Mass unmarked grave for 800 babies in Tuam

Mary wasn’t allowed to travel to hospital with her son, she wasn’t allowed to visit him — even once. When he died in hospital six weeks later, she wasn’t allowed to attend his funeral.

“I don’t know if he was buried in a coffin, if he was buried in a gown. They wouldn’t tell me anything,” she sobs.

It was through two nuns squabbling that Mary had learned that a dirty needle had been used on her during her labour at Bessborough Mother and Baby Home in Cork.

It took another 31 years and a visit to Bessborough however before the Sacred Heart nuns admitted to Mary that her baby boy had died of septicaemia.

When she then sought her son’s medical notes, she was handed a sheet of paper with 90% of the details redacted except for Mary’s name and that of her parents.

She then asked to put a plaque on her son’s grave at Bessborough and she was told “No”. There are a number of graves in the grounds of Bessborough but much of the burial area is off bounds to the public.

I have written to the Attorney General reminding her of her obligations in International Law especially the European Convention on Human Rights and her obligations under the Constitution to vindicate the rights of citizens as well as her obligations under the common law. The letter includes a formal report of potential crimes and a reminder that even catholics objected to the murder of "socially undesirables" in Nazi Germany.

According to new research, death rates at homes in Bessborough in Cork, Sean Ross Abbey in Tipperary, and Castlepollard in Westmeath ranged between 30% and 50% between 1930 and 1945....

...The data, based on preliminary research from the Adoption Rights Alliance found that the average death rate for children born in Sean Ross Abbey in 1932-37 and 1940-45 was 30.73% (846 births/260 deaths) and 30.72% (882 births/271 deaths), respectively.

It also found that the average death rate for children born in Bessborough in 1941-45 was 43.45% (474 births/206 deaths).

Concerns about the level of deaths in Bessborough were highlighted for the Department of Health in the 1950s by the chief medical officer, Dr James Deeny, who temporarily closed the home.

“The deaths had been going on for years. They had done nothing about it, had accepted the situation, and were quite complacent about it,” wrote Dr Deeny in his book, To Cure and To Care — Memoirs of a Chief Medical Officer.

Following early reports on the research of Tuam historian Catherine Corless, who brought the story to light, Liam Hogan, a Limerick-based historian and librarian, began uncovering a trail of damning news clips dating from before the Home’s founding in 1925 to after its closure in 1961.

The articles show that the Home was very much a matter of both public and governmental knowledge. And the way in which they discuss the Home’s occupants (or “inmates” as they are more often referred to) makes clear the totally normalized disdain with which all the “illegitimate children” and “fallen women” were held.

The Tuam Children’s Home, it turns out, is a scandal that emerged from an even earlier scandal – The Glenamaddy Children’s Home, less than 20 miles away.

A June 1, 1924 article from the Connacht Tribune speaks of the ‘dire conditions’ at the Glenamaddy Home, a former workhouse that began housing orphans and unwed mothers in 1921, under the supervision of the Bon Secours nuns....


....An Irish Times account of the contract debate from September 12, 1928, states that at the time there were “118 children, of which 96 were illegitimate, and 30 unmarried mothers in the home.” In the same article, a letter from the Board of Health recommends that unmarried mothers who are “second offenders” should be “committed to a Magdalen asylum of similar institution for a term of years.”...


...Local people living near the Home signed a petition in 1937 calling for “the removal of the cesspool at the back of the Children’s Home, Tuam. . . . The petitioners’ letter stated that the smell from the cesspool was intolerable and highly dangerous to the health of a large number of residents and their families.”...


...An Irish Independent article from November 27, 1954 notes that six children from the Tuam home had been adopted by American families in the previous year and a half, and that the Home Assistance Department of the Galway County Council was “screening” fourteen further applications. The story also notes that “Full inquiries are made before an adoption is permitted and information is obtained through Church and State channels. Reports must be furnished regularly to the Council to show that the religious duties of the child are being attended to, that he or she is attending school, and that the circumstances of the couple who adopted the child have not altered.”...


...By 1961, the Home’s ‘fate was sealed,’ with the announcement that it would be closed in the near future. The article below notes that the occupants would be transferred to “similar centers at Castlepollard, Co. Westmeath; St. Patrick’s, Cabra, [Co Dublin] and Shanross Abbey, Roscrea, [Co Tipperary]” all now recognized as Magdalene institutions. The article seems especially concerned with the “loss” local businesses will feel after the Home closes, “the supply of food, clothing and other necessities [having] been a valuable trade.”