IRELAND
Irish Independent
Caroline Crawford
Published 10/06/2014
The scandal over events at St Mary’s Mother and Baby home has been 90 years in the making. These are the main developments:
* St Mary’s Mother and Baby Home was operated by the Bon Secours Sisters in Tuam, Co Galway, from 1925 to 1961.
* Inspectors’ reports from 1947 raise concerns about the high numbers of deaths at the home. They also mention emaciated children.
* In 1975 two Tuam children, Frannie Hopkins and Barry Sweeney, discover skeletons, believed to be those of children, in a covered-over crypt while playing in the field near where the home stood. Prayers are said at the site by a local priest and the bones are covered over again.
* Locals in Tuam tend to the grave over the decades and it is recorded on maps as a children’s burial ground.
* In recent years a local group set up a committee to erect a memorial at the site. As part of this work, historian Catherine Corless requests the death certificates for all children who died in the home over its 36 years. She was left stunned to receive death certificates for 796 children ranging in age from two days to nine years. They died from a range of ailments.
Note: This is an Abuse Tracker excerpt. Click the title to view the full text of the original article. If the original article is no longer available, see our News Archive.