‘Ireland’s darkest secret’: 796 babies buried in mass grave
A historian has revealed the terrible truth about a mass grave of close to 800 babies at an Irish church-run home for unmarried mothers.
It was not until her fifties that “only child” Anna Corrigan discovered she actually had two older brothers she never knew – and could never know.
Both boys had died as infants at St Mary’s Mother and Baby Home in the west of Ireland, and became two of an estimated 796 babies secretly buried in a septic tank beneath the site.
The home, run by Catholic order of nuns The Bon Secours Sisters between 1925 and 1961, took in women – often the victims of rape – who got pregnant out of marriage.
It is believed a child died there every two weeks.
Now, a decade the scandal first hit headlines in 2014, work to excavate the mass grave will finally begin, The Sun reports.
Speaking at the grounds of the demolished home in Tuam, which later became a housing estate, Ms Corrigan, 68, read out a letter she had written to her late mother Bridget in 2017.
“I was an only child, but now I’m a third child,” she said.
“God only knows how that feels. I used to think I was special, unique, but that too has changed.”
Hunger and neglect
Ms Corrigan also reflected on the trauma her mother would have experienced in the home, adding: “How did you feel being away from your family, ostracised from your village and giving birth to your children alone?”.
Bridget gave birth to John Desmond Dolan on February 22, 1946, weighing in at a healthy nine pounds (4.08kg).
However, an inspection report retrieved by Ms Corrigan and dated April 1947, described a 13-month-old John as “a miserable, emaciated child with a voracious appetite and no control over his bodily functions”.
Little John died two months later. The cause was given as “measles”.
Meanwhile, his brother William Joseph Dolan was born on May 21, 1950. No official death certificate has been found.
Anna discovered the existence of her older brothers after hearing an argument between some relatives.
She began to investigate, and it was when she reported William as a missing person in 2013 that she was put in contact with local historian Catherine Corliss, who had also begun digging into the home’s terrible past.
Ms Corliss uncovered how hunger and neglect were rife at the home.
“The children were treated as commodities,” she previously said.
“The prettier babies were set up for adoption – it was a money-making racket. The sicker ones were put away and allowed to die.”
Ms Corrigan and Ms Corliss took what they had found about the babies’ deaths and burials to local papers in 2014.
Then they turned to journalist Alison O’Reilly to take it national.
Within days, Tuam was making headlines around the world.
“This is the darkest secret in Irish history now exposed,” O’Reilly told The Sun.
“People need to know that it’s black and ugly and rotten and what they did to the children that were born in those homes was an absolute disgrace.
“You wouldn’t do it to a dog.”
The controversy led to the Irish government setting up the Mother and Baby Homes Inquiry, which confirmed significant quantities of human remains had been found in an unmarked grave in Tuam in 2017.
Devastatingly, Ms Corrigan’s story is replicated hundreds of times over.
Annette McKay, 71, now living in Manchester, grew up knowing she had an older sister called Mary Margaret who had died as an infant.
But what she never knew was that nuns had dumped her in a mass unmarked grave.
She told The Sun: “It was disbelief at first.”
“We imagined when we spoke about it that in some churchyard in the west of Ireland would be a little marked grave that said ‘Mary Margaret, daughter of Maggie O’Connor’.
“Then to find out that the nuns had put 796 children in a sewage tank, it was pretty mind-boggling.”
Ms McKay’s mother Maggie had kept the existence of her first child a secret for decades.
She only revealed the painful truth when she was 70, following the birth of a great-grandchild.
“It rocked my world because I considered myself mum’s eldest daughter,” Ms McKay said.
Aged 17, Maggie had been sent to the Tuam home in the 1940s after being raped.
But six months after giving birth, she was callously told by nuns “the child of your sin is dead”.
Ms McKay discovered that the baby’s death certificate had been signed off by a lady described as a cleaner at the home.
For Ms Corliss, the past decade has been a battle to uncover the full truth behind the horror.
“I knew it was wrong, I knew it was terrible, and it just strengthened me to keep fighting to the bitter end, which I did,” the historian told The Sun.
‘Terrible price’
“The government finally buckled because they had to because of pressure from the media, and pressure from other mother and baby home groups. It was just constantly keeping the story out there.”
The government made a formal apology in 2021 after a judicial commission carried out a five-year investigation into a network of mother and baby homes across the country.
Irish prime minister Micheal Martin said Ireland had suffered a warped attitude to sex.
“Young mothers and their sons and daughters were forced to pay a terrible price for that dysfunction,” he said.
“As a society we embraced judgmental, moral certainty, a perverse religious morality and control which was so damaging.
“What was so very striking was the absence of basic kindness.”
However, for Tuam locals, the scandal had always been an open secret, with the septic tank burial area being known as the babies’ graveyard.
Resident Bernie Lunn told The Sun: “We knew it was the babies’ graveyard.”
“When we were small, we were told by our parents when we were going out there playing, we were always told not to go over near the babies,” the 53-year-old continued.
“I feel very sorry for the families, obviously. I think it’s very wrong what was done.”
The excavation of the site will now try to identify the remains.
And for those involved, it is about returning dignity to the families of those infants denied a proper burial.
Forensic archaeologist Dr Niamh McCullagh, who is in charge of the dig, said: “This is a very specific situation where a sewage tank has been reused, repurposed to deposit children and infants who died.
“That’s not acceptable under anybody’s standards and there’s been a growing acceptance of that and a growing understanding of that.
“For me, it’s about removing them from their current location as individuals if we can and then let them be reburied properly.
“That’s the minimum I expect us to achieve.”
Overseeing the work is Director of Authorised Intervention Daniel MacSweeney.
“The overarching element to all of this I think is dignity and the restoration of dignity in death to these children who have been buried in this manifestly inappropriate place,” he told The Sun.
“We want to make sure the families of these babies understand exactly what is happening and aren’t surprised by anything that happens.
“Then they can give their babies a proper and dignified burial.”
In response to the scandal, the Bon Secours Sisters previously issued an apology.
It read: “We did not live up to our Christianity when running the home.
“We failed to respect the inherent dignity of the women and children who came to the home.
“We failed to offer them the compassion that they so badly needed.
“We were part of the system in which they suffered hardship, loneliness and terrible hurt.
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“We acknowledge in particular that infants and children who died at the home were buried in a disrespectful and unacceptable way.
“For all that, we are deeply sorry.”
This article originally appeared on The Sun and was reproduced with permission
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