All Catherine Corless wanted was a decent burial for 796 babies

We need to talk about shame — and we need to unstitch it from the very fabric that binds together Irish life, writes Rita Ann Higgins

WHEN Catherine Corless started her research in 2012 she was interested in finding out about the mother and baby home in Tuam. She knew that the home was run by the Bon Secours sisters previously and she also knew that the home was levelled in 1971.

As a historian she deals in facts. She resists all opportunities to exaggerate even the slightest detail. So if she tells you something, you will know that it carries no embellishments of any kind. She is a truth seeker, first, last and foremost.

She is not a saint, because saints don’t get migraine. She does not take kindly to anyone glorifying her. Her focus now is on helping the families of the Tuam mother and baby home. She does this quietly and without fuss. She wanted nothing in return. Her work is entirely unconditional.

In 1975 when two 12-yearold lads were out playing they came across a concrete structure with the cover slab broken. It was an old septic tank that had dried up and been defunct since 1935. They looked through the broken slab and saw that it contained a lot of small skulls and bones piled on top of each other. They were very frightened and ran off. Later the priest was called.

In the past we looked to the priest for answers. At this time back in 1975 the priest still had a lot of power in the towns and villages of Ireland. So he came with his goblet of holy water and he blessed the spot. The county council was sent for and the covering up began. This time the slab would not crack.

Fast-forward 40 years to when Catherine Corless unravelled one of the greatest injustices in Irish society. She talked to many local people and older people who would have had first-hand knowledge about the mother and baby home.

Not all the locals in Tuam were happy about the questions. Then the no answers started coming from the nuns. No, they did not have that file, they had given it away. All the files were gone. They were given by the nuns to the county council. The county council had given the files to the health board. She knew from data that many of the mothers that went to the Tuam home came from Galway and Mayo.

She wanted to know the answer to one simple question. If, as it was rumoured, a lot of babies had died in the mother and baby home, where were they buried?

Locals mentioned a small plot in the corner. A plot which the locals tended to and they kept in pristine condition for many years.

She did discover that a health inspector visited the home and in his report he mentions the various diseases. He mentioned things like malnutrition and pot-bellied children and wizened limbs. Many of these conditions were put down as causes of death in the children.

Catherine Corless discovered by working with records linked to the St Mary’s mother-and-baby home that many infants died in the home run by Bon Secours between 1925 and 1961. Now it was no longer hearsay she would go a step further. She set about getting each of the children a death certificate.

To enable her to establish the truth she paid €4 for each death cert, total cost to her — €3,184. Her research shows that 796 children, mostly infants, died there. She discovered that there were no burial records for the children and that many of them were buried in an unofficial graveyard at the rear of the former home.

When she contacted the Church about the revelations that hundreds of children were buried but unnamed the Church did not want to know. Their response was ‘you are seeing the past through the prism of the present’. She did not give up, all she wanted to do was have the names of the children mentioned on a plaque. She wanted them to be remembered.

The mothers in the home breast-fed the children for a year when they could. If the mother did not have the £100 to pay to take the baby out, the baby was kept and the mother was shunted out quietly and quickly. In many cases never to see her infant again. The children who survived went to school locally in the Mercy and the Presentation.

Will we be better people because of this revelation? I don’t know the answer to that. Yes, we are horrified — but after a certain time, don’t we all go back to doing our normal stuff ? We need to talk about shame and we need to dismantle it.

The church too needs a bit of dismantling. Was there ever a time when it didn’t despise women? It’s a pity our mothers and grandmothers had such blind devotion to it. They got nothing for it, only fear. To feel shame is one thing, to be shamed is another. It’s archaic and carries with it a kind of crucifixion. The crucifixion of women. The State cosying up to the Church in its attempts to suppress women.