Religion
Related: About this forumIrish baby scandal: forced vaccine trials.
JUNIOR Health Minister Kathleen Lynch has called for controversial vaccine trials carried out in mother and baby homes to form part of any forthcoming Government's inquiry into Catholic Church-run institutions.
Ms Lynch, who campaigned for children forced to take part in vaccine trials while in State care, said she "hit a brick wall" after a Supreme Court ruling blocked a previous government investigation.
And she said the new inquiry would be a "waste of time" if it did not investigate the infamous vaccine trials.
The minister told the Sunday Independent: "What I'll be asking is that whatever investigation that takes place that this should be looked at as well."
- See more at: http://m.independent.ie/irish-news/news/forced-trials-for-vaccines-need-to-be-included-in-inquiry-into-mother-and-baby-homes-30337258.html#sthash.qrSdG8sF.dpuf
Let the google gallop begin.
trotsky
(49,533 posts)Their lives were not as valuable as those of children born to a married couple.
If someone doesn't want this horrid and repulsive religious belief to be discussed, I can see why they'd post 50 Google results to bomb the thread and make it about ANYTHING else.
Warren Stupidity
(48,181 posts)Officially ok to call some believers odious shitheels. I'm just wondering if we can get a list of which sets of theists qualify.
trotsky
(49,533 posts)It's also OK to call some of them "dumbasses" while chewing out people for not respecting the religious beliefs of others.
Never have gotten the lowdown on this, only hemming and hawing about how the "dumbass" label only applied to people with certain beliefs acting on those beliefs as legislators, rather than as people with religious beliefs. (Never mind that then there is criticism of expecting people to separate their religious beliefs from their political goals.)
Double standards ROCK if you're the one setting them!
rug
(82,333 posts)Dorian Gray
(13,517 posts)is disgraceful and a travesty. I am very happy that attitudes have changed. Even if a hardline attitude was taken against the mothers' sins (which I do not support at all!), the babies should have always been treated with love and care.
beam me up scottie
(57,349 posts)The apologists don't seem to be bothered by their conscience, maybe they can explain how they'd square this with their Saviour.
I've been told christians are morally superior, if this is true now would be the time to prove it.
rug
(82,333 posts)I wouldn't want to think you're using these deaths to trot out a tired old anti-Christian argument.
beam me up scottie
(57,349 posts)I don't have an omnipotent vengeful deity looking over my shoulder.
rug
(82,333 posts)Okey dokey, "you're using these deaths to trot out a tired old anti-Christian argument" it is.
beam me up scottie
(57,349 posts)And no one on DU would ever claim that christians are special.
rug
(82,333 posts)I especially interested in that last assertion.
beam me up scottie
(57,349 posts)beam me up scottie
(57,349 posts)But I'd rather watch you try to make this all about me instead of addressing the atrocity cited in the op.
Do go on.
rug
(82,333 posts)Your unsubstantiated claims.
It would be much more productive to discuss what actually happened here without stepping over your antireligious biases in every other post.
beam me up scottie
(57,349 posts)Here's your chance to teach me how to be productive and unbiased like you.
rug
(82,333 posts)I do not think there was a mass murder by nuns 40 years ago.
I do not think they are victims of Mengelean experimentation.
I do think they were not well-cared for and neglected, sometimes grossly neglected.
I do think the Irish government saw these institutions as a cheap solution to child welfare concerns.
I do think orphanages were far more common before legalized abortion.
What I do not know is why nothing was done after these bodies were discovered decades ago nor how they got there in the first place.
beam me up scottie
(57,349 posts)About the orphanages, have you read the information from these sources?:
Leading Irish archbishop warns of more mass graves at other convents around the country as he calls for independent inquiry
The Archbishop of Dublin called on the Irish government to establish a fully-fledged independent inquiry into secret graveyards for infants and mothers consigned to nursing homes run by the Roman Catholic church in the last century.
Dr Diarmuid Martin, the second-highest ranking prelate in the country, said only an independent commission of investigation with judicial powers could address public concerns in the wake of the discovery of a mass grave of infants and children found in the grounds of a convent run by the Bon Secours order of nuns in Tuam, Co Galway last week.
The Government has established a preliminary inter-departmental official inquiry to set the scope of a more thorough investigation.
"The indications are that if something happened in Tuam it probably happened in other mother-and-baby homes around the country," Archbishop Martin told state radio. "That's why I believe we need a full-bodied investigation."
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/ireland/10885038/More-Irish-mass-graves-likely-to-be-found-warns-Archbishop-of-Dublin.html
***
The Irish government is to investigate the extent and cause of deaths of hundreds of babies found in a mass grave at the mother and baby home in Tuam, Co Galway.
A group of experts in various fields is being appointed to carry out the investigation, which will also establish whether there are other mass graves elsewhere in the country.
***
Kenny acknowledged the mass grave had been known about for more than forty years and that inspection reports going back to the 1930s are amongst Dail records.
"Many of the revelations are deeply disturbing and a shocking reminder of a darker past in Ireland when our children were not cherished as they should have been," Flanagan said Wednesday.
http://www.irishsun.com/index.php/sid/222647361/scat/aba4168066a10b8d/ht/40-years-after-becoming-common-knowledge-Irish-government-to-investigate-mass-graves
rug
(82,333 posts)I have yet to see a church teaching that advocates, let alone condone, child neglect.
What I do see is an institution that for decades served as a quasi-official placement of last resort.
Where do you think the government was while this was going on for decades?
beam me up scottie
(57,349 posts)I was asking two separate questions, sorry I wasn't more clear.
And I have yet to see a church teaching that advocates sexual abuse of children and yet it still happened, the Catholic Church knew about the abuse and only cared about protecting the priests. So I do not share your faith in that particular institution.
Telling women that they have to bear children that they cannot care for isn't advocating child welfare.
The nuns abused, neglected and starved children to death, which Church teaching were they following?
Sorry, you can't blame this on the government.
The government doesn't legislate morality, the Catholic Church does.
rug
(82,333 posts)It failed them. So did these caretakers.
Sorry, you can't blame this on church teaching.
beam me up scottie
(57,349 posts)I blame all of the good decent christians who did nothing to stop it even though their Lord commanded them to.
How anyone can deny or defend the people who perpetrated this atrocity is beyond me.
rug
(82,333 posts)you were actually saying it had nothing to do with teachings of the catholic Church.
Before you start blaming "all of the good decent christians who did nothing to stop it even though their Lord commanded them to" - and the nuns - maybe you should find out exactly who did what. Otherwise, wholesale accusations against an entire identified group is no more than shoddy bigotry.
Oh, and while you're at it, why don't you blame the government that was on actual notice since 1947.
beam me up scottie
(57,349 posts)Why do you refuse to acknowledge that the Church is also culpable?
Catholic bishops apologised for the "hurt caused by the Church" as Taoiseach Enda Kenny ordered a wide-ranging investigation into what he branded the "abominable" way mothers and babies were treated in religious-run homes.
The probe will look at death rates and burial practices at the homes, as well as illegal adoptions and vaccine trials.
The bishops conference said in a statement: The investigation should inquire into how these homes were funded and, crucially, how adoptions were organised and followed up.
We also support the Irish Governments intention to publish legislation on tracing rights for adopted children and their mothers with due regard to the rights of all involved.
The bishops statement added that the scandal reminds us of a time when unmarried mothers were often judged, stigmatised and rejected by society, including the Church.
http://www.irishexaminer.com/ireland/bishops-apologise-as-kenny-orders-religious-homes-probe-271650.html
rug
(82,333 posts)But my overriding concern is to learn what happened, how it happened and why it happened.
beam me up scottie
(57,349 posts)And it didn't.
Why?
rug
(82,333 posts)beam me up scottie
(57,349 posts)Answer my question.
rug
(82,333 posts)And familiar.
Yes, the Government was SUPPOSED TO PROTECT AND CARE FOR THE CHILDREN IN THAT HOME.
As were the caregivers.
As to why, that's why facts are more needed than rhetoric.
beam me up scottie
(57,349 posts)You look like you need some help.
rug
(82,333 posts)I'm sure they have a monopoly.
beam me up scottie
(57,349 posts)You went into deep denial.
You make pointing out hypocrisy easy.
rug
(82,333 posts)Frankly, the first thing that comes to my mind when hearing about 800 dead bodies in a septic tank is not Bible quotes and Christian hypocrisy.
YMMV.
beam me up scottie
(57,349 posts)who were supposed to care for children placed in their home, asking why said christians were responsible should be the first thing that comes to mind.
Your outrage at outrage directed at the outrageous crimes committed by members of your faith is, however, duly noted.
And completely predictable.
If the op wanted to illuminate the depths some christians will go through to protect the reputation of their church by denying and defending atrocities, I'd say he got his money's worth.
Well done.
struggle4progress
(118,379 posts)What we would really want, I think, is something like a breakdown of the Home population by age and year, a breakdown of the deaths by age and year and cause, indications of annual funding, and all reports we can find on conditions at the Home
There is one statistic that rather stands out
Of the 800 children who died at Tuam between 1925 and 1961, about 300 died in the period 1943-1946. Thus the average number of annual deaths 300/4 = 75.0 in those four years is almost 5 times higher than the number of annual deaths 500/32 = 15.6 in the other thirty-two years
To make good sense of these figures, we might want to convert to mortality rates, for which we actually need to know the facility population during the years in question, but it's a striking difference: in the mid-1940s, there were on average just under three child deaths a fortnight, and in the remaining period on average just over one child death every other fortnight
A 1947 inspection report indicates: ... 34 per cent of children died in the home in 1943; 25 per cent died in 1944; 23 per cent died in 1945. More than one-in-four (27 per cent) of children living in the home in 1946 lost their lives that year ... The average of these mortality rates leads to something like 27%, which together with the 75 deaths per year for the period we estimated above suggests an occupancy of 278: the actual 1947 report indicates 271 children were living there. So it natural to believe that the Home was overcrowded for many years in the mid-1940s
The situation seems to have been similar at other Homes in the WWII era:
... death rates for children in the Sean Ross Abbey home ... between 1930 and 1945, reach<ed> a peak of 42% in 1942, when 73 out of 170 children born there died. In Bessborough, in that same year, 53 out of 106 children born died a death rate of 50%. The following year the figure was even higher, with 60 out of 106 children dying ...
I've posted in another thread in this group a graphic showing a general WWII era mortality rate increase for children in Ireland.
Why might we see such spikes in total deaths or death rates in the WWII era? Ireland, though independent from the UK from 1921 and officially neutral in WWII, still suffered the effects of the war: a state of emergency was declared; the battle of the Atlantic affected shipping to all the Isles, including Ireland; food became scarcer; and both food and vital services (such as electricity and gas) were rationed
Under these circumstances, the condition of the poor worsens. So it might be natural to expect increases in the numbers of abandoned infants, as well as increases in the numbers of women experimenting with prostitution to make ends meet -- either of which could increase crowding of the homes
The 1947 inspector's report is quite unhappy: it reports malnutrition and starvation in the Home. But before we rush to blame the nuns, perhaps we should note that County Galway owned and funded the Home, which was merely administered for the county under contract with the Bon Secours. The contract in the late 1920s provided 10 shillings (that is, 120 pence) weekly per head, or about 17 pence per day for all costs, and was sometimes contested as being too generous. It is, of course, possible that the deteriorated WWII economy in Ireland might also be expected to limit county budgets
It's fine with me if you dislike Catholicism: you have every right to hold your own opinion. But if you want to blame the Bon Secours sisters for the deaths in the Tuam home, I think you have some obligation to make a better argument than merely pointing and yelling, Ick! Catholics!
And when you make your argument, you should try to get your facts right: your link speaks of the discovery of
but the site in question at the location of the former Home is actually the location of the old county workhouse, which was converted into the Home; the Bon Secours convent was a kilometer away; and no mass grave has been found so far on the old county workhouse, beyond the graves of some famine victims discovered perhaps three years ago elsewhere on the former property of the old county workhouse
beam me up scottie
(57,349 posts)That fact is indisputable.
Why.
I don't want more excuses and misdirection.
They were directly responsible for the day to day care and feeding.
Why did christians do this?
Because I was under the impression that they were supposed to protect them.
Why.
Didn't.
They?
struggle4progress
(118,379 posts)http://www.independent.ie/irish-news/news/children-at-tuam-home-were-emaciated-and-starved-30337248.html
beam me up scottie
(57,349 posts)Are you fucking serious?
Did you just weed through most of the report and only cite the part where they lied about the conditions?
Inspectors' 1947 report reveals the extent of abuse at nuns' care home
THE full extent of the horrendous conditions children were forced to live in at the Tuam mother-and-baby home, where up to 300 infants are buried, are revealed in an official inspector's report obtained by the Sunday Independent.
The damning 1947 report, compiled after a visit to the home, paints a picture as grim as the harrowing accounts of starved children that emerged from Romanian orphanages after the fall of Ceausescu in the early 1990s.
It tells how children were suffering from malnutrition and in many instances were pot-bellied a sign of starvation. The report records children as having wizened limbs, with many described as being 'mentally defective'.
***
"The report just talks about the children as they found them. The inspectors called to the home every other year and a copy of the report from 1947 shows the state of the emaciated babies. It's in the report, there's no denying it.
"The truth needs to be known. You can see the state of the babies from it, they were recorded as not thriving and with emaciated limbs. When you see that, you can't just hide that away. Pot-bellied is a sign of hunger. You can't hide the truth of it," she added.
Revolting.
struggle4progress
(118,379 posts)beam me up scottie
(57,349 posts)If you want me to respond to your posts make them worthy of a response.
Why did you only post part of the report?
Did you not read it?
struggle4progress
(118,379 posts)to a news story about it; so if you discover how to get access to the whole thing, do let us know
I've quoted several parts of it by now
In my #32, I further quoted from the report that "the care given to infants in the Home is good, the Sisters are careful and attentive; diets are excellent. It is not here that we must look for cause of the death rate"
Earlier, in my #28, I not only quoted mortality rates for 1943, 1944, 1945, and 1946 from the report, I also noted out that it reports malnutrition and starvation in the Home
Malnutrition can result from various medical causes, including cancer, liver disease, schizophrenia, ulcerative colitis, dysphagia, persistent diarrhoea or persistent vomiting, congenital heart disease, cystic fibrosis, or cerebral palsy. Perhaps an inadequate water supply for or crowding of the Home spread diarrheal diseases affecting digestive absorption. Perhaps children with problems like tremor or cerebral palsy were abandoned at the Home
There are many possibilities. I don't know the full story here, but it might be useful to understand more accurately what happened
beam me up scottie
(57,349 posts)You even misrepresent your own posts.
Catholic bishops are apologizing for these crimes while you repeatedly refuse to acknowledge the facts cited in your own links.
I think I'm done with you.
struggle4progress
(118,379 posts)beam me up scottie
(57,349 posts)ugh.
I need a shower.
struggle4progress
(118,379 posts)Prasad S. Kulkarni
About 7.6 million children under the age of five die every year, according to 2010 figures, out of these 2.4 million children die from vaccine preventable diseases ...
Most of the vaccine studies are conducted in children, some of them in infants and even in newborns because that is where you want to catch them for prevention of an infection. However, children by themselves are unable to consent, and the vaccinator has to accept a legal guardian's agreement. Also, one would expect children to experience more adverse reactions than adults. For these and many other reasons, it is generally agreed that vaccine studies are, at least primarily, unethical in children if the relevant investigation can be done among adults. The main problem here is, however, that many infections are characteristically only pediatric diseases, or at least, those infections are specially harmful to the youngest ...
Age de-escalation means that phase I and II trials are conducted first in adults, then in older children, and finally, if relevant, in small children ... However, if a new vaccine is only for infants, trials in older children may expose them to unnecessary risks without giving any benefit to these too old vaccinees ...
struggle4progress
(118,379 posts)Jun 9, 2014
Yesterdays papers reported that 2,051 children in care homes in Bessborough, Cork and Sean Ross Abbey, Tipperary were involved in secret vaccine trials in Ireland ...
Certain reports claim that some of these trials were carried out in the 1930s.[11] At this time, research ethics and law around the world had not started to develop in any meaningful way ... The only directly relevant Irish law during the time was the Therapeutic Substances Act 1932, which set out the legal requirements for obtaining licences to conduct research with any therapeutic substance in the State. It does not, however, deal with issues regarding requirements for the involvement of children in clinical trials ...
If an inquiry goes ahead, it will need to look at whether the trials were legal in the sense that they complied with the Therapeutic Substances Act 1932. From an ethical perspective, the inquiry could go beyond this and address issues about whether the trials exposed the children to unacceptable levels of risk and whether they were conducted in the absence of informed consent. In this regard, it must be noted that, informed consent alone does not necessarily make a trial ethically acceptable, if the trial had an unethically high level of risk, for example. In addition, if consent was received, it could be asked whether it was appropriate for the protection of these children. For example, it was claimed that the mother, manager or medical officer were asked for consent for the involvement of the children in the vaccine trials.[14] However, the question is whether these individuals were appropriate guardians of the childrens interests. Generally, the consent of parents or legal guardians is sought, as it presumed that parents will seek to protect their child. It cannot be assumed that managers of residential homes or medical officers would have automatically played this role on behalf of the children. Moreover, even if consent were sought from the mothers, given their apparent lack of freedom to make decisions regarding either themselves or their babies, it is perhaps unlikely that they would they have been in the position to refuse consent ...
It must also be borne in mind that legal and ethical standards were particularly underdeveloped at the time of these trials. Thus, if unethical conduct is thought to have occurred, this will be as a result of an inadequate legal and ethical governance framework in the area, as opposed to breaches of specific legal and ethical standards at the time. This lack of a comprehensive framework for the involvement of human subjects in research was unfortunately not unique to Ireland during the time these trials took place and is thought to have contributed to various appalling research scandals and violations of human rights around the world ...
http://humanrights.ie/children-and-the-law/vaccine-trials-on-children-in-residential-settings-legal-and-ethical-perspectives/
struggle4progress
(118,379 posts)Comptes rendus de lAcadémie des science
Séance du 26 octobre 1885
p. 765-773 et p. 774
... unexpectedly on the 6th of July last, three persons from Alsace presented themselves at my laboratory: Theodore Vone, grocer from Meissengot, near Schlestadt, bitten on the arm 4 July, by his own dog that had become rabid; Joseph Meister, 9 years old, also bitten on 4 July at 8 in the morning by the same dog. This child knocked to the ground by the dog carried numerous bites on the hand, legs, thighs, some rather deep that made his walking difficult. The principal bites had been cauterized only twelve hours earlier with carbolic acid, 4 July at 8 p.m. By Dr. Weber of the town. The third person who hadnt been bitten was the mother of little Joseph Meister ...
... M. Vulpian as well as Dr. Grancher, professor at the Faculty of medicine, were good enough to come to see immediately little Joseph Meister and to establish the condition and number of his wounds. There were not less than 14.
The opinion of our wise colleague and of Dr. Grancher was that by the intensity and the number of bites, Joseph Meister was almost inevitably to come down with rabies ...
... I carried the number of inoculations to 13 and to 10 the number of days of treatment ... In the last days, I had thus inoculated Joseph Meister with the most virulent rabid virus, that of the dog made more potent by a great number of rabbit to rabbit passages, a virus that gives rabies to these animals after seven days of incubation ... Joseph Meister has thus escaped, not only from rabies that his bites would have produced, but also from that which I had inoculated him with in order to check his immunity produced by the treatment -- a rabies more virulent than that of ordinary canine rabies ...
http://www.foundersofscience.net/Rabies.htm
trotsky
(49,533 posts)Rob H.
(5,354 posts)struggle4progress
(118,379 posts)and such questions are complicated, because they involve balancing a number of factors, including the trade-offs between imperfectly known risks and imperfectly known benefits
An earlier form of the practice ("variolation" involved deliberate inoculation of persons with pus from smallpox lesions, when the source-case was believed to represent a relatively mild form of the disease. Certain ethical dilemmas are already evident in that practice, since it involved some judgment-call about how virulent the pus chosen actually was, as well as some speculative trade-off between the actual danger of infecting someone with a known smallpox contagion and the danger that the person to be inoculated might become exposed to a more dangerous form of smallpox at a later date
In the late eighteenth century, Jenner tested folk-legends that a prior case swinepox or cowpox might prevent smallpox. The methods by which he tested his theories would be regarded as entirely unethical today: they included inoculation of persons (including children) with smallpox material, after a known or reported or deliberately-induced case of swinepox or cowpox. The story eventually ends, of course, with the worldwide eradication of smallpox in the twentieth century
The story of Pasteur's development of a rabies vaccine similarly involves behavior that would be considered highly unethical today, and the case indicated in my post upthread is only one of the examples that could be cited illustrating Pasteur's questionable activities in testing his vaccine. Note that, at the end of his treatment of Joseph Meister, Pasteur went far beyond what he thought might suffice to protect Meister from rabies and deliberately injected Meister with material he knew could itself quickly produce a fatal case of rabies -- and that he did so solely in order to check his immunity
The ethical standards for such trials have evolved considerably since the times of Jenner or Pasteur, but many of the fundamental ethical dilemmas remain. Jenner and Pasteur were no doubt convinced that the risks, to which they might expose others, might outweigh the potential benefits -- and such thinking continues in modern vaccination trials
The modern standards, of course, will require considerably more research into potential risks and benefits -- and one nowadays probably hopes to consider potential risk and benefit to the vaccine-trial participant, rather than mere risk and benefit to society-as-a-whole
Beyond the question -- Were past vaccine-trials legal under the laws of the time? -- one can ask to what degree such past trials meet, or fail to meet, more modern ethical standards. The over-arching question here seems to me: Were the vaccine-trial participants exposed to risks that outweighed the benefits they might reasonably have been expected to receive by participating in the trials? If, as reported, several thousand Irish children in such homes between 1930 and 1936 were given experimental diphtheria vaccinations by Burroughs-Wellcome, then the trade-off is between the known dangers of the vaccine and the known risk of diphtheria at the beginning of the trial: if evidence at the time suggested the vaccine itself posed few dangers and might protect against the disease, but the risk of diphtheria itself was high in the experimental population, then one might think the test was ethical
struggle4progress
(118,379 posts)http://www.skepticalraptor.com/skepticalraptorblog.php/irish-catholic-childrens-home-scandal-its-vaccines/
Warren Stupidity
(48,181 posts)struggle4progress
(118,379 posts)in favor of clinical trials which might improve the lives of the test populations?
beam me up scottie
(57,349 posts)A group of experts in various fields is being appointed to carry out the investigation, which will also establish whether there are other mass graves elsewhere in the country.
Taoiseach Enda Kenny has appointed the Minister for Children Charlie Flanagan to set up the investigating panel.
Kenny acknowledged the mass grave had been known about for more than forty years and that inspection reports going back to the 1930s are amongst Dail records.
"Many of the revelations are deeply disturbing and a shocking reminder of a darker past in Ireland when our children were not cherished as they should have been," Flanagan said Wednesday.
http://www.irishsun.com/index.php/sid/222647361/scat/aba4168066a10b8d/ht/40-years-after-becoming-common-knowledge-Irish-government-to-investigate-mass-graves
struggle4progress
(118,379 posts)There were some famine-era burial found in 2012 on one part of the former workhouse grounds (Area I)
Corless believes there is a mass grave in the walled Area 4, but so far it seems to be hypothetical
okasha
(11,573 posts)You ought to know by now that facts are irrelevant to the posters you're dealing with.
struggle4progress
(118,379 posts)A number of standard media seem to be getting the story wrong at every turn
okasha
(11,573 posts)Much of the coverage is of the leads-if-it-bleeds variety, starting with the so-far undiscovered "mass grave." But what's really revealing is the way some posters have added their own fictional embellishments.
beam me up scottie
(57,349 posts)So sweet.
I'll leave you two alone.
beam me up scottie
(57,349 posts)Kenny acknowledged the mass grave had been known about for more than forty years and that inspection reports going back to the 1930s are amongst Dail records.
"Many of the revelations are deeply disturbing and a shocking reminder of a darker past in Ireland when our children were not cherished as they should have been," Flanagan said Wednesday.
If you'd bothered to read either my post or the article you'd have realized that I didn't cite Corliss.
I don't think your reading comprehension skills are that poor, which means you're misrepresenting my post.
Again.
struggle4progress
(118,379 posts)... Catherine Corless has been looking into the Mother and Baby Home run by nuns in Tuam for years. The home, which was active between 1925 and 1961, took in single women who were pregnant, which was considered a terribly sinful state to be in in early to mid-twentieth century Ireland. Corless discovered two things during her research: first, that between 1925 and 1961, the deaths of 796 children were registered by the nuns who ran the Tuam home; and secondly that in 1975 two boys in Tuam discovered an old septic tank on the grounds of the then-closed home, smashed through the concrete covering and saw skeletal remains inside. A fairly vague posting about these findings was put on to a Facebook page, and then all hell broke loose. The media got a whiff of Corlesss findings and turned them into the stuff of nightmares. Bodies of 800 babies, long-dead, found in septic tank at former Irish home for unwed mothers, declared the Washington Post. 800 skeletons of babies found inside tank at former Irish home for unwed mothers, said the New York Daily News. Galway historian finds 800 babies in septic tank grave, said the Boston Globe. The bodies of 800 babies were found in the septic tank of a former home for unwed mothers in Ireland, cried Buzzfeed ...
... Although the media attributed the dumped in a septic tank allegation to Catherine Corless, a local amateur historian, she denies making it. Her attempt to correct the record was reported by the Irish Times newspaper on Saturday (see here) but has been almost entirely ignored by the same global media that so gleefully recycled the original suggestion. That suggestion, which seems to have first surfaced in the Mail on Sunday, a London-based newspaper, reflected appallingly on the Sisters of Bon Secours, the order of Catholic nuns at the center of the scandal. Today the Irish Times has published a readers letter that has further undercut the story. Finbar McCormick, a professor of geography at Queens University Belfast, sharply admonished the media for describing the childrens last resting place as a septic tank. He added: The structure as described is much more likely to be a shaft burial vault, a common method of burial used in the recent past and still used today in many part of Europe ...
... Minister for Education Ruairí Quinn has backed calls for the establishment of an independent inquiry into mother and baby homes, saying it was important to find out the facts ... I have read much of the stuff over the weekend that is now in the public domain and it is quite different to what in fact the banner headlines were suggesting when this story first broke, he said ... Mr Quinn said there was a suggestion in an Australian newspaper that 850 skeletons of young children were found on the site of the former mother and baby home in Tuam. He described the assertion as sensationalism and said it was different to the facts that are known ...
... That 796 children, mainly babies, died at St. Marys Mother and Baby Home between 1925 and its closing in 1961 is not disputed. A local historian, Catherine Corless, says she researched the death certificates. What troubled her was that she could find burial records for only one child and wanted a plaque to commemorate the lives of the others. Ms. Corless surmised that the childrens bodies were interred in a septic tank behind the home, and she then met a local man who said he had seen bones there while playing as a child. While even she acknowledges that the conclusion was a circumstantial leap, once it was picked up in the local press, it was sensational enough to rocket around the globe, becoming a story of a disused septic tank brimming with bone ... Where and how the bodies of the children were actually disposed of remains a mystery ...
CATHERINE CORLESS, a farmer, housewife and local historian in Tuam, a small town in the west of Ireland, struggled for four years to establish the truth about two questions: how many children died in a local mother-and-baby home between 1925 and 1961, and where were their bodies buried? Although she received little help, she has succeeded in answering the first question. A government inquiry should soon help to answer the second ... The revelation of the very large number of baby deaths, and the suggestion, as yet unproven, that many infants may have been buried in a mass grave in the grounds of the former care-home, has stirred the national conscience ... By painstakingly collecting the death certificates of the deceased children at the home, Ms Corless has established both their number and how they had died. But where they were buried remains mostly a mystery, as no burial records exist for these children. A first step in solving it was made when two young boys found an estimated 20 skeletons buried in a small hole in 1975. No official investigation followed that discovery. Some thought the bones could have been the remains of famine victims from the mid-19th century. Ms Corless concluded that many of the babies were buried in an unofficial graveyard at the back of the former home ...