A major film was released about the Tuam Children’s Home recently, a joint production by RTE, the Irish State Television station obviously, and ITV in the UK. It was extraordinarily harsh in describing this institution, others like it and indeed Ireland in general for those years of the 1920s-50s. In this writer’s opinion, it left a lot to be desired in its accuracy in reference to this Home and this article is an attempt to set the record straight. The first and most important issue of course is the question of whether or not the bodies of children were laid to rest in a disused septic tank, for which see the accompanying diagram and description here, followed by the other great issue, that of the mortality rate in these Homes.
Map of the layout of the Tuam Home Graveyard
In this film they superimpose the old maps onto an aerial photograph of the site but it might be more accurate to try and superimpose the data released from the archaeological dig, as is attempted here. The whole question of structures and so called sewage remains is very confusing so a simple key for this picture might help:
Blue Line – These are the old workhouse walls, you will notice that the cesspool is outside these walls, it had to be for legal reasons, on neighbouring land rented from a local farmer.
Green Box – This is the original old cesspool, as created in 1848. (I believe the box is completed by adding in the first of the two red lines, as opposed to the outer red line, because the red box has old masonry on all sides, and hence must be the path around the cesspool and not actually part of the pool itself.)
This was an over ground box made in 1848 of old masonry, and interleaved with wicker to make it better at holding in the manure. The point is that at that time the workhouse did not have sewage lines in our modern sense. It couldn’t because it had no running water, only a pump in one of the yards, and therefore sewage would not be able to flow along pipes. Instead the manure was manually removed from the bottom of the various latrines etc on the site and placed in this temporary, over ground, holding area, until it was sold off to local farmers who then removed it.
Yellow Box – Then around 1890ish the workhouse authorities got running water and attempted to install a modern style sewage system. They abandoned the old large over ground cesspool and instead installed this small structure, with pipes going into it from the workhouse and grates and pipes (a ‘French drain’) leading away from it, taking the sewage as far away as the railway line.
So this does indeed resemble a modern day septic tank but its important to understand that in the archaeological dig they did NOT find human remains anywhere near here. Despite this Catherine Corless on her facebook page posted a picture of this structure and claimed that human remains were found therein, and persisted with it despite this commentator and Eugene Jordan, the Galway historian, trying to correct the inaccuracy.1
Red Box – When the archaeological dig commenced they found the above modern style tank and then, close to the end wall, they found this long narrow structure, with internal walls dividing it into many sections, and abounding in bones, in a very scattered, jumbled pattern. They state in their reports that they simply don’t know what the structure was originally designed for, it has no known connections to any sewage system – no pipes leading to or from it for example – and the soil tests concluded that it was not sewage. But nonetheless as well as stating that they do not know what it was for, they also speculate that it was part of some sewage scheme, but in my opinion provide no reasons to believe so. In this film then, they abandon all the previous caveats and just flatly announce that it is some kind of sewage system, again, without any reason I would suggest.
Instead, its obvious to this observer that the structure was made to contain what it does contain, bones. It is an ossuary made by the Council to hold bones thrown up by the extensive development works of the 1972-80 period, placed, carefully and respectfully, in the recognised graveyard of the Home, and workhouse before that. Among other reasons, you can see this because of the many artefacts found within or around it of the 1970s and 80s period, and the very scattered arrangement of the bones is consistent with this reburial, and incompatible with a theory of intact corpses interred originally at that site.
Remains of board over entrance
This image of a board blocking the only entrance to one of the chambers, is a remarkable one for the film makers to have chosen.2 If, dear reader, you grasp nothing else from this article hopefully you can pick out this point anyway.
We have to go back, for a second, to the ‘nuns put corpses in septic tank’ theory itself. The purveyors of this idea are saying that these 20 individual chambers in a line parallel to the bottom wall of the graveyard, were created as part of sewage works c.1937 and then used by the nuns who would lift the concrete lid of the chamber, put in a corpse, and put back the lid. Hence, they say, the deposits in all of these chambers are the remains of such corpses, including in this chamber (C.62) entered in that way, and remember these are concrete lined rooms with no other entrance (except a tiny water outlet at the bottom).
Now look at that image of the board over the entrance, this is the remains of a board used to pick out that chamber entrance when the concrete was poured over to make the overall lid across all the chambers. You can also see the rest of the board lying on top of the remains in the chamber in the second picture beneath it. Its a familiar technique when using concrete, you ‘frame’ the place where you are to pour the concrete, with wood so that it flows where you want it to. In this case you don’t want it to go over the part where you are making an entrance, that’s what that piece of wood is.
Now look again at that wood, and in your mind’s eye add the part on top of the remains in the chamber to the wood still at the entrance, because obviously that fell down after the chamber contents were placed there. Now explain how you could possibly place corpses into that chamber to fill it up while the wood was intact across the entrance? Clearly the contents of that chamber, and I would say all the chambers, were placed there before the overall lid of the structure was created, which really destroys the former argument but would be very characteristic of work that was done in re-burying remains thrown up by the construction work on the site in the 70s and 80s, long after the nuns had left. How else can you explain it?
Frannie Hopkins grave location
On the left of this picture you can see Frannie standing on the exact spot that he saw the grave, or box of bones, in this film,3 while on the right you can also see him standing on the exact spot, as he explained to Philip Boucher Hayes in 2014 (that was also intended to be the exact spot, as Philip made clear to me in a tweet at the time). Obviously they are two totally different places and this is not to be just pedantic either, in the long New York Times article he elaborates a little further on this discovery:
“Frannie nudge-bumped Barry, and the younger lad fell in. He started to cry, as any boy would, so Frannie pulled him out and then the two boys were running away, laughing in fun or out of fright.” 4
Mortality rates in the Home
Caelainn Hogan referring to Tuam and other similar Homes:
“...as the death rates continued to be high, disproportionally high for children within these institutions.”5
“it also admitted children with serious physical or intellectual disabilities and children who discharged from hospital with untreatable conditions...Some of the children who were in Pelletstown were there because they were seriously ill and nothing further could be done for them in the children’s hospitals...From the late 1950s Pelletstown was increasingly used as a long-stay institution/hospice for children with serious and untreatable medical conditions such as spina bifida, or Down syndrome children with serious heart diseases and many of these children died.” 7
“It is evident from records of children boarded out by Galway County Council that it was not uncommon for children to be returned to Tuam in cases of illness...” 8
“The children of unmarried mothers were at greater risk, because of stress, and a lack of ante-natal care...their diet during pregnancy would have lacked essential nutrients, and this may have been exacerbated by efforts to conceal their pregnancy. Many women were admitted in the final weeks of pregnancy, some arrived following the birth of their child, so they would not have received any ante-natal care.” 9
Absence of burial records
Alison O’Reilly, referring to the death certificates in the possession of Catherine Corless:
“So all of these children were legally registered as dying in the Tuam mother and baby home but they had no burial records. By law you have to have a burial record for somebody who lived and died. There seemed to be no burial records at all for these children.” 10
“...a carefully tended and surprisingly compact plot known locally as the Home Babies graveyard...and it had always been said locally that the area had been a graveyard for children from the baby home.” 11
“In a letter to the sister of Tuam Home brothers John Desmond and William Joseph Dolan in 2012, the Bon Secours nuns said one of the brothers, John, who died in the home must be buried in the ‘children’s graveyard’ at the back of the home.” 12
“Well I moved into a house in the Athenry Road end of the estate in 1975, in June 1975...in October a neighbour across the road pointed out there was a little graveyard down there but I knew it was there but it was all grown over and covered, because it had been mentioned to me by my own mother to say she had a little cousin buried there...she used to always say it was buried over there.” 13
“I knew that burial ground was there because I visited it in 1964, my father showed it to me. And I remember when I was a kid even before that, I think maybe around 1961 when I was maybe around 10 or 11 years of age, I remember hearing this group of people who had been in the Home as residents talking about this burial ground. They used to talk about the little angels who were buried there. Even back then I could remember the kindness and the warmth of love they felt for them. And of course the impression that was left with me was that there was a culture of care for the little ones in the Home...I do remember our father telling us that he remembered seeing coffins being made for the little ones.” 14
“I never met an order of nuns that wasn’t absolutely superb and meticulous at keeping records.” 15
Catholic doctrine
Dr Maeve O’Rourke, after describing how in her opinion the Irish state was set up as a morally pure country and how its a central tenet of Catholicism that sex should be within marriage:
“That is why they actually physically locked away girls and women and children who were evidence of the fact that not everyone becomes pregnant within marriage.” 16
“To have sex outside marriage was the number one sin and to have children outside of wedlock was so frowned upon, I mean it was even viewed to be worse than murder. It doesn’t matter how you ended up pregnant. If you were a woman who was sexually assaulted, raped, it was your fault. You got the blame. Big stone buildings, were just dotted all around Ireland to house these women and incarcerate them for their sins.” 17
“There is no evidence that women were forced to enter mother and baby homes by the church or State authorities.” 18
Rebe: “Did the nuns regard them, did they regard them or treat them [the mothers], as kind of sinners?”
Julia: “No, no they did not. Oh no no no they did not.”
Rebe: “There was no condemnation?”
Julia: “No, no, no Rebe, in fact they were, in fact they were very very nice to them, never never cast anything up to them or said anything like that hard to them at all. Oh no, never [her emphasis]. Oh never trampled[?] on them as sinners at all. They didn’t make Mary Magdalen’s out of them or anything like that.” 20
“It really struck me how some of the death certs said ‘marasmus’, now marasmus is starvation.” 21
“He is ‘emaciated’, which means he is starved, a ‘voracious appetite’ means he is not being fed, he is very very hungry. So two words you don’t juxtapose with each other, so there is something radically wrong, this is with John.” 23
“The care given to infants in the Home is good; the Sisters are careful and attentive; diets are excellent.” 24
Profitable institutions
There is endless talk in this film about the wealthy nuns and religious in general making money off the children, Fergus Finlay:
“The Mother and Baby Homes, they were profitable institutions...and the more they starved the child, the more they ensured that the child lived in rags and was kept in the cold, the more money they made.” 25
“I think every Mother and Baby Home in Ireland made a lot of money from adoptions. The child was a product they could sell, there was a demand for that product and so children made money for the Catholic Church.” 26
“This letter here, emm, this one here is one of the ones that gave us a little, turn of our heads.
‘Many thanks for your lovely letter and most generous donation.’
What was the cause of these adoptions. The term generous seems to infer that was a good size sum for the adoption, you know. So, there were payments made, obviously how much I don’t know. But its there right there in the letter.” 27
“The Commission has not seen any evidence that the religious orders who ran the mother and baby homes made a profit from so doing. At various times, it is clear that they struggled to make ends meet and their members were not always paid for their work.” 28
Rebe: “Did the nuns arrange for them to be boarded out or was it the County Council?”
Julia: “The County Council, oh no no, there you see the nuns had to do the books every so often...”
...
Rebe: “Yes but it was the County Council then not the nuns –”
Julia: “The County Council, oh not the nuns at all –”
Rebe: “– that arranged for the children to be adopted.”
[Julia describes how they put an advertisement in the Connacht Tribune listing children to be adopted or fostered out, including their ages.]
Rebe: “Yes but it was the County Council that did this?”
Julia: “The County Council, not the nuns at all.”
Rebe: “The nuns had no real say in this?”
Julia: “No no, not at all, not at all. The nuns were only working for the County Council.”
...
Rebe: “Tell me about this, it was the County Council, it had nothing at all to do with the nuns?”
Julia: “No, it had nothing to do with the nuns.”
...
Rebe: “The mothers were there for a year. The children were reared by the nuns, or at least under their protection, until they were five years of age, and these women then had absolutely no say in where the children went?
Julia: “Oh no, no.” 30
“The majority of those women were not allowed to bring their children home.” 31
“So a huge amount of children were adopted from these institutions, forcibly in the large majority of cases, from mother’s who didn’t wish to give up their children or to be separated from them.” 32
“...were always free to leave if they took their child;” 33
“Some former residents and lobby groups have suggested that ‘adoption’ should be renamed ‘forced adoption’. The Commission does not agree. The Commission found very little evidence that children were forcibly taken from their mothers;” 34