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BreakingNews.ie
a day ago
- Health
- BreakingNews.ie
Mother of baby who died shortly after birth at Bessborough brings action over inquest refusal
A woman whose son died shortly after his birth at Bessborough mother and baby home has brought High Court proceedings over a coroner's refusal to hold an inquest into the infant's death. Madeleine Bridget Marvier was 17 years old when she was admitted to the home in Blackrock, Cork City, in August 1960. About two months later, she gave birth to her son, William Gerard Walsh. Advertisement In December 1960, at 37 days old, William died at St Finbarr's Hospital, Cork, according to Ms Marvier's court documents. Ms Marvier's case argues an inquest should be held into the infant's death, in circumstances where coroners are obliged to hold inquiries into deaths that are unnatural, suspicious or unexplained. Ciaran Craven SC, appearing with barrister Cillian Bracken for Ms Marvier and her daughter Carmel Cantwell, was on Monday permitted by Ms Justice Mary Rose Gearty to bring the case, seeking to quash the Cork South Coroner's recent decision not to hold an inquest into William's death. In a death certificate, obtained by Ms Marvier in 1999, the infant's cause of death was stated as renal abscess septicaemia, sepsis caused by an abscess in the kidney. Advertisement Ms Marvier was previously unaware as to the cause attributed to her son's death. In 2019, after obtaining documents from Tulsa, Ms Marvier learned for the first time that William had been buried at Carr's Hill Cemetery in Cork, within the jurisdiction of the Cork South Coroner. In October 2023, Ms Marvier wrote to the Cork South Coroner asking that an inquest be held into the death of her son, on the grounds that his death was violent or unnatural, or was unexpected and from unknown causes, or was in suspicious circumstances. Included in her request was a report compiled by Dr Michael Munro, a consultant neonatologist, who opined that the death certificate's stated cause of death was speculative and conjectural. Advertisement In January this year, the coroner wrote to Ms Marvier refusing the request to hold an inquest. The coroner stated William did not die in a violent or unnatural manner, and on the balance of probabilities, did not die unexpectedly or from unknown causes, Ms Marvier's court papers say. Ms Marvier is challenging the coroner's refusal, claiming that a conclusion that the infant's death is beyond doubt 'cannot reasonably be drawn or inferred' and is 'without basis' in the evidence she has put before the coroner. Ms Marvier's case notes the coroner's purported assumption that in the absence of any record of a postmortem examination of the infant, there was no doubt around the cause of death of the infant, and therefore, there is no sufficient evidence available now to cast doubt on the death certificate's cause of death. Ms Marvier claims that the coroner makes this assumption while at the same time acknowledging that medical records pertaining to the infant's care at St Finbarr's are now unavailable, and it is not known what medical skills were employed in establishing William's cause of death. Advertisement Ms Marvier's case also claims the coroner did not have regard for his obligations, under the Constitution and European Convention on Human Rights, to investigate suspicious or unexplained deaths that occur in State custody or detention. The case returns in October. Bessborough mother and baby home was operated by the Sisters of the Sacred Hearts of Jesus and Mary, an order of nuns, between 1922 and 1998. In 2021, the Commission of Investigation into Mother and Baby Homes concluded that 923 babies associated with Bessborough died during that time, but burial records for only 64 of them could be found.
BBC News
15-07-2025
- General
- BBC News
The Interview Catherine Corless, Irish historian: I'm going to be a voice for these children
I'm going to be a voice for these children Chris Page, the BBC's Ireland correspondent speaks to the Irish historian Catherine Corless, who has changed history in her own country. When she began to research a long-closed mother and baby home near where she lived, she encountered local resistance. But her dogged investigation led to the discovery that hundreds of babies and young children were buried in mass, unmarked graves inside a disused sewage tank at the site in Tuam, Ireland. Her work led to the discovery of the scandal of Ireland's historical mother and baby institutions, which housed unmarried mothers and their babies at a time when they were ostracized by Irish society and often their families too. An inquiry launched by the Irish government into the network of homes concluded about nine thousand children died in the eighteen homes investigated. The revelation led to apologies from the Catholic Church in Ireland, the Irish Government, the council which owned the home in Tuam and the religious order which ran the home. The order has also contributed millions of dollars to a compensation scheme, and to the excavation now underway in Tuam. Thank you to Chris Page and Chrissie McGlinchey from the BBC's Ireland bureau for their help in making this programme. The Interview brings you conversations with people shaping our world, from all over the world. The best interviews from the BBC. You can listen on the BBC World Service, Mondays and Wednesdays at 0700 GMT. Or you can listen to The Interview as a podcast, out twice a week on BBC Sounds, Apple, Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts. Presenter: Chris Page Producers: Lucy Sheppard and Chrissie McGlinchey Editor: Nick Holland Get in touch with us on email TheInterview@ and use the hashtag #TheInterviewBBC on social media. (Image: Catherine Corless. Credit: PA)
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.
The Guardian
15-07-2025
- General
- The Guardian
Dig begins at site in Ireland believed to hold remains of nearly 800 infants
A century after Irish nuns first began to bury hundreds of infants in what would become a mass, unmarked grave, archaeologists and other specialists will start excavating the site in Tuam, County Galway. A mechanical digger is to slowly start scraping earth on Monday at the 5,000-sq-metre (53,820 sq ft) site where the Bon Secours order is believed have interred 796 infants who died at the St Mary's mother and baby home between 1925 and 1961. The operation, which is expected to last two years, marks a new stage in Ireland's reckoning with the abuse and neglect of children in religious and state-run institutions, especially those who bore the stigma of being born out of wedlock. Their treatment has been called a stain on the nation's conscience. At St Mary's in Tuam, a so-called mother and baby home where young women and girls were sent to give birth, some infants were buried in a disused subterranean septic tank. There were no burial records and the deaths were ignored until a decade ago when Catherine Corless, a local historian, uncovered death certificates for 796 infants. This led to a judicial commission, a state apology and a promise to excavate the site. 'I'm very, very relieved to know it's happening at last,' said Corless. 'It was a very long haul. It's a bit overwhelming. I've been so long waiting for it. It's a joy for me and for the families that are waiting in hope that they will find their own little relative.' Much of the excavation site – which is in the middle of a housing estate – has been sealed off and the office of the director for authorised intervention in Tuam (Odait) group has done preparatory work. The 18-strong team, which includes archaeologists, anthropologists and other forensic experts from Ireland, the UK, Australia, Colombia, Spain and the US, is led by Daniel MacSweeney, a former International Committee of the Red Cross envoy. The operation aims to recover all the human remains, attempt to identify them, return them to their families and rebury them with dignity. The size and location of the site, water filtration and the co-mingling of remains, plus the proximity of other remains from the 19th-century famine and workhouse eras, made the operation highly complex, said MacSweeney. 'All these together really compound the challenge,' he said. 'This is a recovery to a forensic standard, so it's like a police investigation scene. Our team includes people with expertise in crime scene management. The legislation requires us to call the coroner or the Gardaí [police] if we find evidence of unnatural death.' The digger, which has a special bucket without teeth, would work slowly and pause when archaeologists saw something of interest, said MacSweeney. The team has offices and a laboratory on site that can do preliminary analysis before sending material to a bigger lab. Some relatives of the dead children have provided DNA samples. Sign up to Headlines Europe A digest of the morning's main headlines from the Europe edition emailed direct to you every week day after newsletter promotion The Bon Secours nuns ran their institution with sanction by the Irish state, which overlooked deprivation, misogyny and high infant mortality rates. The Tuam home closed in 1961 and was demolished; a housing estate was built on the site. In 1975 two boys foraging for apples stumbled across human bones in the abandoned septic tank. Authorities took no action until Corless, a former textile factory secretary with an interest in local history, published research that was picked up by local and then national and international media in 2014. The actor Liam Neeson is co-producing a feature film that is to begin filming in Galway later this year. Corless said she hoped the remains, which are about 2 metres below the surface, would be identified and pieced together. 'So many little bones are commingled because water got in. Hopefully they'll be able to match them.' She has passed her records to the excavation team. 'They're top experts in their fields and are just as emotional about the whole thing as I am. They really want to get to the bottom of this.'
Malay Mail
14-07-2025
- Malay Mail
Excavation begins at suspected mass baby grave in Ireland's Tuam mother and baby home scandal
DUBLIN, July 14 — Excavations begin today of an unmarked mass burial site at a former mother and baby home in western Ireland suspected of containing the remains of hundreds of infants and young children. The planned two-year probe by Irish and foreign experts in Tuam comes more than a decade after an amateur historian first uncovered evidence of a mass grave there. Subsequent 2016-2017 test excavations found significant quantities of baby remains in a subterranean disused septic tank at the location, which now sits within a housing complex. Catholic nuns ran a so-called 'mother and baby' institution there between 1925 and 1961, housing women who had become pregnant outside of marriage and been shunned by their families. After giving birth, some children lived in the homes too but many more were given up for adoption under a system that often saw church and state work in tandem. Oppressive and misogynistic, the institutions—which operated nationwide, some not closing until as recently as 1998 — represent a dark chapter in the history of once overwhelmingly Catholic and socially conservative Ireland. A six-year enquiry sparked by the initial discoveries in Tuam found 56,000 unmarried women and 57,000 children passed through 18 such homes over a 76-year period. It also concluded that 9,000 children had died in the various state- and Catholic Church-run homes nationwide. Records unearthed show as many as 796 babies and young children died at the Tuam home over the decades that it operated. Its grounds have been left largely untouched after the institution was knocked down in 1972 and housing was built there. A fierce battle 'These children were denied every human right in their lifetime, as were their mothers,' Anna Corrigan, whose two siblings may have been buried at the Tuam site, told reporters earlier this month. 'And they were denied dignity and respect in death.' Ireland's Office of the Director of Authorised Intervention (ODAIT) will undertake the excavation, alongside experts from Colombia, Spain, Britain, Canada and the United States. It will involve exhumation, analysis, identification if possible, and re-interment of the remains found, its director Daniel MacSweeney told a recent press conference in Tuam. It follows local historian Catherine Corless in 2014 producing evidence that the 796 children—from newborns to a nine-year-old—had died at the home. State-issued death certificates she compiled show that various ailments, from tuberculosis and convulsions to measles and whooping cough, were listed as the cause of death. Corless's research indicated the corpses were likely placed in the disused septic tank discovered in 1975, while prompting the state-backed enquiries that have uncovered the full scandal of the homes. The ODAIT team was finally appointed in 2023 to lead the Tuam site excavation. DNA samples have already been collected from around 30 relatives, and this process will be expanded in the coming months to gather as much genetic evidence as possible, according to MacSweeney. A 2.4-meter-high (7.9 feet) hoarding has been installed around the perimeter of the excavation area, which is also subject to 24-hour security monitoring to ensure its forensic integrity. 'It's been a fierce battle. When I started this nobody wanted to listen. At last we are righting the wrongs,' Corless, 71, told AFP in May. 'I was just begging: 'take the babies out of this sewage system and give them the decent Christian burial that they were denied',' she said. — AFP
