Up to one-third of infants died in homes ...

Breaking News
June 8, 2014

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Up to one-third of infants died in homes in Dublin, Tipp and Cork in 1933

Up to a third of infants died in mother and baby homes in Dublin, Tipperary and Cork in 1933.

Newly released archive material from the Dublin Archdiocese, show mortality rates in Tuam were either matched or exceeded, by homes elsewhere in the country.

Pelletstwon in Cabra, Sean Ross Abbey in Roscrea and Bessborough in Cork had death rates of up to one-third in 1933.

The General Registration Office is to carry out a trawl of death certificates in the hope of establishing the exact number of deaths in all seven mother and baby homes.

The GRO was the source used by historian and genealogist Catherine Corless, who revealed the fact that 796 babies died in Tuam.

Conor Mulvagh is a lecturer in Irish History in UCD, he published the latest findings in today's Sunday Business Post.

He says cause of these deaths is unclear, but there would of been a number of contributing factors.

"The level of overcrowding in these homes was unimaginable - it was a real crisis not just in religious orders, but in Irish society, in terms of the treatment of mothers who were unmarried."

"When you're looking at a country with a high birth-rate but also a low marriage rate – it goes back to the land issue, eve, that these mothers …w ere cast out by their families and put at the mercy of these religious institutions, who took them in when no-one else would."