THE NEGLECTED CHILDREN

THE St Mary’s Mother and Baby Home was a maternity home in Tuam, Co. Galway, run by the Bon Secours Sisters for unmarried mothers and their children.Young single women who became pregnant were sent there to give birth while some poorer women were forced to work to pay for the services provided.

Local health board inpection reports show hundreds of children lived there – many of whom suffered deformities, malnutrition and neglect – from 1925 to 1961. It is suspected as many as 796 children were buried in a concrete tank beside the home between 1925 and 1961. Causes of death included malnutrition, measles, convulsions, tuberculosis, gastroenteritis and pneumonia. The babies were usually buried in a plain shroud without a coffin in a plot that had housed a water tank attached to the workhouse that preceded the mother and baby home.

abused: Young children in Tuam were neglected and ostracised and many died of malnutrition