If you look at Catherine Corless’ statements, her claims are based entirely on speculation that there “MIGHT” be human remains in a septic tank where the orphanage used to be, but the septic tank hasn’t even been excavated to see if there’s anything down there. She has also admitted that it isn’t large enough to hold the “800 skeletons’ which she has speculated might be in there.
The only reason she thinks there are any skeletons in there at all is because:
These remains (if they existed at all) were apparently never exhumed nor examined to determine whether they are human or animal, or what historical time period they date from (a century ago? Two centuries? A thousand years…? You’d need to carbon date them).
They haven’t been able to find these bones that were supposedly there, somewhere. Hence there is absolutely no credible basis for the claim of a “mass grave” which the media keeps on repeating.
And it gets even smellier. If you follow the stated sources in these media articles, you can trace the information back to a tabloid called the “Irish Mail”, which looks and reads like the “National Enquirer” and is seemingly no more credible. Worse, many of these news articles have been running the grossly misleading headline “800 babies found in a mass grave” while usually admitting (near the end of the same articles) that the septic tank hasn’t been excavated yet.
A few articles admit that many of the locals thought the bones dated from the time of the great famines in Ireland, in which case they would have nothing to do with the orphanage; some articles also admit that the recorded deaths at the orphanage were in the same proportion as overall childhood deaths in the general population at that time, due to diseases that couldn’t be cured yet.
Even Corless hasn’t accused the nuns of deliberately starving children to death, despite all the lurid, sensational headlines. In short, the media’s own articles often contradict their own headlines and scandal mongering; and the actual quotes from Corless and other people involved indicate that there is virtually nothing behind these claims at all. This is the definition of a smear campaign, helped along by people who have little interest in evidence as long as there are Long-dead charitable Christian women who need a good bashing.
In direct contravention of allegations of ‘dying rooms’ and deliberate starvation, a Tuam Herald report in 1949 on the Inspection of the home, says that “they found everything in very good order and congratulated the sisters on the excellent conditions in their Institution”. An earlier Board of Health report in 1935, says that “Tuam is one of the best managed institutions in the country”. In 1944, the Matron requested that all occupants were immunised against Diphtheria.It was also recommended that vaccines for whooping cough were supplied... In 1950 a programme of improvements to the building was proposed to the Committee however these were never carried out due to costs. The home finally closed due to dilapidation in 1961 after the £90,000 proposed extension was instead used to carry out improvements on the nursing home run by the sisters."