Bodies of 800 babies, long-dead, found in septic tank at former Irish home for unwed mothers

The stench of an Irish rat

5. June, 2014Blog Post31 comments

A gruesome story out of Tuam, Ireland, about the alleged mistreatment of children at a long-since closed Catholic institution for unwed mothers, is making international headlines.

The Washington Post, for example, published the following:

Bodies of 800 babies, long-dead, found in septic tank at former Irish home for unwed mothers

According to the report:

In a town in western Ireland, where castle ruins pepper green landscapes, there’s a six-foot stone wall that once surrounded a place called the Home. Between 1925 and 1961, thousands of “fallen women” and their “illegitimate” children passed through the Home, run by the Bon Secours nuns in Tuam.

The story, as being told thus far, sounds just terrible. That having been said, I detect the stench of a rat; an Irish rat with an anti-Catholic axe to grind.

The driving force behind the story is Irish historian Catherine Corless, who is reported to have uncovered “a batch of never-before-released documents.”

And where exactly were these heretofore unknown documents hidden?

In plain sight at the Registry Office in County Galway.

According to Corless, as reported on the Irish Central website, she simply requested them. In other words, the newly unearthed “smoking gun” in this story is, and always has been, a matter of public record available to anyone willing to pay a photocopying fee.

Now, I don’t claim to know exactly what transpired at the Home, but let’s be clear; neither does Catherine Corless or anyone else.

Even so, anyone willing to follow a few links and connect a handful of dots can see that the story consists largely of unsubstantiated claims and preconceived notions magnified by the deliberate sensationalism of a complicit media.

The grave itself, in spite of the tenor of media reports, is not some recent “shocking discovery;” in fact, it’s not even news. According to a Reuters News Service video on the Washington Post site (linked above), the grave was discovered some 39 years ago. Even the figure so widely reported of “800 babies” is nothing more than a guess.

And while allegations of “malnutrition” and “mistreatment” are being tossed about with reckless abandon, no supporting documentation has been provided that even hints at abuse at the hands of the nuns.

According to Irish Central, “The certificates Corless received record each child’s age, name, date – and in some cases – cause of death.”

Get that? The cause of death is recorded in just “some cases.”

Even so, for Corless and those media types who love themselves a good old fashioned Catholic cover-up, especially if it is alleged to have taken place in the triumphalistic days predating the Council, it’s obvious enough who the guilty party is.

“I do blame the Catholic Church,” says Corless. “I blame the families as well but people were afraid of the parish priest. I think they were brainwashed,” she told Irish Central.

“To get pregnant out of marriage was the worst thing on Earth,” she said. “It was the worst crime a woman could commit, even though a lot of the time it had been because of a rape.”

How she knows that “a lot” of these unwed pregnancies were the result of rape is anyone’s guess, but don’t expect anyone in the secular press to ask the question.

So, what do we really know?

Using the biased sources already mentioned:

A local health board inspection report from April 1944 recorded 271 children and 61 single mothers in residence, a total of 333 in a building that had a capacity for 243.

Sounds to me like the need was great and resources were being stretched to their very limits by the nuns in order to meet it.

According to documents Corless provided the Irish Mail on Sunday, malnutrition and neglect killed many of the children, while others died of measles, convulsions, TB, gastroenteritis and pneumonia. Infant mortality at the Home was staggeringly high.

The Irish Mail story indicates that some of the children had deformities and mental illnesses as well. It’s not difficult to imagine, therefore, that some of these children were among the unwanted, abandoned and abused of society.

In any case, the causes of death listed in the story are taken from the files of a “local health board,” and yet there is no indication whatsoever that the orphanage was cited for any kind of violations. That should tell any reasonable reader that the children likely entered the facility in a state of “neglect and malnourishment.” That some of them were not saved in a cramped institution wherein many of the children suffered with communicable diseases is no surprise.

In fact, these kinds of conditions would account for an unusually high death rate over all, especially bearing in mind the state of medical science during the time frame in discussion.

According to Irish public health records, for every 1,000 deaths of infants under one year of age in the general population in 1944, nearly 200 of them were the result of “diarrhea and enteritis,” the latter being a bacterial infection that typically clears up on its own.

A closer look at these records indicates that a large percentage of deaths in children under five years of age occurred as a result of conditions that are easily treated today.

Special kinds of neglect and abuse were reserved for the Home Babies, as locals call them. Many in surrounding communities remember them. They remember how they were segregated to the fringes of classrooms, and how the local nuns accentuated the differences between them and the others.

Given the close quarters in the orphanage and the prevalence of infectious disease, could it be that the nuns were “segregating” the “Home Babies” in order to protect the health of the other children? No, that would be far too kind an assumption to make for those intent on attacking the Church.

The only real question of legitimate intrigue that remains concerns the use of a mass burial site.

“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],” Corless said. “Couldn’t they have afforded baby coffins?”

Well, let’s think about this for just a moment without the anti-Catholic bias.

Clearly, resources were not very plentiful at the Home. It’s a distinct possibility, therefore, that they couldn’t afford both baby coffins and the provisions necessary to care for the living, to say nothing of adequate ground space for individual graves. In any case, I’d be willing to wager that those poor children didn’t die without Baptism.

Furthermore, prior to the 1960′s, it was commonly believed that the corpses of those who died from infectious disease were a source of epidemic. Even today, there is an effort underway on the part of humanitarian organizations to educate disaster relief workers who still believe as much. It’s entirely possible, therefore, that the mass grave was used as an attempt to keep infection levels in check.

All in all, if this blockbuster wannabe scandal from the Emerald Isle tells us anything it’s that fuel designed to ignite the fires of hatred for the Catholic Church remains a hot international commodity.

It would perhaps be useful to you and others to be able to step out of defense mode long enough to understand how the constant, rapid-fire excuses and rationalizations sound. It feeds the fire of speculation because the denial is just so obvious, with such historic precedent in other matters. Your church can err and has erred. They’re human.

At times, circling the wagons only makes matters worse. I’m perfectly capable of accepting a factual explanation of this. Thus far, none has been forthcoming. What we do have is death records for almost 800 children with no record of burial from that home. And, we have a septic tank on the former grounds of that home containing skeletons.

Answer the question as to just where these almost 800 children were buried and lay it to rest.

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/3164821/posts

The best I can tell, scripture points to a rapture some time in the last 3 1/2 years. If its earlier I will gladly celebrate, even if I’m already dead.

Why are there no people coming forward who were at this home as children? Or, unwed mothers who were there? I’m sure there are former employees still alive as well. It closed a little over fifty years ago. Quite a number of people, especially women, live into their eighties and beyond.

Answer the question as to just where these almost 800 children were buried and lay it to rest.

Done. It never happened, which is typical when anti-Catholic bigots make these kind of claims::

Tuam mother and baby home: the trouble with the septic tank story

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

Excerpt:
...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.”

I see no answer to that question in your reply, Brian.

Open your eyes, drop the anti-Catholic animus, and read the linked article.

I’ve read the linked article. There is no explanation for where the nearly 800 children for whom there is a record of death were buried.

“There is no record of burial for these almost 800 unfortunate children to be found.”

How do you know that?

“The death rate at that Catholic home for “fallen women” and their illegitimate children was four to five times higher than Ireland as a whole in that era.”

That is your claim. Back it up. The data I have seen suggests you are flat out wrong.

Your reading comprehension is lacking. There was a small plot in the back of the property where they were buried. And there is no proof that where the 20 or so bodies were found was ever a septic tank. It was likely a common crypt for stillborns.

But don’t let that stop you from siding with the liberals/progressives in Ireland trying to use this false narrative to push to legalize more “humane” treatment of babies, i.e., legalized abortion. Amazing how much anti-Catholic liberals and progressives make common cause with anti-Catholic fundamentalists. A lot like progressives make common cause with radical Islam.

What FACTS do you have to bolster the evil implications of your comments? FACTS, not suppositions?

Average mortality rate for infants and children in Ireland during that era was 15%, nurses. Average mortality rate for infants and children at Tuam were up to five times that.

http://www.rte.ie/news/2014/0604/621550-tuam-grave/

Further detail can be found here:

http://www.irishexaminer.com/ireland/baby-homes-death-rate-up-to-50-271048.html

and here:

http://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=1&cad=rja&uact=8&ved=0CCIQFjAA&u

Facts? There are 800 recorded deaths of infants and children at that home, no record of burial and a septic tank with skeletons in it on the former grounds of that home.

What FACTS do you have in refutation? Where were these children buried?

Where is this burial plot then, Brian? Show me. I’m sure there is record of it, yes? Such a simple means of refuting and ending the whole controversy, you’d think it would be common knowledge by now.

And, the septic tank is now no longer a septic tank but a “common crypt” for stillborns? It was known as a septic tank, yesterday it was being dismissed by your fellows because nuns couldn’t possibly have lifted the concrete lid and the only other means of access were pipes from the home.

But, I thought there weren’t any dead children in this septic tank, crypt or whatever you’ve decided to call it now, because they were buried in that small plot?

Slow down, you’re not keeping the story straight.

Because that was the genesis of the entire sordid story, widely published in any number of accounts.

You and me both heh.

This entire story is an anti-Catholic smear campaign based on false assumptions and blatant distortions and lies. The bodies are far more likely to have been from the potato famine of the previous century, a famine reinforced and deepened by anti-Catholic England, whose effects are now being used by anti-Catholics to accuse the Church of evil. Typical that anti-Catholic bigots here would do likewise with it.

From the Wiki entry:

Burial ground[edit]
The common burial ground, described in many media reports as a "mass grave", was not marked or registered with the authorities, and no records were kept of burials there.^[16] Local residents had been aware of its existence since 1975, when two boys smashed a concrete slab and discovered bones underneath.^[6]^[17] Locals thought that the grave contained the remains of victims of the Great Famine or unbaptised babies.^[9] It was resealed shortly afterwards, following prayers at the site by a priest. The number of bodies was then unknown, but was assumed to be small.^[9]^[17] After this first discovery, a local couple looked after the burial site for 35 years.
On 7 June 2014, The Irish Times quoted Catherine Corless as saying that the story "has been widely misrepresented" in the the few days since it broke nationally and internationally. Corless was described as thinking that it seems impossible "that more than 200 bodies could have been put in a working sewage tank". The newspaper report echoed the RTÉ broadcast by casting serious doubt on whether the childrens' remains were actually interred within a septic tank, and also quoted a man who, as a boy, discovered skeletons there in 1975, who said that he saw only about 20 skeletons.^[2] Another Irish Times report on the same day indicated that Garda Síochána sources had pointed out that details of the case, as earlier reported, such as that almost 800 children were buried at the site, and that they were in a septic tank, had not yet been "properly tested".^[22]

Your reading comprehension is lacking. There was a small plot in the back of the property where they were buried.

I'm still awaiting assistance from you with my poor reading comprehension. Where is this small plot on the back of the property where these children were buried? And, please decide, is it a septic tank, a "common crypt" or both?