Posted on 06/03/2014 10:14:36 AM PDT by afraidfortherepublic
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.
Many of the women, after paying a penance of indentured servitude for their out-of-wedlock pregnancy, left the Home for work and lives in other parts of Ireland and beyond. Some of their children were not so fortunate.
More than five decades after the Home was closed and destroyed — where a housing development and children’s playground now stands — what happened to nearly 800 of those abandoned children has now emerged: Their bodies were piled into a massive septic tank sitting in the back of the structure and forgotten, with neither gravestones nor coffins.
“The bones are still there,” local historian Catherine Corless, who uncovered the origins of the mass grave in a batch of never-before-released documents, told The Washington Post in a phone interview. “The children who died in the Home, this was them.”
The grim findings, which are being investigated by police, provide a glimpse into a particularly dark time for unmarried pregnant women in Ireland, where societal and religious mores stigmatized them. Without means to support themselves, women by the hundreds wound up at the Home. “When daughters became pregnant, they were ostracized completely,” Corless said. “Families would be afraid of neighbors finding out, because to get pregnant out of marriage was the worst thing on Earth. It was the worst crime a woman could commit, even though a lot of the time it had been because of a rape.”
(Excerpt) Read more at washingtonpost.com ...
"Stop judging by appearances, but judge with righteous judgment." (John 7:24)
Any fair-minded reader would be looking for answers, not simply passing on lurid speculations. Just twenty four hours later, the "800 baby corpses dumped in a septic tank" story has already been debunked:
Tuam mother and baby home: the trouble with the septic tank story (Irish Times link)
These children --- according to the documentary records on file in the county --- died because epidemics of infectious diseases like pneumonia, gastroenteritis and TB were sweeping through West Ireland (rocky, boggy Connemara, the poorest edge of the poorest country in Western Europe) -- during a time when there were neither vaccines nor antibiotics (pre-1950) --- and when whole wards ---in orphanages, paupers' shelters, and old age homes--- could be wiped out in a couple of weeks.
Where they are all buried has not yet been determined, but at this point the writer of the original story (Catherine Corless)is saying they "cannot" be in that famous, world-wide-reported pit, because only "several" small skulls have been found there.
The individual ---Barry Sweeney --- who as a boy actually found the burial pit 40 years ago, in 1975, thinks he remembers "about 20" and the assumption at that time was that they were much older remains from the Great Famine. The actual residence was built in 1840, N.B. 174 years ago.
Interim summary: No excavation of the property has been done. There has no exhumation or forensic analysis of human remains. No 800 skeletons have been found.
And there were records of health board inspections from the 1920's and 1930's which recorded zero --- zero --- evidence of abuse or neglect.
This is an appalling episode in the history of the miserable hardships of the Irish people. It is stomach-churning to think of what was suffered, not only by the tiny children themselves, but by the impoverished women who birthed them and the other impoverished women (very similar in age and circumstances) who struggled to care for them.
That's not as satisfactory --- for some people's purposes -- as a lurid headline, though, is it?
In a time when a world-wide jihadist movement wishes to eliminate Christians and Jews from the face of the earth, it is long past time for the self-righteous of any JudeoChristian denomination to discontinue condemning and antagonizing those with whom we should be making common cause and seeking reconciliation.
"A Cautionary Tale" (LINK- "The New Wild Geese") This was posted today on an Irish history blog. And I won't be surprised if the story unravels even further tomorrow.
Like the Savita Halappanavar story. By the time the truth came out --- that her death was not causally related to either Catholic pro-life medical ethics or the pro-life laws of the Republic of Ireland --- nobody was interested anymore.
You are correct; I had not heard that the story had come undone. Thank you for the update.
Some people just love to have their prejudices activated. Doesn't take much. Must be self-medicating adrenaline junkies.
The staff of University Hospital, as well as members of Ireland's HSE Regional Health Forum, have stated that there is no "Catholic ethos" that is impacting treatment provided.[41]
Dr Sam Coulter-Smith, a consultant in obstetrics and gynaecology and a university master in the Rotunda Hospital, one of the biggest maternity hospitals in Ireland, said: "This case probably does not have a lot to do with abortion laws."[42] He added that it would be preferable to introduce legislation to bring in clarity, saying, "We really do need legislation in this area, otherwise we're going to be at risk of doctors working outside the law, and that's not appropriate."[43]
...
Microbiologist Dr James Clair[45] stated that the "main problem is being missed" in the case, suggesting that the real issue may be that the septicemia was caused by extended-spectrum beta-lactamase positive gram negative bacteria (ESBL), which "are now spreading rapidly within the Irish population" and are resistant to many known antibiotic treatments.[25]
Savita Halappanavar had septicemia, which is neither caused by pregnancy nor treated by termination of pregnancy. If she had been given the appropriate antibiotic 21 hours earlier, it is believed she would have survived. There was nothing in Catholic ethics, hospital policy, nor Irish law that would have prevented her from getting the correct antibiotic in a timely manner.
Bottom line: "The panel found that hospital staff failed to adhere to clinical guidelines which relate to severe sepsis and septic shock."
A conclusion they finally published after viciously kicking the stuffing out of the Catholic Church and Irish pro-life laws in the global press for one whole year.
Like the Duke lacrosse team persecution. Glad someone at least got the facts out there.
“Where is this small plot on the back of the property where these children were buried?”
How would anyone not intimate with that facility have any idea? What is it that matter about these deaths that fascinates you to the point of hounding FReepers for details they cannot possibly have?
Where is your outrage over the THOUSANDS of babies killed in America EVERY DAY by the proddy supported Planned Parenthood?
“Because that was the genesis of the entire sordid story, widely published in any number of accounts.”
So the ONLY “facts” you have are what the media has fed you? Right?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Los_Angeles_fetus_disposal_scandal
http://girlsjustwannahaveguns.com/2014/03/soulless-bodies-aborted-babies-burned-heat-uk-hospitals/
You want more? Where was your “outrage”?
The person making the claim that there is a small burial plot on the back of the property should have an idea, don't you think? It's a simple matter to scan back through the thread to source the claim. I didn't make the claim, I asked for the person making the claim to validate it.
What has fascinated me over the course of the past several days is the rapid fire excuses and bizarre rationalizations from people such as yourself. According to you, Irish people just dump dead bodies naked, that's the way they are. Others have claimed that the septic tank was actually a "common crypt." Yet others have deflected by referencing other atrocities, as if that somehow lessens the gruesomeness of this one. And yet others claim the whole thing has been "debunked" when no one knows where the bodies of these nearly 800 children went. Were they thrown onto a pile and burned? Were they tossed with the rubbish? Or, were they chucked into the septic tank, where skeletal remains including small skulls are reported to have been seen?
I’ve provided you with sources, narssist. That didn’t interest you, because it didn’t discredit someone questioning a matter that you perceive as somehow being a threat to your religious institution. You’ve besmirched the entire population of Ireland, so I’m in good company. Fine people, lovely country. Difficult history, but then I can relate.
“I’ve provided you with sources, narssist. “
Nope, you linked to MSM stories about partial research. Now you start name calling. Truly sad.
“The butter box babies of Nova Scotia”
Dear God have mercy on us.
One of the controversial aspects of the historian's research, is that she is counting stillbirths among the 800, as "children who died at the home." Normally, however, mortality rates are calculated as a percentage of live births. You can see how including still births would slant the figures above the national average. Still births were very common right up until the 60s, and are often seen even now, with all our advances.
Another issue, not much discussed, is that children born to unmarried teenage girls - right now in this day and age - have a higher than normal death rate, higher rates of disability, and higher rates of poverty and disadvantage.
One would have to compare the figures from the Tuam home with those of births among disadvantaged households in Ireland, for a true statistic picture.
As an Australian, I do assure you that in all sorts of places there are anonymous graveyards for the unnumbered dead. In my country, they are found beside the old TB Hospitals, and places like that. There are lots of them. It is not shameful. They died and rest in peace. Often the land is later recycled for some other use.
The Archbishop of Dublin warns that more mass graves are likely to be found:
At periods when there was a high death rate from infectious diseases --- TB, pneumonia, measles, gastroenteritis, influenza --- no antibiotics and no vaccines--- one of the only things you could do to curb the epidemic was to bury the bodies quickly.
And the compassionate caregiving women most definitely spent their very limited funds for food, soap, and cotton underwear, and not caskets and headstones.
The death rates at the Bon Secours Home was staggering to us, but at the low end of overall death rates at the time (Scroll down til you get to the newspaper clipping from 1935).
"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 (8.5%).
....
"In foundling homes in the US in the early 20th century, mortality was sometimes reported as greater than In foundling homes in the US in the early 20th century, mortality was sometimes reported as greater than 90% among infants cared for in such institutions."
I'll try to find that map tomorrow.
The Archbishop of Dublin says “more mass graves.”
That’s admitting that there is a mass grave at Tuam.
The Irish themselves, despite the shameful slurs written by wrongheaded Catholics on this thread, are far more forthright and honest than the partisans on FR. The wild rationalizations weird excuses are not just wrongheaded, they’re wrong.
You seem reasonable and levelheaded by comparison. Wouldn’t you agree, Mrs. Don-O?
Do you have a source for that statement? I looked over the interviews, and cannot find that quote.
Ultimately, of course, this controversy will be decided when an excavation either does, or does not, unearth a septic tank with the bodies of 800 infants dumped in it. I am very skeptical of that claim - I was when I first heard it. But time will tell.
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