IRELAND
Irish Mirror
BYAMY COLES
7 MAR 2017
A mother and baby home survivor said he was close to being “one of those children left in a mass grave” after he suffered multiple illnesses as a baby.
Derek Leinster was born in the Protestant Bethany Home, in Rathgar, Dublin, in 1941.
At four-and-a-half-months old he was “torn” from his mother’s arms and left to suffer through horrific diseases like pneumonia and diphtheria.
Fortunately he survived, but was dangerously close to becoming one of the 220 babies and toddlers who died at the home between 1922 and 1949.
Derek said many of them were buried in paupers’ graves.
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