Children's Home, Dublin Road,Tuam, Ireland, 1950. (Courtesy of Catherine Corless/ Tuam Historical Society)
In a small town setting in western Ireland a tragedy was unearthed...800 tiny bodies in a mass grave.
Between 1925 and 1961, behind a six foot high wall, was a place that was known as the Children's Home, run by the Bon Secours nuns. This was where young unwed mothers came to have their children. And leave them.
For a thousand years and more, unwed mothers were stigmatized in society, and families usually threw them out to fend for themselves. They didn't care how their daughter became pregnant, even though it was often the result of rape or incest, they just wanted to be rid of her and the obvious results of "sin".
In 1925 the Children's Home opened. A place for the "sinners" to have their child and place it for adoption. Sounds not to bad, huh? What they really entered was indentured servitude for as long as it took to have the child. Forced labour. Taught menial skills so they could support themselves after the birth. They would have become laundresses, seamstresses, factory or mill workers.
But what of their babies? Follow me over the orange bridge.
50 years after the closing of the home and redevelopment of the land, the tragedy is unveiled.
800 tiny bodies found, piled in a massive septic tank, located at the back of the building. A mass grave. No coffins, no gravestones. Nothing to indicate anybody cared about these little deaths.
The police are investigating the gruesome findings. According to documents obtained, the main cause of death was malnutrition and neglect. Others died of measles, TB, gastroenteritis, pneumonia and convulsions.
The rate of infant mortality was incredibly high. " If you look at the records, babies were dying two a week, but I'm still trying to figure out how they could (put the bodies in a septic tank)", said local historian Catherine Corless, "Couldn't they have afforded baby coffins?"
Those that lived past babyhood were neglected and abused. Many who lived in the surrounding communities remember the "Home Babies" as they were called. One local recalls, "(They were) usually gone by school age - either adopted or dead." A 1944 health report describes the Home Children as "emaciated", "pot-bellied", "fragile" and with "flesh hanging loosely on limbs". In school, they were segregated to the side or back of the class and local children were threatened with having to sit with them if they misbehaved.
It is likely there are more than 800 tiny bodies dumped in that septic tank.
To me, this terrible tragedy is personal. I'm adopted, and lived with my adopted family in Wales until emigrating to Canada in 1966. My parents "got" me from an orphanage in London when I was just a year and a half old. A very adoptable, pretty, blue-eyed, curly-haired blond. My parents got snookered; by the time I was four, my hair had darkened to brunette and the curls straightened. I was just an average kid.
What had my mother's life been like in that place? What had mine been like? What would mine have been like if I hadn't been adopted? Would I have lived a life of starvation, neglect and abuse? The odds would have been high.
This awful story was the reality of life for young women in the early part of last century. The ostracization of having a child out of wedlock because of religious dogma is both an old story and a not so old one. The nuns punished the children for the perceived "sins" of the mother, by neglecting them and starving them and abusing them. Religion has much to answer for!
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