IRELAND
Her
BY GILLIAN FITZPATRICK
Joseph Ward was aged just seven months when he died in 1928. Mary Teresa Drury was a year old when she died in 1931.
In 1937, Mary Kate Cahill was two weeks old when she died. In 1943, a baby died a day after being born – and is known now simply as Baby McNamara.
Vincent Keogh was five months (1947); Patrick Hardiman was six months (1952); Imelda Halloran was two years old (1954); Gerard Connaughton was 11 months (1956), and Dolores Conneely was seven months (1959).
These names – as detailed today by TheJournal.ie – make up a mere handful of the 796 babies who died at the Bon Secours Tuam Mothers And Babies home from the 1920s to the 1960s.
Close-to 800 tiny, beautiful children who lived short lives, died and were buried without dignity or respect.
They were for decades silent, nameless victims – muted by a society that bowed down to Catholic autonomy, and never insisted on State accountability.
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