think about what might have been? "Yeah, sometimes I do wonder if they got the right baby back."
He points out that there was no DNA testing in the 1950s. "I had to take their word for it. They kept on insisting I was the right baby," he continues. It is only after a while that one realises he is joking.
"Ah no, everything's kosher. I often say that to my sisters for the laugh. I say 'I'm not sure if I'm in the right family', because I'm the only one who smokes and drinks."