Dig for remains of 800 infants at former 'mother and baby home' in Ireland begins
The remains of almost 800 babies and children are believed to be buried under a former 'mother and baby home' in Tuam, with many believed to have been dumped into a sewage tank that was dubbed "the pit".
It was her painstaking research that uncovered the deaths of 798 children at the home for unmarried mothers between 1925 and its closure in 1961.
Of those, just two were buried in a nearby cemetery. The remaining 796 are, it's presumed, buried at the site.
Ms Corless's findings in 2014 shocked Ireland and made headlines around the world.
It exposed the dark underbelly of a mid-century Ireland heavily swayed by Catholicism and its cruel attitudes towards illegitimate children and the women who bore them, often sent to mother and baby homes before being separated from their offspring.
The goal is to identify as many of the remains as possible through DNA testing, and to give all a dignified reburial.
It's a glimmer of hope for people like Annette McKay, who now lives in Manchester. Her mother Margaret "Maggie" O'Connor gave birth to a baby girl in the Tuam home in 1942 after being raped at 17.
The girl, named Mary Margaret, died six months later. Annette remembers her late mother recalling how "she was pegging washing out and a nun came up behind her and said 'the child of your sin is dead'."
Annette now hopes her infant sister's remains can be exhumed at Tuam and laid to rest with Maggie. Margaret O'Connor reunited with her child.
For Annette, now 71, Tuam is emblematic of a different time in Ireland.
"We locked up victims of rape, we locked up victims of incest, we locked up victims of violence, we put them in laundries, we took their children, and we just handed them over to the Church to do what they wanted," she said.
"My mother worked heavily pregnant, cleaning floors and a nun passing kicked my mother in the stomach. And when that place is opened, their dirty, ugly secret, it isn't a secret anymore.
An inquiry found an "appalling level of infant mortality" in Ireland's mother and baby homes, concluding that around 9,000 children had died in the 18 institutions investigated.
https://news.sky.com/story/opening-the-p...s-13384111
The remains of almost 800 babies and children are believed to be buried under a former 'mother and baby home' in Tuam, with many believed to have been dumped into a sewage tank that was dubbed "the pit".
It was her painstaking research that uncovered the deaths of 798 children at the home for unmarried mothers between 1925 and its closure in 1961.
Of those, just two were buried in a nearby cemetery. The remaining 796 are, it's presumed, buried at the site.
Ms Corless's findings in 2014 shocked Ireland and made headlines around the world.
It exposed the dark underbelly of a mid-century Ireland heavily swayed by Catholicism and its cruel attitudes towards illegitimate children and the women who bore them, often sent to mother and baby homes before being separated from their offspring.
The goal is to identify as many of the remains as possible through DNA testing, and to give all a dignified reburial.
It's a glimmer of hope for people like Annette McKay, who now lives in Manchester. Her mother Margaret "Maggie" O'Connor gave birth to a baby girl in the Tuam home in 1942 after being raped at 17.
The girl, named Mary Margaret, died six months later. Annette remembers her late mother recalling how "she was pegging washing out and a nun came up behind her and said 'the child of your sin is dead'."
Annette now hopes her infant sister's remains can be exhumed at Tuam and laid to rest with Maggie. Margaret O'Connor reunited with her child.
For Annette, now 71, Tuam is emblematic of a different time in Ireland.
"We locked up victims of rape, we locked up victims of incest, we locked up victims of violence, we put them in laundries, we took their children, and we just handed them over to the Church to do what they wanted," she said.
"My mother worked heavily pregnant, cleaning floors and a nun passing kicked my mother in the stomach. And when that place is opened, their dirty, ugly secret, it isn't a secret anymore.
An inquiry found an "appalling level of infant mortality" in Ireland's mother and baby homes, concluding that around 9,000 children had died in the 18 institutions investigated.
https://news.sky.com/story/opening-the-p...s-13384111
teachings of the Bible are so muddled and self-contradictory that it was possible for Christians to happily burn heretics alive for five long centuries. It was even possible for the most venerated patriarchs of the Church, like St. Augustine and St. Thomas Aquinas, to conclude that heretics should be tortured (Augustine) or killed outright (Aquinas). Martin Luther and John Calvin advocated the wholesale murder of heretics, apostates, Jews, and witches. - Sam Harris, "Letter To A Christian Nation"
