‘It’s time to do something’ – The forgotten mass grave of 800 babies in Galway

IRELAND
The Journal

EFFORTS ARE UNDERWAY to raise enough funds to build a memorial at an unmarked grave of as many as 800 babies in Tuam.

The site is located at what was a home for unmarried mothers, run by the Bon Secours order, from the 1920s until the 1960s.

Catherine Corless, a local historian and genealogist, was researching the home when she discovered death records for 796 children, ranging from infants to children up to the age of nine.

There was a high infant mortality rate over the forty year period, with many of the children believed to have died from malnutrition and infectious diseases.

She could also find no record of their burial in other graveyards in the county, or in areas where the mothers had been from.

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