TUAM (IRELAND)
The Times/The Sunday Times [London, England]
July 19, 2025
By Orla Ní Riain
Excavation begins at the Bon Secours institution where Catherine Corless exposed the burials of nearly 800 children in a septic tank
The rain fell with a mournful intent last Monday morning, soaking the semi-detached houses in the Dublin Road estate, as the first diggers rolled into position behind sealed gates. In this quiet corner of Tuam, Co Galway, once famous as a sacred monastic town and now the reluctant custodian of one of Ireland’s darkest secrets, the excavation of a mass grave had begun.
The name of the settlement, Tuaim in Irish, means “burial place”. This apparently refers to a Bronze Age burial site, but this is not the burial site for which this town is now known. Instead, it has become synonymous with a more recent, more haunting burial: a disused septic tank on the grounds of a former mother and baby home, holding the remains of nearly 800 children who died at the home between 1925 and 1960.
The site has long been a source of sorrow, anger and weary familiarity for locals. “I think some people think we’re heartless and cold,” said one middle-aged woman who grew up nearby. “But it’s just not news to us. There could be bodies under our homes. Our houses are built here, and we can’t do much about that.”
It was Catherine Corless, a local historian, who uncovered the extent of the tragedy. After taking a class in local history, she began researching the home. She found the death certificates of 796 children — but no burial records. This led her to uncover the undignified burial they had actually received. Once her research was picked up by the media in 2014, the world looked on in horror.
Now, over a decade later, an international team, led by Ireland’s Office of the Director of Authorised Intervention, Tuam, is finally exhuming the site. The task is formidable: bones are mingled, records are sparse and some remains may never be identified.
The international interest was clear to see last Monday. Journalists from Al Jazeera and NPR, and a German-French documentary crew huddled near the sealed perimeter. Overhead, the weather staged its own theatre: biblical downpours followed by hesitant shafts of sun. The air was heavy, unsettled. A murder of crows gathered on the rooftops just west of the site and gazed at the now sealed-off site, over which drones are not allowed.
“When I saw all of the rain falling today, I said to myself, that’s the children crying,” said Anna Corrigan, who discovered in her fifties that she had two brothers born in the home. Her brother John died at the home aged just 16 months. An inspection report described him as “a miserable emaciated child with voracious appetite … probably mentally defective”.
“He was born healthy, nearly nine pounds,” Corrigan said. “Then by 13 months he’s emaciated, starving, and he’s dead three months later.”
She believes he was heavily neglected while in the care of the Bon Secours sisters at the mother and baby home and that his body was disposed of in the tank along with so many others. Her second brother, William, may not be. Though the home’s records say he died in 1951, there is no death certificate. She suspects he may have been adopted without consent to America, and she holds out hope that he may still be alive.
Corrigan walked across the road to the town’s main Catholic cemetery, just 100 yards from the site of the mass grave, but the manner in which the deceased were handled is worlds apart. Hundreds of plots marked by headstones and well-tended plots versus an unconsecrated pit for the children of unmarried mothers. At the entrance to the cemetery, a council sign reads: “No dogs allowed.”
“It’s not just dogs that weren’t allowed in there,” she said. “No illegitimate children were either.”
Despite the weight of what lies below, life in the housing estate goes on. Some residents are sympathetic, others are fatigued. A warning letter from the residents’ association told them to expect journalists, and reminded them they were under no obligation to speak. Many declined politely, some offered tea, but all asked not to be named.
One man slammed his door and complained that he would no longer be able to access his yard with his van from the back, which would cause him a serious inconvenience.
“They’re going to knock down my turf shed,” said another man, who has lived there for 47 years.
“I won’t have anywhere to store my turf. I can’t plant anything in my vegetable garden either this year,” said one man whose backyard will be encroached on as part of the excavation. He will be compensated for this, however, and a replacement shed will be built once the dig is complete.
He was, however, sympathetic and understanding of the importance of the project. He recalled going to school with children from the home, and the segregation that existed. “They came in later, dressed differently. They were all shy and nervous. They were told not to talk to us and we were kept apart from them. They were known as ‘home babies’.
“After the home closed it was found that the toys people donated to them were left in a room and the children weren’t ever allowed to play with them.”
He added: “It’s hard not to blame the nuns for what happened.”
Despite the horrors once contained within its walls, the Dublin Road housing estate still hosts a handful of front gardens featuring statues of the Virgin Mary and other religious effigies. The home may be gone, its atrocities laid bare, but not everyone has turned their back on the church.
One elderly man dismissed the excavation as “a waste of money”, adding: “Those nuns weren’t all bad. Many of them were very good to us and were very good to the poor in the community. The real question is, where were the fathers? And why did families give their daughters up?”
Many residents admitted they already knew about the bones, long before Corless’s research became public. One recalled how her brother found skulls as a child. “We were told not to go near that corner of the field,” she said. “But we all knew.”
Another resident alluded to questions being raised just after the houses were constructed in the 1970s. “I know a man who seems to think there was something found when they built the estate … That’s all I’ll say.”
One resident suggested that the digging of the site might open up old wounds for people living in the immediate area.
“There are people very nearby who had family members in the home, and they’re not happy about people knowing about it. That needs to be respected too.”
Secrecy and silence haunt the area. Some felt the attention had turned their quiet stewardship into spectacle. “That place was kept tidy by locals, people were protective over the babies,” one woman said. “We saw it as a burial ground. Now nobody goes near it without a camera. What’s dignified about that?”
For survivors, the excavation has been a long time coming. Throughout the day, several arrived quietly to observe the work. Among them was Carmel Smith Larkin, who was born in the Tuam mother and baby home in 1949 and now, by sheer coincidence, lives just minutes away.
“I was born in Tuam and I’ll die in Tuam,” she said.
Fostered by a family in Co Mayo at the age of three, Smith Larkin had a happy upbringing and grew up with little knowledge of the institution where she was born or of her mother’s fate. It was only later in life that she learnt the truth: her mother had died in a psychiatric hospital in Castlebar when Smith Larkin was 12. She was buried in a mass grave on the hospital grounds.
“There was no dignity,” she said. “When I found out, I was traumatised, horrified. I’ll never know exactly what happened to her.”
Although she did not expect the excavation to provide answers in her case, she considered it to be a landmark moment. “We all fought for this,” she said. “This is such an important day — and we have Catherine Corless to thank for it.”
Smith Larkin invited reporters to her home, just across town. She was keen not to disturb the residents of the housing estate, and did not want anyone left standing in the rain.
“I don’t mind the media asking questions,” she said. “The only reason we’re here today is because the coverage this got around the world forced the government and the church to act.”
She was acutely aware of the disruption caused by the attention. “Can you imagine it? Day after day, the media arriving, blocking gateways — no privacy. I can understand why they’re sick of it. That’s why I try to bring people here, to my house.
“I understand too why some people don’t want to dig up the past. Some of those women went on to marry afterwards. They never told a soul. So I can imagine how retraumatising this must be for them.”
A state inquiry published in 2021 confirmed the mistreatment. The Bon Secours sisters apologised, saying: “We did not live up to our Christianity.” The order has pledged €13 million to the redress scheme and €2.5 million towards the cost of excavation.
The Tuam mother and baby home was one of many such institutions in Ireland where unmarried pregnant women were hidden away, often shamed by family, abandoned by parents, and punished by church and state alike. While the home was closed in 1961, its shadow lingers.
Another survivor, Joe Mulchrone, 73, from Co Mayo, spent the first seven years of his life in the Tuam mother and baby home. He is urging others who believe they may have relatives buried at the site to come forward and submit DNA samples.
Mulchrone was eventually able to trace his mother, though she died just a year after they were reunited. Despite the brevity of their time together, he is grateful to have found her.
“I was lucky,” he said. “I was able to find my mother and spend some time with her, because I was always looking. I went all over the country trying to find her. I didn’t know if she was alive or dead.
“I’d really encourage people who think they might have family buried there to come forward and give a DNA sample,” he said. “It’s so important that we do what we can to help with the excavation. People deserve answers.”
He added: “If nothing else, at the very least the children deserve to be identified and given a proper burial.”
In a town once known for its saints and scholars, life must go on. But Tuam, indelibly marked by what lay hidden for so long, will forever be shrouded in the weight of its past.