IRELAND
Washington Post
By Terrence McCoy July 23
More than 60 years ago, a fair-skinned Irish politician named Sally Mulready was born into a home for unwed mothers called St. Patrick’s. It sat on a road named Navan in Dublin, and Mulready was one of four siblings born there. Her brother John never made it out of St. Pat’s. Like hundreds of other babies born into an Irish homes for “fallen women,” John died in 1947. He was two months old.
“Inanition,” his death record read, according to RTE News. “Failure to thrive.”
But RTE News said the record carried a mystery. John for some reason wasn’t buried until 1950 — three years after his death. The oddity was first discarded as a clerical error.
But it wasn’t. John’s records had the designation “AS,” or “anatomical study.” His infant remains had in fact been given to researchers at Trinity College Dublin, who used them for medical research — though it’s unclear whether his mother had given consent for this.
Mulready eventually tracked down his burial plot, she explained to the Irish Times, but found it marked by a “stick with a number on it. … I cannot imagine that happening to children or young babies who died in … well-to-do-families, families with influence.”
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