Latest news with #TuamBabies
Irish Examiner
15-07-2025
- General
- Irish Examiner
Troubled Ground: The story of the excavation of the Tuam Mother and Baby Home
Troubled Ground is a two-part podcast that explores the historic exhumation of a mass grave at the site of the Bon Secours Mother and Baby Home in Tuam, Co Galway, involving the remains of 796 infants and children. In Episode 1, reporter Alison O'Reilly meets local historian Catherine Corless, who first uncovered the existence of the burial site and whose research ultimately led to the excavation. Forensic experts describe the painstaking process of examining the site in search of lost remains. The episode revisits the origins of the Tuam Babies story, beginning in 2014 with Catherine Corless's research into the deaths of hundreds of children at the Tuam Mother and Baby Home. Anna Corrigan shares the devastating discovery that her mother had two sons who died in the home. Despite initial indifference from the media, the story gained traction on the global stage. As international attention mounted, political leaders were compelled to respond, including the Taoiseach of the day, Enda Kenny. The episode captures how a local investigation into a burial ground for forgotten children led to the first mass grave exhumation of its kind in Ireland. To hear more compelling journalism from the Irish Examiner team, follow The Full Story podcast wherever you get your podcasts. Read More Alison O'Reilly: It took a global spotlight for many to accept hundreds of babies are buried in a septic tank in Tuam
Irish Times
15-07-2025
- General
- Irish Times
Tuam is a microcosm for Ireland's history of discarded bones
Ireland often seems surreal. But it is also, if I may be permitted to coin a word, subreal. We share the island, not just with what is above ground but what it under it. Our reality is not just experienced – it is exhumed. As Seamus Heaney put it in Bogland, it keeps 'striking/ Inwards and downwards,/ Every layer they strip/Seems camped on before'. The subsoil of the grounds of the former Bons Secours Mother and Baby home in Tuam is described as a 'yellow-grey silty gritty layer'. And it is being stripped now , down to where, between 1925 and 1961, perhaps 796 tiny human beings were stuffed in a disused sewage system. This non-resting place is, as the technical report published in 2017 has it, 'an elongated structure, comprising 20 chambers, with juvenile human remains identified in 17 of those chambers'. These chambers of horror are 'deep and narrow'. Indeed – this is a kind of reality that has been buried very deep and confined to a very narrow strip of Irish consciousness. It is weirdly apt that Tuam in its original form is Tuaim, a tumulus or burial mound. It has become a microcosm for all that has been interred with Irish history's discarded bones. In the grounds of the home, there are many layers of yellow-grey oblivion. There have been, in modern times, three distinct cycles of shameful burial and exhumation just in this small patch of Irish earth. READ MORE Family members of children believed to be buried at the former mother and baby institution in Tuam have spoken to the media ahead of the excavation of the site Before it was the Mother and Baby home, the complex was the Tuam workhouse. It opened in 1846, which meant that it was immediately overwhelmed by desperate victims of the Great Famine who died, not just of disease and hunger, but as Eavan Boland put it in her poem Quarantine, 'Of the toxins of a whole history.' They were initially buried just beside the workhouse, until the authorities objected that the 'burying ground ... is in such a state as to be injurious to the health of the occupiers of premises in ... the entire town of Tuam'. [ Tuam families can see 'light at the end of a very long tunnel' Opens in new window ] In 2012, during works on the town water scheme, 18 pits containing 48 bodies of famine victims were uncovered. It seems probable that many more bodies lie in and around the grounds. Interestingly, even in the midst of that unspeakable catastrophe, these people had at least been buried in coffins – a dignity not afforded to the children who later died in the care of the nuns. The second episode of burial and exhumation on this same patch of land occurred during and immediately after the Civil War. Between its periods as a workhouse and a Mother and Baby home, the Tuam complex had another brief life that also involved hidden burials. It was occupied during the Civil War by the Free State Army. In March 1923, six anti-Treaty prisoners were executed in the workhouse and buried in the grounds. In May, two more prisoners suffered the same fate. These bodies were exhumed and reburied in 1924. It again seems interesting that these dead men were given a memorial on the site: there is a commemorative plaque on the only preserved section of the wall of the Mother and Baby home. The famine and the Troubles at least occupied enough space in official memory for coffins and commemorations to be afforded to their victims. The children who died in the Mother and Baby home were not part of history until the extraordinary Catherine Corless made them so – thus they got neither coffins nor memorials. The operation to identify so many now-jumbled bones of infants using DNA analysis and other cutting-edge techniques will, if successful, set a new benchmark for the rescue of the unwanted dead from the contempt of silence and anonymity What makes the forensic excavation that began in Tuam yesterday even stranger is that it fuses an old Ireland with a new. It is both deeply atavistic and startlingly innovative. It is something that seems never to have happened before in human history. There have been thousands of archaeological explorations of tombs and burial chambers. There have been numerous grim excavations of bodies dumped in mass graves after massacres or battles. (Daniel MacSweeney, who is heading the Tuam operation, gained his expertise in the Lebanon and the Caucasus. Oran Finegan, its leading forensic scientist, worked on 'large-scale post conflict identification programmes' in the Balkans and Cyprus.) There are also many cases of babies and other inmates being buried in unmarked or poorly recorded graves on the grounds of institutions – at, for example, the Smyllum Park boarding home in Scotland , the Haut de la Garenne boarding home on Jersey , the Ballarat Orphanage in Australia, and the Duplessis Orphans' home in Canada . Here in Ireland, we had the hideous exhumation in 1993 of the graves of women buried at the High Park Magdalene home in Dublin – so that the nuns could sell the land for property development. But the situation of the remains in Tuam – neither a grave nor a tomb – has, according to the technical group, 'no national or international comparisons that the group is aware of'. And the operation to identify so many now-jumbled bones of infants using DNA analysis and other cutting-edge techniques will, if successful, set a new benchmark for the rescue of the unwanted dead from the contempt of silence and anonymity. This is making history in a double sense – doing something that has never been done before while simultaneously reshaping a country's understanding of its own recent past. [ Tuam mother and baby home: 80 people come forward to give DNA to identify buried children Opens in new window ] And, hopefully, of its present. The digging up of the bodies of people disappeared by the IRA has helped us to grasp the truth that the Troubles themselves cannot simply be buried. Revenants like Jean McConville return, not just to remind us of the past but to warn us of what it means when people become, even after death, disposable. While the Tuam excavation continues, we have, in the corner of our eyes, a peripheral awareness of the undead. Since they were not allowed properly to rest in peace, we cannot do so either. Since they were so contemptuously consigned to oblivion, we are obliged to remember. Since they were sacrificed to a monolithic tunnel vision, we must tunnel down to bring buried truths to light and hidden histories to consciousness.
Irish Examiner
08-07-2025
- Health
- Irish Examiner
Bons Secours Sisters release Tuam archives for first time as site excavation begins
The Bons Secours Sisters have opened their archives for the first time to allow forensic experts to review files from the former Tuam mother and baby home, where 796 children died over 40 years. It comes as a specialised forensic team assembled from Ireland as well as Canada, Colombia, Spain, the UK, and the US begin the long-awaited exhumation of the Tuam babies' burial ground, which will take at least two years. In 2014, it emerged nearly 800 children had died in the former institution that housed unmarried mothers. Many of these children were forcibly adopted after birth. Research led by local historian Catherine Corless indicated that 796 babies and young children died at the Co Galway institution from 1925 to 1961. The St Mary's home for unmarried mothers and their children was run by the Bon Secours Sisters, a religious order of Catholic nuns. Director of the Tuam Intervention, Daniel MacSweeney, and senior forensic consultant and forensic archaeologist, Dr Niamh McCullough, spoke on Monday as media from around the world came to Tuam. Mr MacSweeney said the nuns have given the team access to the religious order's documents. 'We needed to and wanted to get access to their archives. There will be a lot of information from various archives that will help us to understand what happened," he said. It is about having multiple sources of information. We will obviously have information that comes from the site, from the excavation, whether that is human remains or artefacts. 'It's really by cross-checking all of this information that allows us to attempt to answer these questions. Even if it is partial identification, that will help us establish a cause of death.' Mr MacSweeney said he has had around 40 to 50 contacts about DNA over the past two years, and more than 30 people have contacted his office in the past month. Families of the Tuam Babies and survivors from the home will have a private visit to the site on Tuesday. Mr MacSweeney said this will be 'the most important event of the week'. He described the forthcoming landmark construction works as 'the most challenging exhumation we have ever worked on, and we want to get it right.' The budget for the works this year is €9.4m, of which €2m was spent on the project in 2024. In 2016 and 2017, it was confirmed by forensics following test excavations in Tuam that a significant quantity of human remains was found at the site that dated to when the home was in operation. The children were aged between 35 foetal weeks, and two to three years old. Mr MacSweeney said he does not know until the area is excavated whether all of the children will be found during the process, which will take at least two years. 'We just want to get it right and we will have to see what we find," he said. Anna Corrigan, whose two brothers died in the home, was also in attendance. She criticised Taoiseach Micheál Martin, children's minister Norma Foley, and President Michael D Higgins for not being in attendance. It's a momentous day, for our loved ones and not a single member of government is here. hat is appalling that they are not here. Ms Corless, the historian who uncovered the names of the children, said she was 'overjoyed' that the exhumation was taking place and that she could 'never have given up on the little children.' "It is huge for me to know those babies are finally going to get the dignity they deserve - it is a wrong put right," she said. In 2021, Taoiseach Micheál Martin delivered an apology on behalf of the state for the treatment of women and children who were housed in mother and baby homes across Ireland. The Bon Secours Sisters also offered a "profound apology" after acknowledging the order had "failed to protect the inherent dignity" of women and children in the Tuam home. Read More International experts join mass grave excavation at Tuam mother and baby home
Irish Times
11-06-2025
- Health
- Irish Times
Tuam mother and baby home excavation to begin on Monday with search for remains of 796 children who died there
The long-awaited excavation of the Tuam babies site in Co Galway is set to go ahead from Monday. The excavation will take place 11 years after local historian Catherine Corless 's original research revealed that 796 children died at the Bon Secours Mother and Baby Home between 1924 and 1961. A lack of burial records indicated the children could be buried on the site. Just two children were buried in local graveyards. The families involved were invited to visit the site over the last few weeks, as from next week there will be a 2.4-metre hoarding around the perimeter and 24-hour security. READ MORE The families will have an opportunity to view the site works as part of a Family and Survivors Day that the Office of the Director of Authorised Intervention, Tuam (ODAIT) is holding on Monday. The director of the exhumation, Daniel MacSweeney, said the process is likely to take two years and will be a 'unique and incredibly complex excavation'. In 2015, the then-government established the Commission of Investigation into Mother and Baby Homes to examine what happened to women and children in those institutions from 1922 to 1998. A test excavation carried out in Tuam in 2017 discovered a significant amount of human remains in what appeared to be a decommissioned sewage chamber. Tests conducted on the bodies revealed that those who died were between 35 foetal weeks and three years of age, and their deaths dated from the time that the mother and baby home existed. The commission concluded: 'The combination of an institutional boarding home and commingled interments of juvenile remains in a sewage treatment system is a unique situation, with no directly comparable domestic or international cases.' In October 2018 the government announced that it would introduce legislation to facilitate a full excavation of the site. As part of the upcoming excavation process, a multidisciplinary forensic team was recruited. The Sisters of the Bon Secours have offered to give €12.97 million to the Government's redress scheme for survivors of mother and baby institutions. In 2021 it issued an apology stating that the children involved were buried in a 'disrespectful and unacceptable way'. [ Woman was 70 when she found out her early years were spent in Tuam home Opens in new window ] [ 'I was a Tuam baby': Boston man appeals for records detailing his past Opens in new window ] The congregation's area leader, Sr Eileen O'Connor, acknowledged the order were 'part of the system in which they suffered hardship, loneliness and terrible hurt. We acknowledge in particular that infants and children who died at the home were buried in a disrespectful and unacceptable way. For all that, we are deeply sorry'.
Irish Examiner
03-06-2025
- General
- Irish Examiner
'Will we find them all?' Families prepare for excavation at Tuam mother and baby home
They have waited 11 years and one month for someone to finally break open the ground at the Tuam burial site and uncover the answers to what really happened to their loved ones. When the news emerged in 2014 that 796 children had died in the Tuam mother and baby home between 1925 and 1961, families, survivors, and the public were angry and upset. But when further news emerged about how these remains had been callously dumped in a disused septic tank on the grounds of the home, the whole world was rightly shocked. The Bon Secours nuns who ran the home on behalf of Galway County Council also owned the privately run Grove hospital nearby. When the nuns sold their land in their early 2000s, they exhumed their colleagues who died and were buried at the Grove hospital and reinterred them at Knock cemetery, but left the remains of hundreds of children behind. At first the nuns claimed they were 'shocked and saddened' over the discovery of the mass grave in the septic tank, but Anna Corrigan, whose two brothers died in Tuam, was one of those to quickly challenge the nuns' denial, stating they knew about the existence of the children's grave. As proof, she points to a letter written to her in 2013, where the nuns advised her to make inquiries about her brothers' grave 'at the back of the former Tuam home'. Historian Catherine Corless at the Tuam mother and baby home. Picture: Andy Newman. When news of the mass grave made international headlines the following year, historian Catherine Corless, whose painstaking research made the discovery possible, together with survivors and their families, believed the next step would be to excavate the site and start the long process of identifying the individual children. However, the whole process became mired in a complex series of issues to do with legislation, practicalities, specialised skills, and a five-year commission of inquiry, which cost the State millions. All the while, the remains of the children remained lying in a septic tank. Legislation was thrashed out in the Dáil and the Institutional Burials Bill 2022 was finally passed allowing for the recovery and identification of the children and an appropriate reinternment. Now, as the date for the first ever mass exhumation of the Tuam Babies burial site approaches, a number of relatives of the children buried there have spoken to the Irish Examiner about what will be an extremely emotional process. Anna Corrigan, aged 70, Dublin In 2012, Anna Corrigan made the shocking discovery that she was not an only child, but instead was the youngest of three. As a child, she vaguely remembered someone arguing with her late mother Bridget Dolan about her 'two sons', and during a visit to the origins department of Barnardos years later — where she was tracing her late father William Dolan's life in an industrial school — she happened to mention this story. A few weeks later, as Christmas drew close, the researcher in Barnardos called Anna and asked her to come into its offices in Dublin. 'I told her 'no',' said Anna. 'I'm a grown woman, a grandmother, just say it over the phone, I told her. 'She was reluctant as this wasn't her preferred option, but when I pressed her, she said, 'Your mother did have two baby boys.' 'My legs nearly went out from under me,' Anna said. 'She explained there were two birth certificates for John and William Dolan, but only one death certificate and that was for John. The research showed Bridget Dolan, from Clonfert, Co Galway, who grew up in a large family on a farm, was an unmarried mother. Anna Corrigan, campaigner and spokesperson for the Tuam Babies Family Group with a photograph of her mother, Bridget, holding her as a young girl. Picture: Moya Nolan She fell pregnant twice, in 1946 and 1950, and was sent to the mother and baby home in Tuam. According to their official birth certificates, Bridget's first son, John Desmond Dolan, was born on February 22, 1946. An inspection report described him as "emaciated" and "mentally defective" and he died on June 11, 1947, from measles. Her second, William Joseph Dolan, was born on May 21, 1950, and is marked as having died on February 3, 1951, but there is no death certificate on record. 'I will never forget learning this news,' Anna said. 'My whole life as I knew it, was not really the way it was. There were secrets, and my mother never said it to me ever. "I think she did that because it was too big to deal with, and maybe her way of coping. I'd like to think she shared it with my dad.' Anna told her mother's story in the original expose of the Tuam babies' burial scandal on May 25, 2014, when Corless's research was published and made international headlines. She chose to share her mother's story anonymously at first, but has since become an avid campaigner for truth and justice and set up the Tuam Babies Family Group. 'We have 11 members with families in the pit,' she said. 'I was never part of the commission, instead I reported my brothers missing to the gardaí and have no update. "I can't say they are dead. John has a death cert, and William is marked as dead in the nuns' ledgers but has no official certification. "Both children were baptised also. 'Is that a mistake in the nuns bookkeeping or he alive? I know my mother told a relative she had a son adopted to America and never left her Dublin tenant flat in the city centre in case he ever came back. Having been front and centre alongside Corless in the fight to have the burial site Tuam excavated, Anna said she is 'delighted to see it starting'. 'There has been so much heartache in between, obstruction by the State, obfuscation, and delays,' she said. 'I don't know how far this is going to take us, what are we going to find. "If remains are found, will the exhumation be halted and then we wait years for the next part of the section to start? 'Will we find them all? Will we find my brothers? I am holding my breath. "I've done my DNA tests, I hope I'll be matched to my brothers and can have some closure, but I have to wait. I always wanted the children out of that site, no matter what, they couldn't possibly be resting in peace lying in a septic tank, and we, the families, have a say in where they are reinterred. 'I also believe there should be a criminal inquiry, but what are the plans for after the children are found? "Will anyone ever be held responsible for this atrocity? Knowing this State, not a hope.' Annette McKay, 71, Greater Manchester No one knew that Margaret 'Maggie' O'Connor had given birth to a 'bonnie' baby girl when she was a teenager in the Tuam Mother and Baby Home after she had been raped in an industrial school. However, at a family gathering shortly after the birth of her great-grandchild, Maggie, broke down and her daughter, Annette McKay, refused to let her mother suffer in silence. She pressed her mother until she revealed the heartbreaking secret she had kept for five decades. ''It's the little baby,' she whispered. 'My daughter'... and it went from there." Maggie, who was known as 'one of the best-dressed women in Galway', had suffered all her life over her broken childhood which saw her raised in Lenaboy Industrial School and later locked up in the Tuam mother and baby home. 'This was all something none of us knew about,' said Annette. 'She was so upset around my grandchild that I got in the car and drove back to her house that night until she told me her secret. 'When the baby died, the nuns threw her out of the home she said, they told her 'The child of your sin is dead, you can go'. 'Imagine that? She was helpless. Mum said the baby was beautiful and described her as a bonnie baby whom she carried around on her hip. 'Mum left Ireland and never went back, she was a broken woman who suffered psychiatric problems for years, she was on medication and had broken marriages. It all added up.' Annette McKay said her mother was 'a broken woman'. Picture: Gareth Chaney/Collins Baby Mary Margaret was seven weeks old when she died from whooping cough on June 9, 1943. In her later years, Maggie suffered with dementia and died on April 8, 2016. Annette has fought for the truth about what happened to her sister who is named on the children's death register in Tuam. She is a member of the advisory committee to the director of the intervention and is preparing for the exhumation, promised to take place in June — and hoping all of the children will be found. 'It's the euphoria that it is actually happening after all this time,' she explained. 'It is also not wanting to get your hopes up that there is going to be some sort of satisfactory outcome to it. 'Being on the advisory board, I do know how difficult and complicated it's going to be. 'I'd like to feel realistic about the possibilities, but I am also dreading going back to that site to see it again, because now its real, it's concrete, the work of trying to get something done is different to all those dark secrets that might finally be exposed. 'What will be the truth of what is actually there, will we really get answers?' Annette recalled visiting the site in 2014 when news of the mass grave first emerged. 'It was raining and dreary and we stood on the site with my cousin,' she explained. 'My cousin said, 'You do know there are unburied babies underneath our feet?' 'It is like the day of the vigil and reading the babies' names, we put our cameras down, because suddenly you could feel the power of the place, saying those names out loud. 'When you read their names and their ages — there's hundreds and hundreds of dead children and nobody can explain why. I am glad on the one hand this has happened, and I've longed to see the end of that place. 'But it is also the banality of evil, in one side of that site is what we know to be the Tuam grave, but then there's a playground beside it. Everything that is normal but abnormal. There are happy children in the playground, but they are living in a place where there are dead children under their feet. She said all she can hope for is that 'all of the children will be found and accounted for'. 'I just hope at the end of it we don't come to a place where there are still so many missing. 'What will Tuam reveal? What will it really tell us? "Those babies will never be here again, they are short, miserable lives, and we owe it to them to give them some dignity.' Chrissie Tully, 94, Loughrea, Co Galway Chrissie Tully sat on her small velvet-covered orange sofa in the living room at the front of her home as two forensic specialists swabbed the inside of her mouth. As the only known surviving mother of the Tuam home, she has lived the past 76 years of her life with two heartbreaking scenarios. Her baby boy Michael arrived into the world on December 13, 1949, but died and lies buried somewhere in the Tuam grave, or he was adopted and is alive somewhere, possibly in the US, and unaware of his origins. 'I just remember the pain when I went into labour,' Chrissie said. 'I was in the Tuam home. I had this unmerciful pain, and the nuns said they would have to get me into the hospital in Galway.' The then 18-year-old was rushed to Galway Central Hospital where her baby boy was delivered. 'That's all I know is that he was a boy,' she said. 'I never saw his face and they said he was upside down in the womb. 'They went off with him and came back and said, 'the child died'. I didn't even get a cup of tea. I had nothing. 'I went back to living my life as a domestic, a priest gave me a job.' In 1955, Chrissie discovered she was pregnant again, with her partner who was 'not the marrying type'. 'He went off to England, he didn't have any children as far as I know. Then one day two gardaí came and brought Chrissie to the station in Loughrea. 'There was an old judge there and he said, 'If you don't tell us who the father of your children is we will put you in jail.' Chrissie laughed because 'laughing is all I can do now, if you can't laugh you would die. Chrissie Tully, from Loughrea, with her son Patrick Naughton. Picture: Hany Marzouk 'I told him, 'Go ahead so'. I wasn't afraid of him, sure I'd have nothing to lose; I was already the talk of the town. 'I went back to Tuam, my mother never sent me anything in case the women in the post office would read the address on the parcel. I never got any visitors or presents or letters." Recently, through the generosity of strangers, Chrissie raised €72,000 to buy her council home in case Michael is alive. 'I can't say what happened to him I can't find where he was buried, and we did look everywhere.' There is one record that states 'return to the Tuam home' and that one sentence haunts Chrissie. 'I have been sick a lot lately, the idea he is in that pit. I don't think I could face that,' she said. 'It hurts so much. I went to Tuam two years ago and one woman looked at me and said, 'I can't find my baby' and I wanted to run away. 'I pray for him every night. To think he might be in a hole in a pipe somewhere. If he is found he will be buried with me. "But nobody can tell me anything, and that is why I want to leave this home for him. There is also the idea he is alive — you can't trust the nuns.' Thomas Garavan, 64, Co Mayo Professor Thomas Garavan has been unable to find burial details for his nine-month-old aunt Teresa Angela Daly who died in Tuam in 1936 as — on her death certificate, she appears as Angela Daly. His mother, Margaret Daly, nee Garavan, aged 93, is now in a nursing home with dementia and is non-verbal. 'I'm acting for my mother now; I am her legal representative,' he said. 'Nobody ever knew about my mother's sister until we got the records. 'Nobody was told about her, or her death. "My grandparents John and Margaret Daly from Co Mayo were married with no fixed abode and fond of the drink, so the children went into Tuam — but were also separated. 'We got a death cert for Teresa but have never been able to find where she is buried, and she died of meningitis. There are no records that show my grandparents were ever told about her death. 'She went in at nine months old as a healthy baby, she was right in the middle of my mother and her sister, and then the three boys after her. 'We didn't know about her, nobody ever knew about her, my mother and aunts did not know.' Prof Thomas Garavan is 'sceptical about the Tuam exhumation, I wonder given what we know what actually they are going to find out'. Picture: Denis Minihane He said the forthcoming exhumation is difficult because his mother is without memory and will never know if her sister has been found. 'When my mother was well, we did our DNA tests, we have all taken part in that process, so that bit is out of the way, and that is great. 'But I can't tell my mother, she has no talk out of her at her at all, she is 92 and her sister 97 and both of them are in nursing homes." While the majority of the children who died in Tuam were born to unmarried mothers, Thomas' family was different. 'They were the children of a married couple who were unable to raise their children' he said. 'All seven were taken and put into Tuam but separated, they found each other with no help from the State. 'I am sceptical about the Tuam exhumation, I wonder given what we know what actually they are going to find out. 'What condition are the bones in? Is there any potential to extract DNA and is the science good? 'My mother is a full sibling, so there is a good chance of a match if my aunt is found. But I don't know. 'My aunt died in 1936, that is a long time ago, so anything is possible, but it leaves me with more questions. 'I would like to know what happened to her and where is she buried, I would have her reinterred with her mother in Mayo. She is buried alone, my grandfather died in 1942, and my grandmother never claimed him, and he was put into a pauper's grave. 'It really paints a picture of the sort of family they were, and my aunt did not deserve to die in Tuam, but all we can hope for is that all of the children are found.'
