Posted on 06/07/2014 6:18:05 AM PDT by narses
Catherine Corless’s research revealed that 796 children died at St Mary’s. She now says the nature of their burial has been widely misrepresented
In light of Corless’s article a Children’s Home Graveyard committee was established last year. In recent months its secretary, Teresa Killeen Kelly, addressed the congregation after Mass at Tuam Cathedral, explaining the work of the committee and asking for donations towards a plaque. Copies of Corless’s article were handed out.
As John Lowe, another member of the committee, explained this week at the site of the former home, the group’s aim is to raise €15,000 for a plaque with all the names of the children on it. So far they have raised €7,000, and €2,000 has been paid for initial drawings of the plaque. In 1840 a workhouse was built on a site off what is now Dublin Road. When the workhouse closed, the building was taken over, and from 1925 until 1961 it was used as the mother-and-baby home. After that it lay derelict for several years, until it was demolished and a new housing estate and playground built in its place. In the years that it was falling into disrepair, the large building and surrounding land became a natural magnet for curious local children.
The Sean Ross Abbey in Roscrea, which was a home from 1930 to 1970. Photograph: Niall Carson/PA WireThis time, the issue of mother and baby homes must be addressed Corless writes in her article about hearing of boys who “came upon a sort of crypt in the ground, and on peering in they saw several small skulls. I’m told they ran for their lives and relayed their find to their parents.”
On St Patrick’s Day this year Barry Sweeney was drinking in Brownes bar, on the Square in Tuam. He fell into conversation with someone who was familiar with Corless’s research, and who repeated the story of boys finding bones. “I told her that I was one of those boys,” Sweeney tells The Irish Times in his home, on the outskirts of Tuam. “I got a phonecall from Catherine a couple of weeks later.”
Sweeney was 10 in 1975, and the friend he was with on that day, Frannie Hopkins, was 12. They dropped down from the two-and-a-half-metre boundary wall as usual, into the part of the former grounds that Corless and local people believe is the unofficial burial place for those who died in the home. “We used to be in there playing regular. There was always this slab of concrete there,” he says. In his kitchen, Sweeney demonstrates the size of this concrete flag as he recalls it: it’s an area a little bigger than his coffee table, about 120cm long and 60cm wide. He says he does not recall seeing any other similar flags in their many visits to the area.
Between them the boys levered up the slab. “There were skeletons thrown in there. They were all this way and that way. They weren’t wrapped in anything, and there were no coffins,” he says. “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.”
When Corless was researching the home she looked at old maps of Tuam. One was an 1840 Ordnance Survey map that shows the then workhouse. At the rear of the site is a space she believes to be the sewage tank for the workhouse, although it is not labelled as such. Later maps have “sewage tank” written in the same space.
More at the link....
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That ain't no public service bargain price.
No kidding. You would think some talented Irish artist would do it for free just to help commemorate the site.
I hope you ping all the haters to this story. Guess they jumped the gun with their bashing of the Church and their feigned outrage, lol.
They’ll never admit it anyway. If there is a smidgeon of a reason to bash the Church they will.
They also never consider history in the context of history. A century ago the world was a different place.
Correct. haters gotta hate. That is what they do.
Narses, Thanks for the ping about the truth of this issue. Have any of the prots apologized for the slanderous attack comments that were made to vilify you over this?
People just eat anything up that slanders our Church. Thanks for posting this!
Haters will hate. They are still going on.
Well right the world is a different place. Every major city has a “pauper’s grave”, or a “potter’s field” where the dead are buried at public expense. There are no gravestones, no ceremonies, etc. In Hart Island, New York, dead children and babies are put into graves, which hold one thousand bodies each.
Catherine Corless’ Family have strongly criticised the Rosita Boland Article which claimed that Corless had retracted her position. As they point out, the Article contains numerous innacuracies
http://kettleontherange.wordpress.com/2014/06/27/an-international-publicity-frenzy-and-my-mother/comment-page-1/
No they didn’t. Catherine Corless’ Family have strongly criticised the Rosita Boland Article which claimed that Corless had retracted her position. As they point out, the Article contains numerous innacuracies
http://kettleontherange.wordpress.com/2014/06/27/an-international-publicity-frenzy-and-my-mother/comment-page-1/
I don’t understand what you mean by feigned outrage. As a member of the Catholic Church, I acknowledge that there are significant causes for concern in relation to many of these homes, including Tuam
http://www.independent.ie/irish-news/news/extraordinary-doctor-stood-up-to-clergy-and-closed-home-30344924.html
http://www.irishexaminer.com/ireland/midwifersquos-memoir-reveals-the-horror-of-bessborough-271158.html
http://www.irishtimes.com/news/politics/surviving-a-mother-and-baby-home-1.1828918?page=1
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