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Mass unmarked grave for 800 babies in Tuam

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    #752
    Waitsian
    Registered Users Posts: 1,708 ✭✭✭Waitsian


    Bannasidhe wrote: »
    Gardaí statement just read on on radio 1 - they say no investigation as apparently it could be a famine grave.

    A forensic anthropologist would soon determine that except the remains are not being handed over to the coroner...

    So - the Guards have dismissed it with no investigation whatsoever

    As shocking, and frustrating, and maddening, and disgusting as that is....are we really that surprised?

    "Plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose..."


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    #753
    Birroc
    Closed Accounts Posts: 1,070 ✭✭✭Birroc


    Tuam Garda Station

    093 24202

    I am going to ring them up and ask them is there an investigation ongoing. Feel free to do the same.


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    #754
    shruikan2553
    Closed Accounts Posts: 6,113 ✭✭✭shruikan2553


    Im assuming they can supply the dating of the remains that suggest this?


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    #755
    ScumLord
    Registered Users Posts: 28,789 ✭✭✭✭ScumLord


    It's just a tradition of the Roman empire church. It's their culture.

    http://knowledgenuts.com/2014/02/13/the-tragically-common-practice-of-roman-infanticide/


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    #756
    Flippyfloppy
    Registered Users Posts: 3,748 ✭✭✭Flippyfloppy


    Birroc wrote: »
    Tuam Garda Station

    093 24202

    I am going to ring them up and ask them is there an investigation ongoing. Feel free to do the same.


    What do we need to ask? I have a 'young girls' voice and don't want to be laughed off the phone, so want to ask the right questions from the get go!!


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    #757
    Czarcasm
    Closed Accounts Posts: 10,076 ✭✭✭✭Czarcasm


    eviltwin wrote: »
    Maybe they did but at least society has moved on in its thinking, the church still has the same old views.


    One would like to think so, but clearly that's not the case, not by a long shot -


    Are we going back to the laundries for single mothers?


    Same attitudes on display that still view single mothers as the dregs of society, a drain on State resources, etc, etc.

    Do people here genuinely believe that attitudes in Irish society have really changed that much in the last 50 years?

    If people here truly believed in examining evidence and questioning everything, with a logical approach and a rational thought process, then apply that same critical thinking to these atrocities to determine the actual reasons why the most vulnerable members of society were failed, and who exactly was responsible for these atrocities.

    Because blaming the RCC as a whole is just lazy, and if we are to do right by the victims of these atrocities, then we owe it to them to examine all the factors involved in these tragedies, because that's the only way we can learn from the failures of previous generations and ensure this never happens again.

    You don't have to be an atheist or a Roman Catholic to understand that much, you just have to be a human being.


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    #758
    Azwaldo55
    Registered Users Posts: 546 ✭✭✭Azwaldo55


    There is nothing surprising about any of this.
    Infanticide was routine in Ireland for centuries and cases only began to fall off when abortion became legal in the UK.
    Child mortality and death in child birth were a fact of life.
    The 19th century workhouses which later became County Homes and Regional Hospitals throughout the country all have mass graves on their grounds.
    It was not just dead children who got unmarked graves but suicides too who were buried on unconsecrated ground.
    Even in consecrated graveyards only the wealthy could afford headstones and in the early days of local newspapers only the wealthy could afford death notices.
    The majority of the poor lived and died unnoticed.

    Today children do not end up in hellish institutions because they are aborted instead or else the Department of Social Protection doles out "mickey money" to unmarried mothers. Children in "care" today are still being sexually abused and neglected.


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    #759
    shruikan2553
    Closed Accounts Posts: 6,113 ✭✭✭shruikan2553


    Czarcasm wrote: »
    One would like to think so, but clearly that's not the case, not by a long shot -


    Are we going back to the laundries for single mothers?


    Same attitudes on display that still view single mothers as the dregs of society, a drain on State resources, etc, etc.

    Do people here genuinely believe that attitudes in Irish society have really changed that much in the last 50 years?

    If people here truly believed in examining evidence and questioning everything, with a logical approach and a rational thought process, then apply that same critical thinking to these atrocities to determine the actual reasons why the most vulnerable members of society were failed, and who exactly was responsible for these atrocities.

    Because blaming the RCC is just lazy, and if we are to do right by the victims of these atrocities, then we owe it to them to examine all the factors involved in these tragedies, because that's the only way we can learn from the failures of previous generations and ensure this never happens again.

    You don't have to be an atheist or a Roman Catholic to understand that much, you just have to be a human being.

    Unless we start locking up these women and taking away their children then it is nothing like it. It is comparing what we have now to human trafficking and slavery. People are against those who choose not to work and live off off benefits, doesnt matter if they and single, married, parents or childless.

    We should examine all factors but one of the facts is that these places were run by religious orders and what happened inside these places was up to the religious order. They were free to treat these people with some sort of respect and they didnt.


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    #760
    SpaceTime
    Closed Accounts Posts: 9,088 ✭✭✭SpaceTime


    I'm just wondering if there's anything we could do to help establish facts?
    A huge amount of this kind of research involves accessing public records, creating databases and analysing data.

    There's a huge amount of work going on with open data and public data. I wonder if there might be some scope to apply it to this problem?

    I'm not an expert in it, but I'm sure there must be some people on here who know a lot about it. I know it's already being used for genealogical research, health research etc etc...

    We spend a lot of time waiting for the state to initiate investigations, but if there data there on the public record, maybe the groups who have already started should get in touch with some university computer science / IT departments and see if anyone can point them in the direction of using some crowdsourcing techniques to gather and crunch the data necessary to really get to the bottom of what went on in these places.

    If every local historian with an interest in it were feeding all the data into a bigger system, we might start be able to really start to get a true picture of what was going on...

    I'm just thinking that maybe we could channel this angry energy into actually doing something to get to the bottom of it and maybe see if we could offer to pool some skills and resources?

    Just a thought if anyone's out there reading this who is involved in a research group or with open data / big data type operations maybe they should try and hook up somehow. I'd say perhaps get in touch with the universities as a starting point?


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    #761
    robindch
    Moderators, Society & Culture Moderators Posts: 24,406 Mod ✭✭✭✭robindch


    Historian Catherine Corless interviewed on RTE radio.

    http://www.rte.ie/radio/utils/radioplayer/rteradioweb.html#!rii=9%3A10285863%3A53%3A28%2D05%2D2014%3A


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    #762
    robindch
    Moderators, Society & Culture Moderators Posts: 24,406 Mod ✭✭✭✭robindch


    SpaceTime wrote: »
    A huge amount of this kind of research involves accessing public records, creating databases and analysing data.
    Liam Hogan (@Limerick1914) has been tweeting the history of the Tuam home with newspaper clips as supporting evidence:

    https://storify.com/Limerick1914/children-s-home-in-tuam-1920s-1960s


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    #763
    Bannasidhe
    Moderators, Society & Culture Moderators Posts: 19,219 Mod ✭✭✭✭Bannasidhe


    Czarcasm wrote: »
    One would like to think so, but clearly that's not the case, not by a long shot -


    Are we going back to the laundries for single mothers?


    Same attitudes on display that still view single mothers as the dregs of society, a drain on State resources, etc, etc.

    Do people here genuinely believe that attitudes in Irish society have really changed that much in the last 50 years?

    If people here truly believed in examining evidence and questioning everything, with a logical approach and a rational thought process, then apply that same critical thinking to these atrocities to determine the actual reasons why the most vulnerable members of society were failed, and who exactly was responsible for these atrocities.

    Because blaming the RCC as a whole is just lazy, and if we are to do right by the victims of these atrocities, then we owe it to them to examine all the factors involved in these tragedies, because that's the only way we can learn from the failures of previous generations and ensure this never happens again.

    You don't have to be an atheist or a Roman Catholic to understand that much, you just have to be a human being.

    I agree that the Irish State continues to fail and demonise the most vulnerable in society (although as a gay single parent I have never felt vulnerable but then I am stroppy) and currently this is the 'fault' of the State and the State alone.
    However, I think Irish society is becoming more and more liberal at an astonishing rate.

    It also cannot be denied that the Irish State as it currently exists is very much founded upon a Roman Catholic ethos and that informs our leaders - most of whom grew up in the Ireland that buried those children in a septic tank and dared not question the RCC .

    We are 'educated' to accept what we are told without question and defer to authority. We learn this in our primary schools. Sadly, I believe we will continue to do so while an organisation that demands unquestioning obedience dominates our educational system.

    In my experience, most Irish people really do perceive those in positions of power as 'our betters' - not as the ordinary, and often mediocre, human beings they actually are and traditionally no-one had more authority than anointed clergy of the RCC.


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    #764
    Czarcasm
    Closed Accounts Posts: 10,076 ✭✭✭✭Czarcasm


    shruikan2553 wrote: »
    Unless we start locking up these women and taking away their children then it is nothing like it. It is comparing what we have now to human trafficking and slavery. People are against those who choose not to work and live off off benefits, doesnt matter if they and single, married, parents or childless.

    We should examine all factors but one of the facts is that these places were run by religious orders and what happened inside these places was up to the religious order. They were free to treat these people with some sort of respect and they didnt.


    I'm talking though about the prevailing attitude in society towards single mothers shruikan. It's no different today to the prevailing attitude back then. I mean, you don't think it was just a little too convenient for people to shun these women, use threats of sending them to the laundries and workhouses as a means of discipline, exclude them from society, and then the locals claim they thought it was a famine grave right beside a laundry where they knew what went on in there?

    People couldn't possibly have been so clueless that over a forty year period they could claim "We knew nothing!", and still forty years later claim ignorance, even though there are records to prove people were far from ignorant.

    Can anyone honestly claim they were still so brainwashed even in 1995 when Cardinal Cathal Daly appeared on The Late Late Show to defend the RCC in the wake of the stories about paedophile priests, and Fr. Brian D'Arcy went through him for a shortcut?


    People knew, and they did nothing.


  • Options
    #765
    Nodin
    Closed Accounts Posts: 46,938 ✭✭✭✭Nodin


    Czarcasm wrote: »
    ................

    People knew, and they did nothing.

    And if you read this, you might understand why....
    http://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/showpost.php?p=90670344&postcount=454


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    #766
    lazygal
    Registered Users Posts: 12,644 ✭✭✭✭lazygal


    My mother's class were warned not to be alone with Brendan Smith when he did a retreat in their rural school in the 1960s. Everyone knew, look at the comments on the Fr. Fortune documentary.


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    #767
    mezuzaj
    Closed Accounts Posts: 176 ✭✭mezuzaj


    shruikan2553 wrote: »
    Its amazing how the church just pretends these event never happened and then harp on about morality. Cant believe some of them werent closed until the 90s.

    My mother mentioned last night that her first child died before she gave birth. The nuns gave the baby to my Father who buried in family plot, but unmarked. She had spina bifida and was still born.

    That was the reality of the day for many children born like this, they were not given funerals. Not just in Catholic Church but also in protestant, it was the way things were done 60 years ago.

    There are hundreds of unmarked mass graves around Ireland, from the 1840's to 1950's. This is the historical realities in a era of poverty and pre-antibiotics/medical care that we have today.

    It seems some what to shine the spotlight on what some Catholic institutions did.. but they forget that Protestant institutions did the exact same.. If a Child died a birth they were also buried in an unmarked grave. That was the thinking of the day.

    There are many thousands of unmarked graves around Ireland of Children who died at Child birth in an era when child mortality was 5-6% that has nothing to do with any Catholic or Protestant institution.


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    #768
    Benny_Cake
    Closed Accounts Posts: 4,205 ✭✭✭Benny_Cake


    It's not available on the Radio 1 website yet, but Drivetime had a segment by Philip Boucher-Hayes which is pretty interesting, including an interview with someone who stumbled on the grave in 1975. Summary of the available evidence here:

    http://philipboucher-hayes.com/2014/06/04/tuam-babies-the-evidence/

    Not the finest hour of the Gardai, to say the least.


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    #769
    Lingua Franca
    Registered Users Posts: 2,800 ✭✭✭Lingua Franca


    lazygal wrote: »
    My mother's class were warned not to be alone with Brendan Smith when he did a retreat in their rural school in the 1960s. Everyone knew, look at the comments on the Fr. Fortune documentary.

    And my school welcomed him in and allowed him to be alone with girls in the 1980s.


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    #770
    Hailey Abundant Harmonica
    Posts: 0 ✭✭✭✭ Hailey Abundant Harmonica


    Benny_Cake wrote: »
    It's not available on the Radio 1 website yet, but Drivetime had a segment by Philip Boucher-Hayes which is pretty interesting, including an interview with someone who stumbled on the grave in 1975. Summary of the available evidence here:

    http://philipboucher-hayes.com/2014/06/04/tuam-babies-the-evidence/

    Not the finest hour of the Gardai, to say the least.

    Catherine Corless interview is online already

    http://www.rte.ie/radio/utils/radioplayer/rteradioweb.html#!rii=9%3A10285863%3A53%3A28%2D05%2D2014%3A


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    #771
    mezuzaj
    Closed Accounts Posts: 176 ✭✭mezuzaj


    Benny_Cake wrote: »
    It's not available on the Radio 1 website yet, but Drivetime had a segment by Philip Boucher-Hayes which is pretty interesting, including an interview with someone who stumbled on the grave in 1975. Summary of the available evidence here:

    http://philipboucher-hayes.com/2014/06/04/tuam-babies-the-evidence/

    Not the finest hour of the Gardai, to say the least.

    Benny.. My Great Grand father who died in 1930 has no mark over his grave, many many families could not afford to mark their graves. Lets put all the facts in context of the era.


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    #772
    Nodin
    Closed Accounts Posts: 46,938 ✭✭✭✭Nodin


    mezuzaj wrote: »
    Benny.. My Great Grand father who died in 1930 has no mark over his grave, many many families could not afford to mark their graves. Lets put all the facts in context of the era.


    And they were all put in a mass grave?


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    #773
    Azwaldo55
    Registered Users Posts: 546 ✭✭✭Azwaldo55


    Czarcasm wrote: »
    People knew, and they did nothing.

    What could ordinary people do exactly? The clergy had an iron grip over society. Politicians, Gardaí, big farmers, small farmers, business people, the gentry, the GAA, local and national organizations of every description even criminals and the shadow state, the IRA, all deferred to them. The poor had no power and if you were middle class you had no power either if you remained aloof from organizations controlled by RCC puppet masters. If you raised your voice you would be boycotted and intimidated into submission and marked for life and your children would get no work locally and have to emigrate. Among Irish communities in England and America and Australia the RCC also pulled the strings. Outside of Irish communities abroad how would you survive? The Irish stuck together in Irish ghettos under the protection of the RCC. What chance had an ordinary people against this power? Not a hope!


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    #774
    mikom
    Closed Accounts Posts: 16,391 ✭✭✭✭mikom


    mezuzaj wrote: »
    Benny.. My Great Grand father who died in 1930 has no mark over his grave, many many families could not afford to mark their graves. Lets put all the facts in context of the era.

    Was your Great Grand father buried in a septic tank?


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    #775
    mezuzaj
    Closed Accounts Posts: 176 ✭✭mezuzaj


    Nodin wrote: »
    And they were all put in a mass grave?

    And which grave were they to be put in?? on which land? By todays standards of course it was wrong, but its not as if families have social welfare in 1930's40's Ireland.

    That is what happened and was the way things were in Ireland... not just for Catholics but also in Protestant institutions.. Does anyone say they don't have unmark mass graves??

    The Children died over several decades.


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    #776
    Corkfeen
    Closed Accounts Posts: 4,940 ✭✭✭Corkfeen


    mezuzaj wrote: »
    My mother mentioned last night that her first child died before she gave birth. The nuns gave the baby to my Father who buried in family plot, but unmarked. She had spina bifida and was still born.

    That was the reality of the day for many children born like this, they were not given funerals. Not just in Catholic Church but also in protestant, it was the way things were done 60 years ago.

    There are hundreds of unmarked mass graves around Ireland, from the 1840's to 1950's. This is the historical realities in a era of poverty and pre-antibiotics/medical care that we have today.

    It seems some what to shine the spotlight on what some Catholic institutions did.. but they forget that Protestant institutions did the exact same.. If a Child died a birth they were also buried in an unmarked grave. That was the thinking of the day.

    There are many thousands of unmarked graves around Ireland of Children who died at Child birth in an era when child mortality was 5-6% that has nothing to do with any Catholic or Protestant institution.
    Except these babies weren't stillborn,they died of malnutrition and I assume they baptised them. But still they decided to throw them into mass graves as if they were some dark secret. The home also had an extremely high mortality rate in contrast to the country's actual mortality rate.
    mezuzaj wrote: »
    And which grave were they to be put in?? on which land? By todays standards of course it was wrong, but its not as if families have social welfare in 1930's40's Ireland.

    That is what happened and was the way things were in Ireland... not just for Catholics but also in Protestant institutions.. Does anyone say they don't have unmark mass graves??

    The Children died over several decades.

    Note how the nuns all got marked plots of land for their burials. They didn't even log where they buried the 800.


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    #777
    mezuzaj
    Closed Accounts Posts: 176 ✭✭mezuzaj


    mikom wrote: »
    Was your Great Grand father buried in a septic tank?

    just placed in the ground with no coffin, no head stone, hard times. But that was want happened to poor families.


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    #778
    Benny_Cake
    Closed Accounts Posts: 4,205 ✭✭✭Benny_Cake


    mezuzaj wrote: »
    Benny.. My Great Grand father who died in 1930 has no mark over his grave, many many families could not afford to mark their graves. Lets put all the facts in context of the era.

    No, I fully accept that. But if suspected that the remains of 800 children were left in an abandoned septic tank without informing the authorities, that's an entirely different matter.

    Not prejudging anything here. The correct course of action would be to start with a Garda investigation and get the state pathologist involved (she's probably the most competent person to determine how many remains are there, cause of death, etc). Also, access to the register of births and deaths might clear some of this up.

    If church organisations should have learned one thing, it's that getting the facts out in the open as quickly as possible isn't just the moral course of action, it's the expedient course of action. In the long run the truth will find the light of day.


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    #779
    mezuzaj
    Closed Accounts Posts: 176 ✭✭mezuzaj


    Corkfeen wrote: »
    Except these babies weren't stillborn,they died of malnutrition and I assume they baptised them. But still they decided to throw them into mass graves as if they were some dark secret. The home also had an extremely high mortality rate in contrast to the country's actual mortality rate.

    How may children in Ireland died from Malnutrition, you would think the Catholic Church invented it.. That was what Irish society was like.

    People fail to remember that in the 40's food was rationed in Ireland!!!! There were poor children everywhere.


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    #780
    SpaceTime
    Closed Accounts Posts: 9,088 ✭✭✭SpaceTime


    mezuzaj wrote: »
    Benny.. My Great Grand father who died in 1930 has no mark over his grave, many many families could not afford to mark their graves. Lets put all the facts in context of the era.

    I doubt he was just dumped into a disused septic tank though with a load of other people?

    (No offence intended, but the comparison is a little inappropriate)


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    #781
    Karl Stein
    Closed Accounts Posts: 7,689 ✭✭✭Karl Stein


    nagirrac wrote: »
    This could be a watershed event in Irish history, if handled properly and maturely. The take home message here is no different to the harsh realities that on a grander scale Germany for example had to face after WWII [...] It is difficult to confront the ghosts of our past, but it is now long past time for Ireland to finally face up to its demons.

    I agree with what you say but how do we reconcile the above idea that Ireland should face up to its demons like the Germans did (or were forced to) when we seem quick to absolve the wider public for its lack of civil courage?
    The RCC fell into a position of power [...]they made the laws
    The gutless politicians who empowered them and deferred to them are just as guilty


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