NORTHERN IRELAND
The Detail
AT least 43 babies died from severe malnutrition at two Sisters of Nazareth children’s homes in Belfast in a single year.
That is the disturbing key finding from the examination of a year of burial records for Milltown Cemetery’s Public Ground site – otherwise known as the Bog Meadows. Thousands of stillborn and unbaptised babies are among those buried in unmarked mass graves on the west Belfast site.
We now know that they include 63 children – 21 girls and 42 boys – from Nazareth House and Nazareth Lodge who were aged between two weeks and almost two-years-old when they died in 1942. See full details on each case in the table below.
One of the babies was six-week-old George who died from severe malnutrition (marasmus) and a “septic scalp” in October 1942.
Marie died aged two-months-old in January 1942 from “cardiac failure due to marasmus”. It appears to be her twin sister Jean who died two weeks later from “haemoptysis due to congenital heart disease”. The sisters were buried in separate mass graves.
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