"Significant" numbers of babies remains actually found

Annasopra

Very shocked by the news coming from Tuam

http://m.independent.ie/irish-news/news/tuam-babies-significant-quantities-of-human-remains-discovered-at-excavation-site-35498856.html

According to Kitty Holland we are talking about hundreds of remains of babies and toddlers

whisky_galore

Tbh, I'm not really surprised at these things anymore.

There's probably sites all over the country that'll never be discovered.

mynamejeff

some of these sites date back to the 1800s right ?

wasnt the rate of infant mortality very high historically then ?

RobertKK

The homes ran from 1925 to 1961."

I am not shocked that there are a lot of remains there, what I would like to know is what diseases they died of, given so many diseases were rampant then, that are not present now, or present to very insignificant levels and treatable. A lot of families have members of their extended family who died as children in that period.
What is shocking is how the remains of the dead were possibly treated.

Wanderer78

Not surprised at all, we have a very nasty history regarding these issues

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seamus

Given the nature of the homes, I wouldn't be too surprised about remains of foetuses and babies up to about a year. Poor education, poor support, poor medical care and poor nutrition provided by the homes means that the number of children who died within the first year would be very high.

It's the children over a year that need extra focus - were they subject to extreme levels of physical abuse, or was disease and malnourishment rampant? A child over a year is pretty easy to keep from dying - feed them and don't let them fall from a big height.

I disagree with Robert that the treatment of the remains is the "most shocking" thing. It's the level of cover-up that allowed so many children to die without anyone raising a flag that something might be wrong.

If the bodies had all been buried in individually-marked graves that wouldn't make it "OK" that an insanely high infant mortality rate went unreported and uninvestigated for so long.

SEPT 23 1989

It should be treated as a crime scene

Red Kev

SEPT 23 1989 wrote: »

It should be treated as a crime scene

Have we an extradition treaty with the Vatican?

It was thought that up to 800 were buried in Tuam in various sites. My granddad is from 8 miles from Tuam and that's what they always said. Sounded mad until the story came out a few years back. Hard to know as so many records of what happened were deliberately destroyed over the past few years.

That Cardinal O'Connell who died a couple of weeks ago did his level best to prevent people seeing documents, makes sense that they destroyed a good few as well.

Sad thing is we'll never know the names of the kids in those graves for a fitting memorial and nobody will ever sit for it.

RobertKK

seamus wrote: »

Given the nature of the homes, I wouldn't be too surprised about remains of foetuses and babies up to about a year. Poor education, poor support, poor medical care and poor nutrition provided by the homes means that the number of children who died within the first year would be very high.

It's the children over a year that need extra focus - were they subject to extreme levels of physical abuse, or was disease and malnourishment rampant? A child over a year is pretty easy to keep from dying - feed them and don't let them fall from a big height.

I disagree with Robert that the treatment of the remains is the "most shocking" thing. It's the level of cover-up that allowed so many children to die without anyone raising a flag that something might be wrong.

If the bodies had all been buried in individually-marked graves that wouldn't make it "OK" that an insanely high infant mortality rate went unreported and uninvestigated for so long.

In that period on my father's said he had a brother who was around 2 years old when he died.
My mother had a brother who was 16 years old who died from pneumonia in that same time period.
I am not making excuses for anyone, just simply, young people died from things that one would not expect in this modern era.

In Ireland, there were sharp declines in infant mortality rates beginning in the mid 1940s, with most of the gains occurring in urban areas over the next twenty years. This lead to a convergence of urban and rural infant mortality rates, essentially eliminating the urban mortality penalty. We argue that the reasons for the sharp fall in infant mortality during this
period were due largely to legislative changes that improved sanitation and water, including food safety, and rubbish disposal.
1
With appropriate time lags, these changes improved the
contemporaneous health of infants, and lead to a significant improvement in the health of affected cohorts at older ages.

http://www.ucd.ie/geary/static/publications/workingpapers/gearywp200943.pdf

In 1926 the life expectancy at birth was 57.4 years.

There is a graph in that link which shows infant mortality peaked in the 1940s where over 80 babies born alive per 1,000 babies died.
This I assume could be associated with WW2 and food being rationed.

super_furry

Responsible? The only response from the Catholic church will be another cover-up and they'll do everything in their power to frustrate any investigation. Again.

I'd love to hear what their spokesperson Terry Prone has to say about this latest discovery, given the letter she sent to Saskia Webber.

http://www.thejournal.ie/terry-prone-email-tuam-babies-site-1721252-Oct2014/

Wasn't this the graveyard though?
I mean it's common knowledge that they buried hundreds of babies and children in a mass grave here.
Disgusting behaviour, not too shocking though unfortunately

RobertKK

I think people forget that it is families who sent their daughters and sisters to these places.
I know a person who had a baby in that period, it is something one to this day would not speak about, as her family made her give away the baby for adoption, I am not suppose to know any of this, so I never ever go near that subject with that person who is a very kind lady and who would have made a great mother. I am sure it hurts her what happened, but I think families are responsible for a lot of this, to avoid shame of the unmarried mothers...

Yourself isit

sugarman wrote: »

No, 1922-1998!

It is absolutely sickening and this is only the tip of the iceberg. There will be hundreds of thousands of more bodies discovered in the years to come.

The level of abuse and oppression the catholic church has brought to this island has caused more hurt than any other organization or nation in our history.

Since independence, yes. Before no.

How anyone can support and continue to have faith in an organization that not only covered up child abuse and murder but continue to let it happend and deny all wrong doing!

This needs to be treated as a murder investigation. The church needs to be held responsible.

Well there will be nobody alive to prosecute.

jaja321

RobertKK wrote: »

I think people forget that it is families who sent their daughters and sisters to these places.
I know a person who had a baby in that period, it is something one to this day would not speak about, as her family made her give away the baby for adoption, I am not suppose to know any of this, so I never ever go near that subject with that person who is a very kind lady and who would have made a great mother. I am sure it hurts her what happened, but I think families are responsible for a lot of this, to avoid shame of the unmarried mothers...

Sure, but where did that shame come from?

Donal55

Another Inquiry on the horizon.

seamus

RobertKK wrote: »

In that period on my father's said he had a brother who was around 2 years old when he died.
My mother had a brother who was 16 years old who died from pneumonia in that same time period.
I am not making excuses for anyone, just simply, young people died from things that one would not expect in this modern era.

Yes, of course. But the mortality rates in these homes were 2 - 3 times the national average.

In a place that was masquerading as a care home for mothers and children, a child mortality rate that's multiples of the national average can only happen if there was severe, even deliberate mistreatment of the residents.

whisky_galore

Donal55 wrote: »

Another Inquiry on the horizon.

Doubt it.

For all the good it would do at this remove.

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RobertKK

jaja321 wrote: »

Sure, but where did that shame come from?

I think it came from pride, like every cover up, it is a case of Mrs Bucket and keeping up appearances.
These places existed because they were handy for families to hide what they considered to be their black sheep.
I suspect for some of these families they were happy for the secret to end up dead, because they were certainly not going to be welcomed into the family.

I remember growing up, there use to be people on RTE radio 1 complaining in the 1980's and maybe into the 1990's about single mothers getting support off the state. People saying the state is encouraging single women to have babies and it was a disgrace.
It is not that long ago where the single mother was seen as someone inferior and morally suspect.
It took decades for attitudes to change.

jaja321

RobertKK wrote: »

I think it came from pride, like every cover up, it is a case of Mrs Bucket and keeping up appearances.
These places existed because they were handy for families to hide what they considered to be their black sheep.
I suspect for some of these families they were happy for the secret to end up dead, because they were certainly not going to be welcomed into the family.

I remember growing up, there use to be people on RTE radio 1 complaining in the 1980's and maybe into the 1990's about single mothers getting support off the state. People saying the state is encouraging single women to have babies and it was a disgrace.
It is not that long ago where the single mother was seen as someone inferior and morally suspect.
It took decades for attitudes to change.

Think you might be missing the point I was trying to make. The attitude that there was something shameful to being an unmarried mother came largely from the church and was enforced by the state, through lack of supports etc.

Graces7

RobertKK wrote: »

I think people forget that it is families who sent their daughters and sisters to these places.
I know a person who had a baby in that period, it is something one to this day would not speak about, as her family made her give away the baby for adoption, I am not suppose to know any of this, so I never ever go near that subject with that person who is a very kind lady and who would have made a great mother. I am sure it hurts her what happened, but I think families are responsible for a lot of this, to avoid shame of the unmarried mothers...

Robert; even f that were totally fully true?

The babies were given to the Church to be cared for; they were not cared for. The blame is of the Church.

You know my loyalty BUT loyalty takes a poor second place to this atrocity.

Have been watching the Tuam situation and the Tribunal . not just Tuam but mother/baby homes all over Ireland

There is no excuse, no defence.

Trust was abused. Massively and culbably

RobertKK

....... wrote: »

This post has been deleted.

But it was families who projected that shame onto family members.

It was a different society back then, and the world in general from 1920s up to the 1960's was often a very dark place.

valoren

It is incredibly disturbing. A number of samples taken are presumed to from the 1950's.

To understand the mindset of that period, I am reminded of what my dad told us when he was a child of about 5 or 6, in the mid-50's. He was playing football near a protestant church. For those familiar with Cork, it would be the St Anne's graveyard on the grounds of Shandon. It was a protestant graveyard. He said his grandmother at the time threatened him that he should never, under any circumstances, enter that graveyard. If he did, she said the devil would set him on fire.

To be that deluded, deranged in their thinking about the nature of God, to have such an unhinged, ignorant outlook on life is incredibly disturbing. He never dared go into that place. Now someone had to bury those babies and children. No doubt they viewed those babies and those children as the spawn of Satan. Burying them would be too respectful a word. That they threw them into septic tanks full of sh1t, would not have taken any toll on them mentally. They, whoever they are, were doing God's work. I understand the argument that mortality rates were high, health standards were low. But there is no justification for what happened, for how they were treated in death. They died. And they were thrown out like the 'godless' trash they were regarded as.

Throwing babies and children into filthy septic tanks was them doing God's work.
They didn't know any better, never stood a chance, were never given a chance, treated like animals.

Nobody will ever know their names. They were statistics.

The whole history of the M&B homes is for me personally our national digrace.

spurious

Jesus wept. Just when you thought it couldn't get worse.

I vote we let them control and run primary schools.

Graces7

RobertKK wrote: »

I think it came from pride, like every cover up, it is a case of Mrs Bucket and keeping up appearances.
These places existed because they were handy for families to hide what they considered to be their black sheep.
I suspect for some of these families they were happy for the secret to end up dead, because they were certainly not going to be welcomed into the family.

I remember growing up, there use to be people on RTE radio 1 complaining in the 1980's and maybe into the 1990's about single mothers getting support off the state. People saying the state is encouraging single women to have babies and it was a disgrace.
It is not that long ago where the single mother was seen as someone inferior and morally suspect.
It took decades for attitudes to change.

It came from the Church in the extent and extremes to which it was carried out. To compare this tragedy with Mrs Bucket... Sorry Robert, but wrong.

Babies were to be cared for and they were not. Period. And no graves. Whereas the sisters at Tuam? They had fine graves and when they lfet, they took the coffins with them, reburied the sistrs with a fine monument.

What I have bolded is not worthy of you and is not true. There are women searching for their babies to this day.

RobertKK

Graces7 wrote: »

Robert; even f that were totally fully true?

The babies were given to the Church to be cared for; they were not cared for. The blame is of the Church.

You know my loyalty BUT loyalty takes a poor second place to this atrocity.

Have been watching the Tuam situation and the Tribunal . not just Tuam but mother/baby homes all over Ireland

There is no excuse, no defence.

Trust was abused. Massively and culbably

I agree, I do however think some people didn't care about their unmarried daughter/sister and didn't care what treatment they or their baby got in such a place, the 'problem' was out of sight.
I think a lot of the deaths were from having a lot of young in buildings that were not suitable, not clean enough, not warm enough, maybe not enough food, no electricity for some of that period, no running water and the nuns 'mother and baby homes' were a dumping ground to hide family secrets.
Yes they deserved the best of care, but how suitable were these places to start with.
Then the treatment of the dead...I think a cover up not only helped the nuns but families who wanted secrets kept hidden - all of which was totally wrong.

screamer

So very sad, children should be cherished above all. Sometimes, I feel ashamed to be Irish, for such a small nation we have a very dark, disturbing past relating to the church and our children.
Little angels, rest in peace.

Graces7

Just read the report and am weeping.

Because of some work I do, I though I knew the worst; been dreading this breaking... but it is far far worse than we thought it would be

Shame on them. utter shame on them.

And this is only the start of the tribunal findings. There is far far more to come.

There is no defence possible in any way. None. And I a faithful Catholic say that. No .

Not even going to read excuses now.

RobertKK

Graces7 wrote: »

It came from the Church in the extent and extremes to which it was carried out. To compare this tragedy with Mrs Bucket... Sorry Robert, but wrong.

Babies were to be cared for and they were not. Period. And no graves. Whereas the sisters at Tuam? They had fine graves and when they lfet, they took the coffins with them, reburied the sistrs with a fine monument.

What I have bolded is not worthy of you and is not true. There are women searching for their babies to this day.

But that is what some families were doing, hiding away the secrets they didn't want known, to keep up appearances.

There was always going to be some mortality when in that period infant mortality for the country as a whole went above 80/1,000 live births.
There is no excuse for how their remains were treated, and I can bet the nuns were not dumped into their grounds like the innocent young were.

elperello

super_furry wrote: »

Responsible? The only response from the Catholic church will be another cover-up and they'll do everything in their power to frustrate any investigation. Again.

I'd love to hear what their spokesperson Terry Prone has to say about this latest discovery, given the letter she sent to Saskia Webber.

http://www.thejournal.ie/terry-prone-email-tuam-babies-site-1721252-Oct2014/

She happened to be on Sean O'Rourke when the story broke. He didn't quite get the ball over the line.
http://www.rte.ie/radio/utils/radioplayer/rteradioweb.html#!rii=b9%5F10692113%5F15036%5F03%2D03%2D2017%5F