IRELAND
The Guardian (UK)
Amelia Gentleman
The Guardian, Friday 13 June 2014
Catherine Corless spent eight months trying unsuccessfully to get people to pay attention to the research she was doing on an institution for unmarried mothers in Tuam, the Galway town where she grew up.
An amateur historian who had spent weeks scouring records in libraries, churches and council offices, she had uncovered the fact that, between 1925 and 1961, 796 children died in the St Mary’s Mother and Baby Home, run by nuns from the Bon Secours order, but she was unable to find records of where they were buried. Last September she suggested that many of the bodies may have been put in a disused septic tank in a corner of the home’s garden, a spot where boys had discovered a pile of children’s skeletons in the 1970s.
She was surprised that the local newspapers and radio stations did not share the horror that she and a few Tuam residents felt. She had hoped to get support for a fundraising campaign to install plaques with the names of the dead babies at the site of the home. A small article was printed, without prominence, in a local paper. “It seemed as if no one wanted to bring this up,” she said this week. She told the nuns, the local clergy and the police about her research, but there was no response.
“I couldn’t understand it. We were shocked. We expected an outrage. The only ones who were outraged seemed to be us,” she said. “The mentality seemed to be: ‘That’s a long time ago, forget about it, it doesn’t matter any more.'”
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