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"You are up to you neck in pure evil."

It's not a case of me being "evil".

It's a case of your *dementia*.

A case of you having "Nuns On The Brain". What is this fetish you have about nuns anyway?

What don't you understand about TEN CHILDREN OVER A PERIOD OF 37 YEARS BEING STARVED TO DEATHS BY THEIR NEGLECTFUL TEEN MOTHERS, PERHAPS EVEN BEING STARVED IN THE WOMB, ENTERING THE HOME WHEN IT'S TOO LATE TO SAVE THEM BECAUSE THEIR ORGANS ARE ALREADY FATALLY DAMAGED???

Again, I can't prove that's the scenario, but it's a far likelier scenario than yours and the Blood Libeling journalists' proposed scenario of: "Healthy happy bouncing well-fed babies enter an orphanage, only to be cruelly starved by Satanic Nuns!!" It's only sheer hatred & malice on your part that can drive you to come up with this as the likeliest scenario. You're starting to worry me.

AGAIN, LET ME REPEAT: THERE IS NOT ONE SINGLE DOCUMENTED CASE IN ALL THE HEALTH AUTHORITY'S RECORDS SHOWING THAT A MALNUTRITION-RELATED DEATH WAS CAUSED BY THE NUNS.

Blaming the 10 malnutrition deaths on the nuns is just as insane as blaming all annual Chicago gunshot deaths on the ambulances and ER's, because: Hey! They were still breathing when you got your hands on them, so it's all your fault!

As far as the stats go, yes, ALL Irish orphanages and even normal two-parent homes in Ireland over most of those decades had horrendously high death rates for children that would be unimaginable today. Antibiotics for fighting bacterial infections, and immunizations for commonly fatal childhood diseases were only starting to spread around the world towards the last decade or two of this orphanage's existence. And you better believe it was the poorest nations which got them LAST. And you better believe Ireland was the poorest of the poor in Europe.

Aren't you aware of anything about their history? The 1800's Potato Famine zeroed out their economy, and it was only starting to recover by the early 20th century when they got hit by the double whammy of warfare: First their Revolution to separate from the UK, and then their internal Irish Civil War. And if that wasn't enough societal damage, the Civil War was almost immediately followed by the worldwide Great Depression.

There are stories of starvation all over the US in the 1930s, yet we started into the Depression as a far wealthier nation than did Ireland, so the level they eventually sank down to must have been incredibly far below ours. In the blackest of economic times, how do young, unskilled, homeless teen girls kicked out of their own homes when their parents can no longer feed them, sent into a society without govt welfare, support themselves? Any guesses? Do you think they had 9 full months of cushy pre-natal care and healthy diets with loads of the proteins needed to keep the babies growing while in the womb, to generate plenty of breast milk after birth, and enough to feed both them and the babies after weaning?

I think the proportion of death certificates listing "Malnutrition" is so *LOW* (only 12 out of 796) because most of the babies were born at the orphanage or came in soon after birth, so that the good care of the nuns kept them from starving. Most likely the very few malnutrition deaths were due to a small number of babies who came in with their organs already starting to shut down due to being starved *before* they arrived.

As to the high numbers of ALL deaths, the chain of links I followed from these stories told of how most deaths came in waves, in big spikes, happening when a contagious disease started and spread rapidly to all the kids there, because they were all living in one place (instead of separately in nuclear family homes where parents could quickly quarantine them away from classmates or neighborhood playmates).

Also, the figures you quote are cherry-picked, by selecting only the worst year or range of years. Eg, 1947 was chosen by one Yellow Journalist likely due to it being a year with the highest ratio in deaths between that orphanage and the average of all other Irish orphanages that year (other than Dublin, who refused to report their figures, which makes you wonder why).

One way you can tell it was cherry-picked, is that the number of Congenital Syphilis cases for 1947 was *2*, yet there were 12 total in 37 years, averaging 1 every 3 years. 1947 was a very bad year for Tuam, and so the axes-to-grind writers have targeted it.

Another major point most of these articles ignore is that, A) Yes, this one orphanage over a certain span of years, DID have a higher death rate than the others, though not nearly as high as your cherry-picked figures, and B) The doctors / health authorities who did annual re-certification inspections were very much aware of these stats, and took pains to find out what the reason was, and C) They never did find out what the reason(s) were, but they investigated enough to figure out that the nuns were not the reason.

Here's verbatim the report of the health inspector from the infamous year of 1947: "The death rate amongst infants is high... The death rate had appeared to be on the decrease but has now begun to rise again. It is time to enquire into the possible cause before the death rate mounts higher." The report went on to say, "the care given to infants in the Home is good, the Sisters are careful and attentive; diets are excellent. It is not here that we must look for cause of the death rate"

Did you notice that? He said the nuns were NOT to blame for the higher rate of deaths. This guy was an inspector who did this for a living. This inspector was an actual contemporary. He was *THERE*. So it's his first hand account from an in-person live close-up inspection on the one hand, versus Journalists With Agendas 70 years later, well armed with biases & prejudices & hatreds. Who are we to believe? My my.

Interestingly, the 1947 inspector did go on to suggest a few possible causes for their higher rates (after clearing the nuns of responsibility). He mentioned the geriatric doctor who the local authorities assigned to this orphanage, implicitly questioning his competence, and suggested a "younger doctor" - which seems to be a euphemism for "competent doctor". He also thought perhaps diseases were being brought in from the outside at a higher than normal rate. And he noted the serious overcrowding there, which meant that any time the next disease swept through, the crowding made the fatality rate much higher. They were way over their supposed max capacity of 243, hosting 332 children & mothers.

Once again, is it the nun's fault they were overcrowded? Or that the authorities assigned them a doctor in his 80s?

Another thing I notice is that all the worst-case stats are for the under-1-year old demographic. The older kids never get mentioned ANYwhere. Why is that? Could it be because once children can talk and then become sick, they're able to tell of a new worrisome symptom to their harried, overworked protectors, each of whom is responsible for watching over DOZENS of them? So the nun can call the doctor. Whereas the non-talkers can only cry, and a non-parent who has to divide her attention dozens of ways will have no idea WHAT a crying episode is about, unlike a 24x7 attentive parent who learns to figure out what is wrong much more quickly.

This set of sensationalist stories just stinks on so many levels. And it's not from the sewage at Tuam. It's coming from the mouths of the irresponsible journalists, and being spread by such as yourself, who seem to harbor an abiding, insatiable hatred of anything Catholic.

Well, I hope all these heated exchanges don't trigger your horror-show Evil Nun Nightmares to recur.