IRELAND
Irish Examiner
By Michael Clifford
THE Tuam babies story this week says much about the past, but about the present also.
The graveyard in the grounds of the former so-called mother-and-baby home was first discovered by two 12-year-old boys, in 1975. One of them opened the concrete cover and was met with the horror below. Pretty quickly, the cover was drawn across again. In the 1970s, the past had not yet been acknowledged. Indeed, the past wasn’t even past.
The next major juncture in the story was last October, by which time local historian, Catherine Corless, had painstakingly compiled and matched records from the home. Corless concluded that the concrete tank must contain most, if not all, of the nearly 800 infants who had died in the home during its existence, between 1925 and 1961.
The story was first published in the Connaught Tribune on October 10 last, which reported that the number of babies allegedly involved was 788. Continuing research has brought this number up to 796.
Declan Tierney’s report in the Tribune began: “Research has shown that there are 788 children, from newborns to eight-year-olds, buried in a graveyard that was attached to an old orphanage in Tuam.
“And a group of interested individuals have now established the names of each of the children, what age they were when they died, and the causes of their deaths. It is now their intention to erect a memorial in their honour and this will contain the names of each of the 788 children.”
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