In a revealing article in the Irish Times published online 45 minutes ago, Catherine Corless, the amateur historian who uncovered the records of the 796 children who died at the Tuam children’s home, run by the Bon Secours sisters has expressed her dissatisfaction by the way the story has been covered by the media, in particular the claims that 800 bodies were ‘dumped’. ‘I never said that word’ – she states.
What has upset, confused and dismayed her in recent days is the speculative nature of much of the reporting around the story, particularly about what happened to the children after they died. “I never used that word ‘dumped’,” she says again, with distress. “I just wanted those children to be remembered and for their names to go up on a plaque. That was why I did this project, and now it has taken [on] a life of its own.”
Her motivation was entirely about commemorating those who died there and her original article describes how she believes that the children were buried in an unofficial graveyard at the rear of the home. Perhaps this is why the locals have been so shocked on the discovery of the news, because many of them had tended to what was believed to be ‘the angels plot’ putting up a makeshift garden and Marian shrine.
In the light of Corless’ research which was first reported last year, a graveyard committee was established, a copy of her article was distributed and donations asked for a plaque following a Mass at Tuam Cathedral last year. Barry Sweeney, one of the boys who had originally discovered the graves, got in touch with Catherine to confirm that he had found bones, but as the Irish Times reports:
. “But there was no way there were 800 skeletons down that hole. Nothing like that number. I don’t know where the papers got that.” How many skeletons does he believe there were? “About 20.”
He goes on to state that the size of the slab broken into was 120cm by 60cm, roughly the size of his coffee table. This makes sense and what I was suggesting in my previous post which received such condemnation from certain quarters. There is no way that you would squeeze 800 bodies into a septic tank.
The article notes the archive material about the sewage scheme which was brought to the home in 1937. The tank had been in use between 1926 and 1937 during which period 204 children died. Catherine Corless admits that it is impossible that the tank would fit 204 bodies and that they would have been thrown into a working sewage tank.
My theory has always been that during these works, which would have required digging, bodies of famine victims were unearthed and it was these who were put unceremoniously into the hollowed out tank, perhaps to save space.
Catherine Corless has said that no-one from the government has asked to review her work, neither has anyone corroborated it, but that she would be happy to share it.
It is likely that the babies are buried on the site somewhere, there are many children’s burial grounds in County Galway and throughout Ireland, but the story that 800 babies were ‘dumped in a septic tank’ is undoubtedly false.
Michael Cook from Mercatornet produced this map of all the childrens’ burial grounds in Country Galway.
Here is an archeological explanation of the work that has so far been carried out on the site of the former home. These specialists posit that the children may have been buried at a site less than a mile away.
We would hypothesise that not only did the Bons Secours nuns in Tuam have to face the difficulties in burying dead infants but so too did many/most Irish families at a time when infant mortality rates were very high. It is no coincidence that Children’s Burial Grounds abound throughout Ireland and also that one is found in Ballymoat townland less than a mile northeast of the Workhouse. If the nuns did bury the infant dead within the Home grounds then where did the neighbouring families bury their infant dead? Some in the children’s burial ground and some in consecrated ground?
None of this detracts from the unacceptably high death rates in Mother and Baby homes and it is important that more research into these institutions is carried out, which is why the Archbishop of Dublin asked his diocesan archivist to collate all the records pertaining to the Mother and Baby homes and make them available to the government, just a few months ago.
This letter in the Irish Times, along with many of the comments on my previous post, throws some light onto conditions faced in the home.
Cohorting infants in institutions puts small infants at risk from cross-infection, particularly gastroenteritis. Early infection to the gastrointestinal tract can cause severe bowel damage. Without the availability of recent technology, many such infants would die from malabsorption resulting in marasmus [severe malnutrition]. The risks would have been much increased if the infants were not breast fed.
In foundling homes in the US in the early 20th century, mortality was sometimes reported as greater than 90 per cent among infants cared for in such institutions. Lack of understanding of nutrition, cross-infection associated with overcrowding by today’s standards, and the dangers of unpasteurised human milk substitutes were the main factors.
Of course many of the babies are reported to have been breast-fed as their mothers were there, but gastroenteritis is certainly an important consideration. Even if the babies were breast-fed, they would have been at increased risk once weaning began. There is always the possibility that they were mixed fed but in any event milk substitute only one factor in gastroenteritis which is very dangerous. My daughter was very ill with campylobacter as a baby, despite good hygiene and being breast-fed.
Irish Blogger Shane, (Lux Occulta) has carried out research indicating that the mortality rate in the home at Tuam was actually LOWER than much of the rest of the country, except in Dublin, where it was the same.
Between 1925 and 1937, 204 children died at the Home — an average of 17 per year. 17 deaths out of 200 children equals a mortality rate of 8.5%. It is interesting to compare that with the rest of the country at the time. In 1933, the infant mortality rate in Dublin was 83 per thousand (ie. a mortality rate of 8.3%), in Cork it was 89 per thousand (8.9%), in Waterford it was 102 per thousand (10.2%) and in Limerick it was 132 per thousand (13.2%). (Source: Irish Press, 12th April, 1935; below).
Also the historian Liam Hogan (@limerick1914) who has done so much work in digging up the archives and sharing them, has discovered that the home never once left the hands of the County Council. In 1951, 10 years before it shut, the sisters were begging the board for a grant, saying that they were too ashamed to show councils part of the building which desperately needed renovations, the children were sleeping in attics in terrible conditions and the building were considered a fire risk. In a meeting in 1949, Senator Martin Quinn were told that the children were suffering as result of the condition of the building, to which he replied “I do not like these statements which receive such publicity”.
It seems that the home shut after money wrangles, the County Council were simply not prepared to spend the money to upgrade the building which they owned, especially if it was later to be handed into the hands of the nuns. It was pointed out however, that the nuns could not be expected to take over and maintain a property which was in such bad condition.
Other interesting facts to have emerged are that the Mother Superior was a member of the NSPCC and that the ratepayers repeatedly talked about the unacceptable cost of the ‘misfortunates’. ‘I want the public to know what the illegitimate children are costing the ratepayers of Galway’ said one report in 1938.
This is not meant in any way to deflect or divert blame from any individuals within the Catholic Church, we know that various religious fell well short of the standards expected of them.
“800 bodies dumped and she wants to talk about the logistics” scoffed one tweep. But to most critical thinkers, the story never made sense.
No matter what may have gone on, there is no way that nuns would have been refusing to baptise children as suggested or simply tossing their bodies into a septic tank. That people were so willing to believe this and jump on the outrage bandwagon should be a cause for concern and shows that much work still needs to be done to atone by the Church and others for a terrible time in Ireland’s history.
The Catechesis of Caroline 
Thank you so much for these two excellent articles Caroline. I have re-blogged them on Catholicism Pure & Simple.
Thanks for two well balanced articles, Caroline. Do be wary of the statistics, though. Infant mortality (deaths of children before 1st birthday, per 1000 live births) is not the same as child mortality (deaths before the age of 5 per 1000 live births). Thus a percentage based on number of deaths per year of a particular population (as in the calculation you quoted for the Tuam home) is not directly comparable with child or infant mortality rates and will, in fact, be a very significant under representation compared with child mortality.
Despite the days you have spent writing apologetics for this issue, we still have the issue of 796 unaccounted-for bodies and the sight of bodies in a septic tank.
P.
Despite the days you have spent ranting and attacking Catholics who dare challenge your narrative we still have no evidence that the bodies were those of children or that the nuns did anything untoward with the deceased and followed common practice.
“ranting and attacking Catholics”
Given I’m married to a Catholic and have my child baptised as Catholic, I always enjoy being told my criticisms of abuse of the Catholic Church’s power in 20th century Ireland are simple bigotry.
good reply
I’m not sure what having your child baptised catholic proves. If you want people to take seriously abuses in the church you need to get your facts straight and not indulge in tit-for-tat arguments on the internet. Otherwise an important topic is going to turn into a joke.
Paul, I have seen no denial on this blog that there are nigh on 800 deaths recorded without a corresponding record of burial, nor has there been any denial of remains being found in what is/was/might have been a septic tank. There has been no denial that there is tragedy and likely wrong doing. There has been compassion, integrity and a desire for the truth (“The first task must surely be to secure the site and carry out forensic analysis.”). There has been support for “a social history project to be run in parallel to any inquiry in order that an accurate picture of life in the homes can be established.” There is acknowledgement of things awry – badly awry (‘This is not to deny abuses or shocking treatment”). What Caroline has done – and done admirably – is to try and counter people making unsubstantiated and likely false ‘conclusions’ (e.g. 800 babies in a septic tank) that are then propagated as fact and thus muddying the waters. If there is going to be some stone-throwing as a result of Tuam – and other mother and baby homes – let’s at least call for, hope for and wait for some sort of inquiry that will build on the noble work already done by Catherine Corless so that we know in what direction to throw. That’s what I call justice, both for victim and perpetrator.
I don’t care if it was even 1 body that was found buried, like a piece of trash, IT WAS WRONG, and the Catholic Church is to be blamed for the inhumane trreatment of children and young women and men. IT HAPPENED FOLKS, so why are some now trying to excuse or render it false. IT HAPPENED.
Reminds me of the French Revolution. Judgement to death through ignorance, or on the basis of the Kangaroo court.- Mob ‘justice. HOLD BACK Toni!
I leave the final word to Catherine Corless in the video attached to the above article:
Boland: “Do you believe that there are all of the children in that grave, do you think that that is possible?”
Corless: “I think it’s quite possible going from the boys’ explanation that it was full to the brim of bones. But still how children at the time, does it matter if it’s 500, 600? If there isn’t a full 796? 10 children in a septic tank? 20? Isn’t that horrific? Is it the numbers that makes it horrific?
Even one is horrific Paul … These homes existed for so many years and the torture endured whether physical or mental was and is an abomination ..
‘The cost to the ratepayer’ the dreadful toll from communicable diseasesbin institutions seem more likely to ‘blame’ than the Church. Coffins cost a lot and in an epidemic this may have been an act of desperation. And attitudes in society to the poor today have hardly changed have they?
Not often one sees a septic tank with a shrine of Our Lady of Lourdes!
The last paragraph states that there is no way nuns would have refused to baptise children or toss them into a septic tank. Why would you think this? The nuns in various institutions used children in illegal vaccine trials and illegal adoptions while abusing their mothers in the laundries. They have proved that nothing is/was beyond them. They continue to deny the rights of these mothers and children on a daily basis in the present day. Nothing is or was beyond them!
No stereotyping here.
Which bit is the stereotype Jim, the illegal use of children in vaccine trials, the illegal adoptions of children, the abuse of women in Magdalene laundries. Do you deny that any of these took place? As I said before lets have the full report and investigation and lay the facts out for all to see. The truth is what we all want isn’t it?
How sad all those precious babies died from cross-infection etc, because at the time there was not the knowhow, biotics or ‘Diarrolite’, solutions.
For these grieving mothers, probably young girls who had been taken advantage of, by irresponsible men. there has to be great sympathy. I’m sure the sisters were equally distressed..
To Adrian Cafferkey. Ref illegal vaccine trials, Where’s the proof?
The ball’s in your court. Have you got the balls?
The balls for a full independent enquiry free of religious bias or government influence. Why would this be a problem unless there was something to hide from the likes of you?
FYI Michael Davidson – Newstalk, this very morning covered the illegal vaccine trials in some detail. I believe it may be available on Podcast in case you missed it.
Caroline Thank you so much for standing up there for God. So, I’ve been a bit slow to register my total support for your defence, of what is TRUTH. Truth is very often un-popular, and proclaiming it is costly. Sorry, if, at times, you may have felt Catholics, are staying so silent, When the catalyst, from which truth and justice is born is lacking in it’s essential elements I hope your husband ‘real husband’ is making up for the time you would have normally given to your children. Bless them. Mike.
Caroline. Thank you so much for your excellent reporting.
Keep telling yourselves that nuns dumped the bodies of children in a septic tank, when the most likely explanation is that the bodies had been buried nearby and were later discovered and moved without their knowledge *as often happened* with roadwork or other construction projects. This has been brought up and then ignored any number of times.
To those who wish to blame the Catholic Church I’d like to draw your attention to the doctors in England, trained before the NHS and with eugenic ideals who told a relative ‘put him in an institution and they’ll deal with it. Just forget you had him’. Where are THESE forgotten children? The nuns did as well as they could with limited resources FROM THE STATE.
Like this lady
http://www.macclesfield-express.co.uk/news/local-news/lost-sister-found-after-70-2536452
No nuns involved.
Oh – and Cranage Hall is now a hotel – I wonder what is over the graveyard there now? Landscaped gardens or a carpark?
The Macclesfield Workhouse retained various inmates after it became a Mental Hospital. It has a nice carpark as well.
“Tuam’s child holocaust”. Wow, right up there with “Kathy’s Story.” Perhaps Judie Dench could play Mother SSuperior. The Irish obsession with blaming the Catholic Church for just about everything is making the country of which I was once proud to claim my descendance look utterly absurd.
Mark thank you.
Thank you for this. FWIW Here is a blog by me on this topic:
http://save-send-delete.blogspot.com/2014/06/what-heck-is-wrong-with-irish-child.html
Thank you so much for these entries, Ms. Farrow. This is the kind of dispassionate investigative journalism that all of the mainstream media sources should be conducting, instead of publishing rage-mongering headlines.
Danusha, I read your blog post and agree with you. Not to get off topic, but I would argue that the Irish Republican Brotherhood and original IRA were indeed freedom fighters. The ranks of the IRA in The north of Ireland were swelled by a disgraceful event called Bloody Sunday in Derry. Civil rights demonstrations had been brutally repressed and, seeing their fellow countrymen shot in cold blood by an army of occupation that colluded with the infamous RUC and loyalist paramilitaries, many young Catholics saw they had little option but to defend their community. They have my total respect. As for the Tuam episode, this is looking very much like the Magdalene Laundries 2. Remember what the McAleese report turned up? No, neither does anyone else.
Reblogged this on The Back of the World and commented:
The truth is, as per usual, much more complicated than the headlines…
an enquiry should establish the truth; certainly many babies died; it seems they were fed by a “wet nurse” most of the time, which would cause cross infection; why is Ms Corless disturbed about the truth; half of the country died during the famine from incureable diseases and hungar as the food was sent to England by the English administration in Ireland. Even if only one baby was thrown into the septic tank is shows a lack of respect but the Catholic church said then that unbaptised babies could not be buried in consecrated ground, so given the ravinging of the English caused famine people were just trying to surivive eating nettles etc so no one was to pushed where the dead bodies were buried as they would be contagious with serious disease. Clearly if over at least 200 babies died in Tuam orphanage it is a lot and there should be records; the mothers were not allowed near their babies the survivors were shipped abroad to U.S. and Australia etc so only God knows how they fared ; sad times and the system operated up to the early 1960’s as some survivors were on the TV wondering who their mothers were as the Church would never allow the mothers or surviving babies to meet, causing unnecessary suffering to the victims of these semi Magdelene “laundries” etc
The famous Irish famine of the 1920s. Everyone was starving back then. It’s all the fault of the English. Perhaps the landlords threw all the potatoes in the septic tank too 😉
If the bodies found turn up to be famine victims, will the abortion extremists turn their mire on the British state and demand compensation for war crimes on Ireland which included a forced starvation. Nah, they won’t because the Brits would tell them to **** **. Much easier to rant and rave at a few (dead) nuns. The fact is that ALL victims deserve justice, truth, full disclosure and compensation, if that is possible. Not only the victims that suit the agenda of Church hating abortionists. All the bodies should be dug up, buried properly, a proper, independent, investigation carried out.
Please watch this video very carefully and decide for yourself if there is any truth to it, without perceiving it as an attack on all Catholics or even all Catholic priests. There’s no question there are evil people among ALL the major faiths. That much let’s agree on. That doesn’t mean everyone is rotten but …. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H5TyNPG88aU
Thanks for the video. It is the best evidence I have yet seen for re-incarnation. Here is the “story” concerned in a previous life http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maria_Monk
I note that as a Reiki Master and “foot reader” practitioner, you have a unique insight into the gullibility of the general population, and that you are disarmingly honest about being taken in by a chap called Keshe, whose site (with your interview videos) is here
http://abundanthope.net/pages/Environment_Science_69/Mehran-Keshe-Interview-by-Shahriar-Mazandi-30th-January-2013-Parts-1-to-7.shtml
I am assuming that at some point you realised you were never going to get a ride in his spaceship, or “become a Messiah” as he promises his followers.
http://www.getoutofdebtfree.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=60&t=59005#p208039
After a long explanation of the thought processes which lead to you being taken in, you conclude
“Like many others far brighter than myself I dearly wanted to believe him. What lessons are there to be drawn from this? Perhaps before any of us are consumed by ‘conspiracies’ we should be more rigorous in our research. I now feel very badly for what I have done.”
I would be very grateful if you could offer the professional witch-hunters of the Irish atheist left, and their bedfellows, a short and reasonably priced stay at your excellent holistic B&B, the “Cloudsley” (day trips to Derek Jarman’s house at Dungeness a speciality), where you can communicate the wisdom you have obviously gleaned from your experience with Mr Keshe. After all – you “dearly wanted to believe” and concluded that there are “lessons to be drawn”.
One such lesson to teach the Catholic-bashers might be to treat stories in the Irish Mail on Sunday with a bit of scepticism – for as our very own Catholic Ascended Master equivalent, GK Chesterton was wont to intone through his third eye, while practising his daily dose of Prana Yoga, and enjoying some shiatsu massage from the hands of Hilaire Belloc:
“When men choose not to believe in God, they do not thereafter believe in nothing, they then become capable of believing in anything.”
You might want to think twice over whether it was the nuns who buried 800 children in a sewage tank . You can never rule out NASA.
How do you know they were ‘illegal’, Adrian? The reports were published in The Lancet in the early 1960s and they were conducted by staff from University College Dublin.
They might have been but we don’t know – whose consent was obtained and under what circumstances?
What did the State know? Did it authorise these trials? As the State owned most (if not all) the institutions in which they are alleged to have taken place, it seems a bit of a stretch to believe that it had no idea.
We may view them today as immoral and/unethical – but in the absence of actual facts, which only an enquiry will bring out, we simply do not know. raising a hue and cry in the absence of an enquiry is merely yet another example of rabble-rousing.
Either way – they did not take place at Tuam. It’s a distraction and to be expected – as the truth emerges and it doesn’t conform to the bigoted prejudgement, the mob rushes off to the next ‘scandal’.
Hi Ruari
I agree that the Tuam issue is being mis-used for a lot of wider issues many of which I don’t agree with. However it is also helpful in highlighting many other issues which have not been dealt with adequately by the state or various church bodies despite repeated efforts over the years. I am aware of cases where illegal vaccination trials were carried out without consent however I recognise that there needs to be a full comprehensive investigation of same and this is all I am looking for. My original post on this site was to counter a blind defence of the nuns without properly considering the facts of many of the wrongs they carried out. You are right also that a lot of anti church rhetoric is being stirred up and different agendas jumping on the bandwagon but don’t let this distract from the issues at hand either.
Babies and innocent children were mistreated in these homes to put it mildly, illegal vaccinations were carried out without consent (regardless of who carried them out or recorded them) and mothers were abused in these institutions and all I and many others want to see is a proper investigation of this. I’m sure the state and institutions of the state were also culpable and society itself was guilty of turning a blind eye but that doesn’t make these things any less wrong or the perpetrators any less guilty. How would you feel if it was you or your child that these things were done to? Why would anybody not want these things fully investigated? Why do the same institutions lie and refuse to provide information to many of these mothers and children to this very day? Surely institutions with nothing to hide would be delighted that an investigation could exonerate them. That’s all I am looking for. I don’t believe there’s anything remotely rabble rousing in that!
Adrian the post wasn’t a blind defence of nuns, but in the particular case of Tuam, there is very little in the way of solid evidence that the sisters of the Bons Secours were guilty of mistreating those in their care. As yet we have little in the way of witness statements for example.
“No matter what may have gone on, there is no way that nuns would have been refusing to baptise children as suggested or simply tossing their bodies into a septic tank.”
This is the comment I took umbrage with. Is this not a blind defence? How do you know they didn’t do these things? We know they did many things which were much worse to the babies, children and mothers in these institutions and are still lying to many of the affected people to this very day! Never mind their treatment of the dead when they still continue to treat the living with nothing short of disdain.
Adrian my defence was of an attack which was based upon no evidence aside from someone else in another religious order may have badly treated children therefore it’s likely that the Tuam sisters (who had a good reputation locally) did these things?
How do you know that they did refuse baptism and chuck bodies in a septic tank? Because some other nuns in another institution abused children? You wouldn’t get that one past the CPS?
All children were baptised in these homes as soon as possible and they were given first holy communion. Fact. There is nothing to suggest otherwise. The sisters would have thought it doubly necessary to have the children baptised given attitudes at the time.
Chucking corpses into a septic tank on a regular basis? As my post explains, it’s completely unfeasible. Critical judgement is not a blind defence.
Hi blondpidge
So let’s have a full investigation of all of these institutions and find out who did what, to whom and find out the full facts of this. How do you know all of the children in these homes were baptized and given holy communion when the children themselves have often been denied access to their records and continue to be denied access to these records to the present day? I see how polarized the debate is becoming but whatever side of the debate you’re on, is the best solution not a full independent investigation to suit all parties? All I want is for the truth to be established in relation to all of these places. Is that not reasonable?
Reblogged this on My Musings.
A relative told me of working on the renovation of a Catholic church in Ireland and seeing a priest’s bones taken and put in a box which was deposited in a culvert. He said the bones must have been washed into the nearby river and then perhaps into Lough Corrib. I don’t think the workers sought Church approval..
As an American — and if this were playing out in the U.S. — I’d expect to see tents put up around the gravesite and an investigation underway. Is this happening? And, whatever the reason for the mass grave (if that’s what it is), why would the children not have received proper burial back then? And will those disinterred (assuming they will be) receive proper burial now?
“Investigators have been given permission to exhume remains found at the notorious Arthur G Dozier School for Boys in Florida…. following pupils’ revelations of widespread physical and sexual abuse. The decision comes after a team of researchers found evidence of almost 100 deaths at the institution.
Dozier survivors, who call themselves the “White House Boys” – after a small outbuilding where beatings are said to have taken place – have come forward with stories of beatings, rapes and murders by staff during the 1940s, 50s and 60s. Children as young as five are said to have been chained to walls or tied to a bed and beaten.”
“It (Dozier) survived Congressional hearings, state hearings and state investigations. Each one turned the spotlight on horrific conditions, and little changed.”
Curious how so many of these young black boys died of “pneumonia.”
Oh, and, yes, Dozier did close eventually. Not in the 60s, though. It closed 3 years ago.
Remember the worldwide media storm over this and how every man and his dog seemed to have an opinion on it? No, nor do I.
And this was a case with far more substance to it than the non-story of Tuam.
You’ve been following up on this, have you, “as an American”? As an Englishman in America I’d say you need to put those stones down. I’ve seen an awful lot of glass houses here.
Congratulations Caroline on two excellent pieces of proper journalism a skill which has been notably absent in the general media coverage of this story
The thing that really gets me about this story is the fact that it has developed such legs on the basis of so few known facts. So far as I can see nobody has the faintest idea how many bodies are in this so called septic tank, let alone whether they are children or adults or when the date from nor do we even know whether it was a septic tank. All we do appear to know is that in the period 1925 – 1961 some 796 deaths of children were lawfully recorded and registered as arising from a variety of childhood illnesses.
I think we also need to bear in mind the realities of the period 1925-61
1925 Ireland, a poor country to begin with, is just starting to get itself sorted out after a brutal war of Independence followed by a brutal Civil War
1930 The World depression which hit Ireland as badly as anywhere. Look at the stories of poverty in England or the US in the 30’s and understand that conditions in Ireland especially the West of Ireland were even worse
1932 -38 a Trade War by Ireland with Britain which was her biggest trading partner
1939 – 45 A World War where Ireland may have been neutral but still had great difficulty importing food or fuel or exporting anything (In this respect its worth noting that one widely quoted Inspection report on the Tuam Home which mentions malnutrition is dated 1944 )
1945 – 61 a period where all of Europe is just starting to get itself sorted out and begin to prosper at the end of which Ireland is just starting to catch up economically with Europe. Its also the “Call the Midwife” period when childbirth was still dangerous and child death still not uncommon
In that period and in those circumstances even if the Irish State was making payments for the upkeep of the children I doubt if it was much and probably many of the women who came in were malnourished to begin with especially bearing in mind that we are talking about the West of Ireland which was the poorest part of Ireland
The fact is that there is no evidence that the Bon Secour Nuns did anything other than try to the very best that they could with the limited resources available to them in a poverty stricken region during a poverty stricken time
Alot of these babies died of malnutrition! They were left in a room to die of starvation.
Ain’t nothing like cracked nuns doing gods work
And you know this how, exactly? I mean the “they were left in a room to die of starvation” accusation? That many, many children in Ireland died of malnutrition in that period seems clear, but your accusation that the Sisters of Bon Secours deliberately left the children in rooms to die of starvation is a slanderous lie, unless you’ve got some hard, documented evidence to back it up. I don’t think the nuns are the ones that are cracked, mate…
In all humanity whether it is a prison, a childrens’ home, a private school, a home for the elderly there is scope for the disintegration of human values and rights. Given that within living history, files and records are still the most valuabel and the most difficult to get access to (if they exist anymore) We are encouraged to forget this event, minimise it, but remember what happened 2014 years ago…
Same story, different country: https://youtu.be/gqUvhDG7x2E
“Ireland’s Lost Babies” documentary: Catherine Corless appears in a segment starting at 46:00 minutes, and at 48:00 minutes, Martin asks Corless “And do we know how many babies or children are actually buried here? and Corless replies “Including the whole area, there’s nearly 800, which is an enormous amount altogether.” http://www.pbs.org/video/2365621958/