Mass unmarked grave for 800 babies in Tuam

Hotblack Desiato

https://www.irishtimes.com/ireland/2022/10/11/more-than-1200-applications-for-birth-information-in-first-week-of-service/

More than 1,200 people have applied to the Adoption Authority of Ireland seeking their birth information since a service offering the material opened a week ago.

The Birth Information and Tracing Act, signed into law earlier this year, provides a full and clear right of access to information for a person who was adopted, boarded out, had their birth illegally registered or who otherwise has questions in relation to their origins.

Let's hope the secrecy and shame of the past is finally at an end.

robindch

‘Every little bone’: How 796 babies at Tuam’s mother-and-baby home will be exhumed

https://www.irishtimes.com/ireland/social-affairs/2023/06/04/every-little-bone-the-difficult-exhumation-ahead-at-tuams-former-mother-and-baby-home/

Hotblack Desiato

Yet another year passes and no apparent progress whatsoever.

tinytobe

Just wondering, was the cause of death ever known? Like somethin in early infancy? Or was it even downright murder?

markodaly

Is the title of this thread correct?
I thought the 'mass grave' aspect of it was debunked and the numbers are to be determined.

A proper excavation should happen mind you.

Pherekydes

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122302100#Comment_122302100

796 not enough? Was it debunked by the Russian SS?

markodaly

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122302751#Comment_122302751

Eh what? Who mentioned the Russians?

robindch

I thought the 'mass grave' aspect of it was debunked and the numbers are to be determined.

It's only been 'debunked' in far-right propaganda outlets and clowns platforming gobshites. Here's the Sage of Castlerea claiming without evidence, that there's no evidence of 900 babies, and no evidence that the nuns were involved.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OjE3zWl-WDg&ab_channel=TuamBabiesHoax

Peregrinus

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122302089#Comment_122302089

SFAIK, all the deaths were registered as they occurred. The causes of death stated on registration included tuberculosis, convulsions, measles, whooping cough, malnutrition and influenza. The figure of 796 burials on the site is arrived at by taking all the registered deaths and subtracting those known to have been buried at other locations — I think only two, but certainly not a large number.

The deaths occurred between the 1920s and the 1960s, the full period of operation of the home. Given the number of children known to have been in the home, the implied death rate is at least twice the national average mortality rate for children during this period. The stated causes of death are not in themselves implausible — all these conditions were endemic in Ireland at the time, and could be fatal — but the high fatality rate suggests that the children were unusually vulnerable and/or that they received substandard care when ill. SFAIK there's nothing so far to suggest that any of them were murdered.

A full forensic excavation of the site began twelve months ago. This will include identifying the exact location of all remains, recovering as many of the remains as possible, forensic examination of the remains, identification of as many as possible, and reburial. I've no idea what the timescale for the operation is but, with approximately 800 individuals to be located, recovered and examined it can't be short. I also don't know to what extent the forensic examination will focus on confirming the cause of death, or how feasible this may be after so many decades.

(For many decades before becoming a mothers' and babies' home in 1925, the local government operated the premises was operated as a workhouse. It's possible that some of the burials date from this period and, if that is so, the implied death rate would be lower. But so far no evidence at all has emerged to suggest that there were any burials on site during the workhouse period, and on-site burial is not known to have been practiced at other workhouses. The forensic excavation now under way will presumably establish how many, if any, of the burials predate the mothers' and babies' home.)

tawnyowl

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122304293#Comment_122304293

Ah, the "bad John Waters who thinks he's good" as he was nicknamed on Twitter a few years ago. I think I see his far-right friend Gemma there too.

mrslancaster

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122304680#Comment_122304680

Just curious, but how were children's deaths in those homes verified? Did someone simply fill in a form for the GRO or did a gp have to see the body? If only two burials were at other locations, and if the site survey doesn't find the remains of nearly 800 children, what happened the bodies? I'm no fan of John Waters but he could have a point when he says it's hard to believe that the nuns callously disposed of dead children in an underground chamber.

Is it possible that those death registrations were false and those children went to local childless couples or were sent to couples in other countries and then registered as the natural child of those couples?

It is well known that false birth registrations of babies happened - it was a well run system involving gp's, midwives, nuns, priests and possibly some local registrars (some were also dispensary doctors). They were all complicit in hiding the true identity of stolen children even though it was illegal, so falsifying death certs might not be that far-fetched.

Peregrinus

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122363263#Comment_122363263

A very large number of remains have been found on the site, plus we have eyewitness accounts of children being buried there, so the view that the nuns would never do this is hard to reconcile with the evidence.

But we're not yet in a position where we can say that all 800 registered deaths are buried at that site; the examination of the site and of the remains is ongoing.

So it is possible that some of the 800 death registrations were false.

Honestly, though, it doesn't seem very likely. I know that some birth registrations contain inaccurate details, but there's a big different between registering a birth that actually occurred but falsifing some of the details, and registering a death that never occurred at all. Plus, there's no obvious reason to do this. You suggest it could have been done to facilitate adoptions but it wasn't necessary for that purpose; we know that lots of adoptions took place without any false death registration being involved. You suggest that this was part of a scheme for registering the children's births in their country of adoption as the natural children of their adoptive parents (so, a false death registration in Ireland plus a false birth registration in another countru) but this doesn't really make sense; it isn't any easier to create a false birth registration in, say, the US if you first create a false death registration in Ireland, so what role does the false death registration play in this scheme? Plus there was a downside to the nuns for registering all these deaths; the home was identified as one with an alarmingly high death rate and was the subject of attention from the authorities because of that.

Nothing is impossible. But the explanation that best fits the evidence we currently have is that most or all of the 800 babies and children involved did die, and were buried on the site.

kaymin

Is the issue here that babies were buried in a mass grave or the fact it was an underground chamber? I appreciate the child death rate was higher than in other settings but then the illnesses prevalent in those times would more easily spread when there are lots of children in the one location. Dead bodies spread disease so prompt burials by any means may also have been a necessity in those times.

Grave recycling, ie moving residents into a mass grave, is a common practice nowadays so I'm struggling to understand the controversy here with mass burials, particularly when referring to decades ago.

"The problem is most acute in cities that do not practise grave recycling. Countries such as Singapore, Germany and Belgium offer public graves for free – but only for the first 20 or so years. Thereafter, families can either pay to keep them (often on a rental basis) or the graves are recycled, with the most recent residents moved further into the ground or to another site, often a mass grave"

https://www.theguardian.com/cities/2015/jan/21/death-in-the-city-what-happens-cemeteries-full-cost-dying

riddles

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122302089#Comment_122302089

in the 50s alone infant mortality in Ireland was very high. Something like 40 per 1000 compared to 1.83 today and I assume in a place like these homes death at births were pretty high also compared to modern maternity practises.

This is a case of putting a historical topic through a modern selective lens. There’s no mention in all this outrage on the role of families of the girls unfortunate to end up in Tuam or any other of these places.

They fell pregnant in a lot of cases to a family member or neighbour and the whole thing was abuse in many cases. If you talked to elderly relatives they would give you a real insight as to what was going on back then.

Things were shockingly swept under the carpet. And of course the media has backed away from the story of these girls before they entered these horrible places because it’s an uncomfortable topic. Most families being large the last thing they wanted was another dependent. Girls in a lot of cases when they left those homes were never seen locally again - why?

The level of poverty back then is not something we can thankfully understand in modern Ireland. That said we have children living in horrendous conditions today.

Hotblack Desiato

Let's not be making excuses. The infant death rate in the Tuam home in the 1940s was substantially worse than the poorest slums in the country.

robindch

This is a case of putting a historical topic through a modern selective lens.

Not in the slightest. The Catholic Church demanded obedience on the grounds that it was the infinite's representation here on Earth and publicly held others to standards of purity, respectability and honesty - it is now abundantly clear from research into virtually every area it ever touched - which, in private, it held in complete contempt.