Skeletons of 800 babies, infants believed to be buried at Bon Secours Sisters site

IRELAND
news.com.au (Australia)

A WOMAN with a dark secret has revealed why the skeletons of about 800 infants and children are believed to be in a disused septic tank.

The site in Tuam 32km north of Galway City, Ireland, is located at what was The Home, a home for unmarried mothers, run by the Bon Secours Sisters — a Roman Catholic religious order of nuns that today operates in US, Ireland, Peru, France, and Great Britain — from the 1920s until the 1960s, Irish Mail on Sunday reported.

Catherine Corless, a local historian and genealogist, was researching The Home where she discovered death records for 796 children, ranging from infants to children up to the age of nine who had no recorded burial.

She recalled as a child herself being segregated from the young children from The Home.

“They were always segregated to the side of regular classrooms,” Corless told IrishCentral. “By doing this the nuns telegraphed the message that they were different and that we should keep away from them.

“They didn’t suggest we be nice to them. In fact if you acted up in class some nuns would threaten to seat you next to the Home Babies. That was the message we got in our young years.”

Corless remembered watching an older friend wrap a tiny stone inside a bright candy wrapper and present it as a gift to one of them.

“When the child opened it she saw she’d been fooled,” Corless said. “Of course I copied her later and I tried to play the joke on another little Home girl. I thought it was funny at the time.”

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