Mass grave of tiny children found in sewers of Catholic home for mothers
A MASS grave containing the remains of babies and young children has been uncovered beneath a former Catholic home for unmarried mothers in Ireland.
Excavations of the sewers at the Bon Secours Mother and Baby Home in Tuam, County Galway, unearthed ‘significant quantities of human remains’, government-appointed investigators yesterday confirmed.
The ages of the dead ranged from 35 foetal weeks to three years old and were mostly buried in the 1950s, officials said.
The grim discovery is the result of an inquiry launched in 2014 after local historian Catherine Corless said there was evidence of an unmarked graveyard.
Death certificates showed almost 800 children died at Tuam between 1925 and its closure in 1961, but there was only one burial confirmed.
The remains were discovered in at least 17 of the 20 underground chambers.
Unmarried pregnant women were sent to give birth at the home, which was run by an order of nuns. Babies were crowded into communal nurseries where infection and disease was rife.
Like many church-run homes at the time, conditions were primitive with women denied basic medical care and refused painkillers for even the most difficult birth because the agony was ‘God’s punishment for your sin’.
Government records show that in the 1930s, 40s and 50s, the mortality rate for ‘illegitimate’ children was often more than five times that of those born to married parents.
On average, more than one in four children born out of wedlock died.
Reports suggested many in Tuam suffered malnutrition and neglect, while others died of measles, convulsions, TB, gastroenteritis and pneumonia.
Local boys playing on the old site in the 1970s had reported seeing a pile of bones in an underground chamber.
Ireland’s minister for children and youth Affairs, Katherine Zappone, described yesterday’s findings as ‘sad and disturbing’. The Mother and Baby Homes Commission is investigating 17 other church-run institutions.
Martin Sixsmith, who wrote the book Philomena which was later turned into a film starring Dame Judi Dench and Steve Coogan, previously carried out research on women who had spent time in Tuam.