IRELAND
Belfast Telegraph
Mass baby grave in Tuam, Galway: Laid to rest in septic tank, shameful fate of 800 little children
BY ADRIAN RUTHERFORD – 05 JUNE 2014
For more than half-a-century it has hidden a terrible secret, a horrifying and sinister reminder of a shameful chapter in Irish history.
At the site of a former home run by the Catholic Church in Tuam, a small town west of the Irish midlands, lies a mass grave filled with the bodies of almost 800 children.
Locals have known about it since 1975, when two boys broke apart a concrete slab and discovered a tomb filled with small skeletons. The remains, interred in a concrete septic tank, were initially thought to be from the Great Famine era of the 1840s.
A parish priest said prayers and the site was sealed once more, the number of bodies below unknown, their names forgotten.
Little more was thought about the grave until about 10 years ago when a historian, Catherine Corless, began investigating children’s deaths at the home. What she discovered has shocked her, appalled the Irish State and made headlines around the world.
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