A gruesome discovery has been made at a former common home run by nuns for unwed mothers in a town in Western Ireland. A local historian's efforts has led to the investigation of a mass grave beneath a thick piece of concrete within the building's premises and in it, the remains of 800 children who were believed to have died of malnutrition, TB, and other, supposedly preventable, diseases. Catherine Corless, a local historian from Tuam, began to investigate the rumors of infant deaths in the shelter run by Bon Secours nuns in 1995, but only managed to approximate the number of deaths in the shelter very recently with the assistance of the Births and Deaths Registrar in Galway, Ireland. An assistant from the said registrar presented Corless with a listing for up to 800 infant deaths, the youngest of whom was only 2 days old while the eldest was aged 9.
The church-backed foundation, aptly named 'The Children's Home', was a shelter for unwed mothers who were living in conservative Catholic Ireland at the time. From 1925 to 1961, the Home catered to single mothers from Western Ireland and nearby towns. It was intended to be a safe refuge where children born out of wedlock could live in and attend school while their mothers made a living elsewhere; however, according to records from the local registry, life in the Children's Home was not ideal. An average of 2 deaths a week showed that infant mortality was alarmingly high in 'The Children's Home'. In total, it is believed there are at least 800 children buried in the Home's septic tank, without names or markers.
The unusual form of burial has baffled both the authorities and Corless. "If you look at the records, babies were dying two a week, but I'm still trying to figure out how they could put the bodies in a septic tank. Couldn't they have afforded baby coffins?", she wonders.
Today, the piece of property where the Children's Home once stood is now the site of a subdivision playground, but Corless believes that there are still unrecovered remains in the Home's mass grave. The existence of the mass grave was first noted in the 1970s when two 12-year old boys, Barry Sweeney and Francis Hopkins, accidentally stumbled upon the big, slab of concrete that served as the mass grave's lid. Although a priest was brought in to bless the mass grave, no further effort was exerted to identify the names of the dead and notify their living kin.
The Children's Home Graveyard Committee, which was established by Corless, aims to erect a memorial for the lives lost in the Children's Home throughout the five decades it was in operation.
