IRELAND
The Sunday Times (UK)
Justine McCarthy Published: 8 June 2014
THE historian who discovered that 796 children may be buried in a mass grave in the west of Ireland believes three mothers are also interred there with their babies.
Catherine Corless has established that nine women were buried in the grave in the grounds of the former St Mary’s mother-and-baby home in Tuam, Co Galway. She has identified three of them by matching the home addresses on their death certificates with the addresses of those of the children. She has so far been unable to identify the other six women.
Corless is adamant that the Tuam crypt, which she says was originally a septic tank, contains scores of bodies.
Barry Sweeney, who accidentally found the grave in 1975 when he was playing there with a friend, Francis Hopkins, said he had been left with the impression that there were “about 20 bodies” of boys aged 10 to 12.
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