A forensic team has initiated the excavation process at the site of a former “mother and baby home” located in Tuam, Ireland, in an effort to locate the remains of nearly 800 infants and children.
This grim operation will occur at the location where the home – which ceased operations over 60 years ago – once existed, following revelations that as many as 798 children perished there between 1925 and 1961.
According to The Guardian, Catherine Corless, a local historian from County Galway, Ireland, was the first to raise concerns regarding the tragic history of the institution. Corless’ investigations revealed the identities of 798 infants believed to have been interred at the home, with some buried in an abandoned septic tank.
Excavation teams commenced sealing off the site yesterday (June 16), in preparation for the digging for the remains scheduled for next month.
“There are so many babies, children just discarded here,” Corless stated to Agence France-Presse.
Corless claims that numerous children who died at the institution were disposed of in a septic tank known as “the pit.” Only two of the suspected 798 children were formally interred in a nearby cemetery, while the remainder are thought to be resting in a mass grave without coffins or headstones, and with no documentation of their burial.
Corless initially published her research in 2014, although investigations at the site of the former ‘mother and baby home’ trace back to 1975, when two 12-year-old boys uncovered the previously mentioned septic tank, which is reported to have contained human remains.
The so-called ‘mother and baby homes’ were establishments where young women and girls who were pregnant out of wedlock were sent to deliver their babies, instead of doing so in a hospital or at home. Throughout most of the 1900s, these facilities functioned as orphanages and adoption agencies, managed by religious organizations.
In an interview with Sky News, Corless, whose relentless efforts prompted an Irish commission to investigate these homes, expressed, ‘I’m feeling very relieved.’
‘It’s been a long, long journey. Not knowing what’s going to happen, if it’s just going to fall apart or if it’s really going to happen.’
Reports indicate that Ireland had at least 10 such institutions, which accommodated approximately 35,000 single women over the years. Tragically, mothers were frequently separated from their children, or their infants were forcibly placed for adoption.
A 2021 inquiry revealed an ‘appalling level of infant mortality’ in these homes nationwide, with around 9,000 children dying across 18 institutions.
The Sisters of Bon Secours, a religious order of Catholic nuns who managed the Tuam home where excavations have recently commenced, extended their ‘profound apologies.’ However, Corless still struggles to comprehend how such inhumanity could occur.
‘The church preached to care for the vulnerable, the elderly, and the orphaned, yet for some inexplicable reason, they never included illegitimate children in their own mindset,’ she remarked.
‘I can never, ever understand how they could do that to little babies, little toddlers. Beautiful little vulnerable children.’