Readers might remember the sensational claim that went around the world back in 2014 that almost 800 babies had been found in a septic tank on the grounds of an old mother and baby home in Tuam, County Galway, in the West of Ireland.
The claim was made when a local historian, Catherine Corless, had gone through the death certificates of 796 babies and young children who had died at the home over the years of its existence from 1925 until 1961.
Underneath the remaining grounds of what was the home are chambers that are located in something that was once part of the home’s sewage system. It was instantly concluded by many – although not by Corless, it should be noted – that the bodies had all been dumped in a septic tank.
The home had been run on behalf of Galway County Council by the Bon Secours Sisters and it is back in the news because a dig is just beginning at the site, funded by the State, to try and find the bodies, take DNA samples from them, and then attempt to match them up with living family members of the deceased who are willing to provide DNA samples (14 in total have done so to date). It is a complex operation and will take about two years to complete.
But when news about the death certificates first emerged 11 years ago, the fact that so many people were willing to believe the very worst about the nuns was interesting and revealing in itself.
People were perfectly willing to accept that the babies had been starved or neglected to death, or had actually killed by the wicked nuns before being dumped in the septic tank (which was still in use, for such purposes, according to the wilder rumours).
When nuns are now depicted on screen in movies such as the recent <em>Small Things Like These</em> or <em>The Magdalene Sisters</em> or <em>Philomena</em>, they are almost invariably depicted as characters from a gothic horror movie, sometimes literally emerging from the shadows. I struggle to think of a more demonised group of women.
Following the hysteria that surrounded the original claims in 2014, the Irish Government established an official Commission of Investigation which four years ago published an enormous report about the country’s mother and baby homes, and also on the county homes which were the direct successors of the work houses of Dickensian lore.
The death toll in the mother and baby homes, as well as in the county homes, was extremely high. They mainly operated at a time of extreme poverty, widespread hunger and poor health.
Infant and child mortality was very high back then and prior to the widespread use of vaccinations and antibiotics in the 1950s. But it was even higher in the homes because they were over-crowded and disease spread fast. Children would die in clusters, as happened in nursing homes during the Covid-19 pandemic.
But the fact is that they all died of natural causes. It can be correctly argued that the homes were under-resourced and overcrowded, and shouldn’t have existed in the first place, but the nuns did not deliberately neglect the babies, never mind outright kill them or dump them in an active septic tank.
The women who entered the mother and baby homes to have their children were almost always unmarried, and very poor, although about 10 per cent of women who went into Tuam Children’s Home, to give the place its proper name, were married and had been driven into it by poverty. They had literally nowhere else to have their children and to raise them.
These mother and baby homes were not unique to Ireland, by the way. Britain, among other countries, had many of them right through to the 1970s and the vast majority were not run by the Catholic Church.
The reason mother and baby homes do not exist today is because unmarried mothers can afford to raise their children themselves, or because the State gives them support or because the would-be mothers terminate their pregnancies.
The aforementioned report of the Commission of Investigation throws a huge amount of light on the issue, although it cannot answer all questions because too much time has passed.
One thing it tells us, for example, is that the nuns were not in charge of the burials. This is a crucial piece of information that almost no-one knows. In the opinion of the Commission, that responsibility lay with Galway County Council which actually owned the home and should also have been recording the burials, which it neglected to do. Either that or the burial records have been lost, leaving only the death certificates.
The Commission says there is an undetermined number of remains in the underground chambers, but it is likely most will be found under the memorial garden with its statue of the Virgin Mary, a sight that will be familiar to people who have followed this story. Locals have always assumed the garden is where many of the bodies are to be found. It was no secret.
There is a separate chapter in the report of the Commission on the various homes, including on Tuam. In the chapter on Tuam, we find a number of eyewitness accounts by people who worked or lived in the home. Unavoidably, these are few and far between because the home closed 64 years ago.
Some of the accounts depict miserable conditions that were both physically and emotionally chilly. Several eyewitnesses mention Sr Hortense, who ran the home for most of its existence – but inconveniently for the current narrative, they praise her.
One eyewitness says: “Sister Hortense loved children and helped out with them”.
Another said: “She had a heart of gold”. This same witness remarked that the Sisters who ran the home were “the kindest and dearest nuns I had the privilege of knowing”.
This runs completely counter to the gothic horror depiction of nuns that is so commonplace today: Where are the monstrous women who were supposed to have run the Tuam home? How can anyone have positive memories of the place?
All I can say is, read media accounts of the home with the greatest caution. They rarely quote the Commission of Investigation. In fact, when the Commission published its carefully researched report, the media were mostly dismissive because it was far more sophisticated and nuanced than the popular public impression.
If you are really interested in the issue, then please <a href="https://www.gov.ie/en/department-of-children-disability-and-equality/publications/final-report-of-the-commission-of-investigation-into-mother-and-baby-homes/"><mark style="background-color:rgba(0, 0, 0, 0)" class="has-inline-color has-vivid-cyan-blue-color">read the report</mark> </a>for yourself. Start with the chapter on Tuam.
<em>Photo: The shrine dedicated to the children who died in the Bon Secours Mother and Baby home in Tuam, Ireland. (Photo by Charles McQuillan/Getty Images.)</em>
