IRELAND
Sunday Independent
Caroline Crawford
Published 08/06/2014
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’.
One child is described as ‘a miserable, emaciated child with a voracious appetite and no control over bodily functions’, while another is reported to be ’emaciated, with flesh hanging loosely on limbs’.
It also reveals that the home was crowded with 271 children and 61 mothers living there at the same time. This number exceeded the ‘desirable’ level of 243, according to the inspector.
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