IRELAND
Aljazeera
Sinead O’Shea Last updated: 12 Jun 2014
Tuam, Ireland – “Everyone knew there was babies buried here, but we thought it was only a small few,” says James Mannion, a resident of this western town.
Camera crews and satellite vans assemble in the middle of a housing estate in Tuam. Mannion and other locals have come down to have a look. All are focused on a walled-in, grassy area the size of a basketball court.
Catherine Corless, a local historian, thinks there are 796 babies buried here, not including stillborns.
The site is on the former grounds of the Tuam Mother and Baby Home, which was owned by the Bon Secours nuns and was in operation from 1925 to 1961. This was one of several institutions funded by the state and run by the Catholic clergy to accommodate unmarried mothers – the “untouchables” of Irish life.
Unwed mothers brought their families great shame at a time when the Catholic Church’s influence over society was strong, and children born out of wedlock who died often did not receive a Christian burial.
At the institutions, mother and child were separated after nursing, and the children fostered out or, sometimes, sold to prosperous American families. Meanwhile, the mothers stayed to work off their “debts”. Some escaped to England. They risked arrest if they returned.
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