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News.com.au
a day ago
- Health
- News.com.au
Ireland prepares to excavate 'mass grave' at mother and baby home
Over a decade since a historian discovered an unmarked mass burial site for children at a former mother and baby home in western Ireland, workers finally began on Monday to prepare for extensive excavations. A crew sealed off the site in Tuam, 135 miles (220 kilometres) west of Dublin, in preparation for beginning to dig for any remains next month. In 2014, local historian Catherine Corless produced evidence that 796 children, from newborns to a nine-year-old, died at Tuam's mother and baby home. Her research pointed to the children's likely final resting place -- a disused septic tank discovered in 1975. Significant quantities of baby remains were discovered in an apparently makeshift crypt at the site during test excavations between 2016 and 2017. The home was run by Catholic nuns between 1925 and 1961, and the site was left largely untouched after the institution was knocked down in 1972. It was Corless's discovery of the unmarked mass burial site that led to an Irish Commission of Investigation into the so-called mother and baby home. n findings published in 2021, the commission said there had been "disquieting" levels of infant mortality at the institutions. "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 last month in Tuam. "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. - Babies taken from mothers - Women who became pregnant out of wedlock were siloed in the so-called mother and baby homes by Irish society, the state and the Catholic church, which has historically held an iron grip on Irish social attitudes. After giving birth at the homes, mothers were then separated from their newborn children, who were often given up for adoption. The state-backed enquiries sparked by the discoveries in Tuam found that 56,000 unmarried women and 57,000 children passed through 18 such homes over the space of 76 years. The commission's report concluded that 9,000 children had died in the homes across Ireland. Often church and state worked in tandem to run the institutions, which still operated in Ireland as recently as 1998. A team was finally appointed in 2023 to lead the Tuam site excavation. It is tasked with recovering, memorialising and re-burying any remains recovered at the site. Sample DNA will be taken from people who have reasonable grounds to believe the remains are those of a close relative.
BBC News
2 days ago
- General
- BBC News
Tuam: Works to enable excavation of mass burial site to start
Works are beginning on Monday to allow the excavation of a mass burial site linked to a historic mother and baby institution in the Republic of 2016, investigators found what they described as "significant quantities of human remains" in underground chambers at the site in Tuam in County confirmed the bodies belonged to babies and children up to three years of former mother and baby institution was run by the Bon Secours Sisters, an order of Catholic nuns, and it closed in 1961. It provided accommodation for unmarried mothers and their children during a period when women were ostracised by Irish society, and often by their own families, if they became pregnant outside excavation work at the site will be overseen by the Office of the Director of Authorised Intervention (ODAIT), an independent office established under the Irish Institutional Burials Act objective is to "recover and forensically analyse, and to memorialise and bury with respect and dignity, human remains recovered from the site".Family members and survivors of the institution will have an opportunity in the coming weeks to view the perimeter of the "forensically controlled site" to see the works being MacSweeney from ODAIT said from the start of works on Monday "the entire site, including the memorial garden, would only be accessible to staff carrying out the will be 24-hour security monitoring."The initial four weeks will involve setting up the site, including the installation of 2.4-metre hoarding around the perimeter," he said."These measures are necessary to ensure the site's forensic integrity and to enable us to carry out the works to the highest international standards that govern the excavation and recovery programme." 'Unique and complex excavation' Mr MacSweeney added it was a "unique and incredibly complex excavation". "The work is expected to take approximately 24 months to complete," he said."The final timetable will depend on many variables, some of which may only become fully clear as the work progresses."The revelations about the burial ground came to international attention when a local historian, Catherine Corless, discovered there were death certificates for 796 children and infants, but no burial Irish government set up a Commission of Investigation into the network of historic mother-and-baby institutions in the found the chambered structure containing the children's remains at Tuam was in a disused sewage work getting under way at the site on Monday is yet another part of a process of discovery which will once more shine a light on a troubling period of Irish social history.
