For balance:
Tuam mother and baby home: the trouble with the septic tank story
The deaths of these 796 children are not in doubt. Their numbers are a stark
reflection of a period in Ireland when infant mortality in general was very much
higher than today, particularly in institutions, where infection spread rapidly.
At times during those 36 years the Tuam home housed more than 200 children and 100
mothers, plus those who worked there, according to records Corless has found.
What has upset, confused and dismayed her in recent days is the speculative na-
ture of much of the reporting around the story, particularly about what happened
to the children after they died. “I never used that word ‘dumped’,” she says
again, with distress. “I just wanted those children to be remembered and for their
names to go up on a plaque. That was why I did this project, and now it has taken
[on] a life of its own.”
She also discovered that there were no burial records for the children and that
they had not been interred in any of the local public cemeteries. In her article
she concludes that many of the children were buried in an unofficial graveyard at
the rear of the former home. This small grassy space has been attended for decades
by local people, who have planted roses and other flowers there, and put up a
grotto in one corner.
http://www.irishtimes.com/news/social-affairs/tuam-mother-and-baby-home-the-trouble-with-the-septic-tank-story-1.1823393
Bon Secours Mother and Baby Home
In early June 2014, a local historian, Catherine Corless, studied the state
death records of 796 children who had died at the home from a range of ailments,
including gastroenteritis, malnutrition, and disease. She then cross-referenced
the names with those in local graveyards and found that only one (a child who had
been interred in a family plot) had been buried in any of those cemeteries. Based
on mapping of the former home and her findings, she concluded that the only possi-
ble location for the corpses was the site uncovered by the boys nearly four de-
cades ago, which is located at the edge of the grounds of the former home. The re-
mains of the victims were mostly within the septic tank. Victims were placed in a
grave without interment records being kept. Corless is now campaigning for a grave
marker to be placed at the site.
Inquiry
Susan Lohan, co-founder of Adoption Rights Alliance, has called for an inquiry
into mother and baby homes.[16] On 4 June 2014 the Irish government announced it
was putting together a number of representatives from various government depart-
ments to investigate the deaths at the home and propose how to address the issue.
Minister for Children and Youth Affairs Charles Flanagan said that a government
inquiry would not be confined to the home in Tuam and that officials would advise
the Government on the best form of inquiry before the end of June 2014.
Qualification of the narrative
On 5 June 2014, an RTÉ Prime Time television report by Mark Coughlan called
"Home Babies" stated, "We don't know for sure, as yet anyway, if the babies who
died in the Tuam home were buried in a septic tank: no burial location is listed
on the death records." On 7 June 2014, The Irish Times quoted Catherine Corless as
saying that the story "has been widely misrepresented" in the the few days since
it broke nationally and internationally. Corless was described as thinking that it
seems impossible "that more than 200 bodies could have been put in a working
sewage tank". The newspaper report echoed the RTÉ broadcast by casting serious
doubt on whether the childrens' remains were actually interred within a septic
tank, and also quoted a man who, as a boy, discovered skeletons there in 1975, who
said that he saw only about 20 skeletons.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bon_Secours_Mother_and_Baby_Home
Philomena
Accusations of Anti-Catholicism
The New York Post characterized the film as "another hateful and boring attack
on Catholics." The Post's film reviewer, Kyle Smith called it "90 minutes of or-
ganized hate". Smith further asserted: "A film that is half as harsh on Judaism or
Islam, of course, wouldn’t be made in the first place but would be universally
reviled if it were." In response to this review, filmmaker Harvey Weinstein posted
a full-page ad in the New York Times protesting this characterization. Smith has
accused Harvey Weinstein of making numerous anti-Catholic films, including The
Magdalene Sisters (2002), The Butcher Boy (1998), Priest (1995) and Philomena.
The Catholic League for Religious and Civil Rights issued a report which it says
debunks Philomena, taking issue with factual representations in the film. The re-
port calls it "a cruel caricature of nuns that is based on half-truths and out-and
-out lies. That it appeals to the worst appetite in anti-Catholic bigots is not
debatable." The congregation of sisters depicted in the film said that they were
denied a copy of the script, that the film was "very misleading" with the facts,
and "twisted the truth".
An article authored by Martin Sixsmith and published in the Guardian supports
much of the portrayal of a scheme carried out by Catholic organizations in Ire-
land that enriched the Church through coerced adoptions and forced labor of unwed
mothers.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philomena_%29film%28#Accusations_of_Anti-Catholicism
I appreciate this and also the contribution Sixsmith has made to human rights
for Irish women but his piece here is full of errors (which don’t appreciably de-
tract from the bulk of his comments).
In today’s Irish Times, Catherine Corless has drastically revised what appears
she said initially (http://www.irishtimes.com/news/social-affairs/tuam...
There is NOT a shred of evidence that 800 or so infants were tossed into a septic
tank. The two boys who saw some skulls in 1975 now say maybe there were 20 skulls
at most!
If there was a septic tank (a map from 1892 copied from a map in 1840 when it was
a Famine-era workhouse indicates so), it was not a septic tank for the Bon Secours
"Home". The misreporting has been so shockingly misleading that when the news
fabrications are disclosed, it will very unfortunately be a propoganda coup for
the RCC in Ireland.
4. The usual fact checking expected from the WaPo,the Guardian for the McCoy,
O’Toole reports were completely absent (maybe the names are Irish so they know)
5. There were usually 200+ children in the "Home" over 40 years; from death cer-
tificates, there might have been 22 deaths/year. This would give the HOME a
"respectable" infant mortality rate of 10-15% - phenomenally better than other
"HOMES" and no different from non-institutionalized babies in impoverished third-
world Ireland with third-world sanitation and third-world rates of communicable
diseases. Sixsmith like many others neglect that Ireland was a third-world country
for the first 5 decades of the 20thC, with immense poverty even if there was not
another Famine. Even in the 1950s, an astonishing 50% of the young people were
forced to immigrate to survive and it was their savings dispatched home that kept
the island above water.
Tuam deaths need further investigation, says academic expert
Prof Liam Delaney says deaths cannot be explained by social conditions
http://www.irishtimes.com/news/ireland/irish-news/tuam-deaths-need-further-investigation-says-academic-expert-1.1822219