The truth behind the 800 orphans found in a mass Galway grave
A HISTORIAN REVEALS
A septic tank near a long abandoned workhouse in Galway was found to contain the bodies of up to eight hundred infants and children.
There is a growing international scandal around the history of The Home, a grim 1840’s workhouse in Tuam in Galway built on seven acres that was taken over in 1925 by the Bon Secours sisters, who turned it into a Mother and Baby home for “fallen women.”
The long abandoned site made headlines around the world this week when it was revealed that a nearby septic tank contained the bodies of up to eight hundred infants and children, secretly buried without coffins or headstones on unconsecrated ground between 1925 and 1961.
****http://www.irishcentral.com/opinion/cahirodoherty/Nuns-join-Irish-bankers-in-avoiding-justice-over-Magdalene-payments.html
Now a local historian has stepped forward to outline the terrible circumstances around so many lost little lives.
Catherine Corless, the local historian and genealogist, remembers the Home Babies well. “They were always segregated to the side of regular classrooms,” Corless tells IrishCentral. “By doing this the nuns telegraphed the message that they were different and that we should keep away from them.
“They didn’t suggest we be nice to them. In fact if you acted up in class some nuns would threaten to seat you next to the Home Babies. That was the message we got in our young years,” Corless recalls.
Now a dedicated historian of the site, as a schoolgirl Corless recalls watching an older friend wrap a tiny stone inside a bright candy wrapper and present it as a gift to one of them.
“When the child opened it she saw she’d been fooled,” Corless says. “Of course I copied her later and I tried to play the joke on another little Home girl. I thought it was funny at the time.”
But later – years later – Corless realized that the children she taunted had nobody. “Years after I asked myself what did I do to that poor little girl that never saw a sweet? That has stuck with me all my life. A part of me wants to make up to them.”
Surrounded by an eight-foot high wall, Tuam, County Galway locals say that they saw little to nothing of the daily life of The Home or of the pregnant young mothers who arrived and left it without a word over the decades.
In the few surviving black and white photographs taken at the site no child is smiling. Instead they simply frown at the camera, their blank stares suggesting the terrible conditions.
A local health board inspection report from April 1944 recorded 271 children and 61 single mothers in residence, a total of 333 in a building that had a capacity for 243.
The report described the children as “emaciated,” “pot-bellied,” “fragile” with “flesh hanging loosely on limbs.” The report noted that 31 children in the “sun room and balcony” were “poor, emaciated and not thriving.” The effects of long term neglect and malnutrition were observed repeatedly.
Children died at The Home at the rate of one a fortnight for almost 40 years, one report claims. Another appears to claim that 300 children died between 1943 and 1946, which would mean two deaths a week in the isolated institution.
In The Home’s 36 years of operation between 1926 and 1961 some locals told the press this week of unforgettable interactions with its emaciated children, who because of their “sinful” origins were considered socially radioactive and treated as such.
One local said: “I remember some of them in class in the Mercy Convent in Tuam – they were treated marginally better than the traveler children. They were known locally as the “Home Babies.” For the most part the children were usually gone by school age – either adopted or dead.”
Thanks to Corless’ efforts we now know the names and fates of up to 796 forgotten infants and children who died there, thanks to her discovery of their death records when researching The Home’s history.
“First I contacted the Bon Secours sisters at their headquarters in Cork and they replied they no longer had files or information about The Home because they had left Tuam in 1961 and had handed all their records over to the Western Health Board.”
Undaunted, Corless turned to The Western Health Board, who told her there was no general information on the daily running of the place.
“Eventually I had the idea to contact the registry office in Galway. I remembered a law was enacted in 1932 to register every death in the country. My contact said give me a few weeks and I’ll let you know.”
“A week later she got back to me and said do you really want all of these deaths? I said I do. She told me I would be charged for each record. Then she asked me did I realize the enormity of the numbers of deaths there?”
The registrar came back with a list of 796 children. “I could not believe it. I was dumbfounded and deeply upset,” says Corless. “There and then I said this isn’t right. There’s nothing on the ground there to mark the grave, there’s nothing to say it’s a massive children’s graveyard. It’s laid abandoned like that since it was closed in 1961.”
****http://www.irishcentral.com/news/Memorial-campaign-underway-for-forgotten-grave-of-800-babies-in-Galway.html
The certificates Corless received record each child’s age, name, date – and in some cases – cause of death. “I have the full list and it’s going up on a plaque for the site, which we’re fundraising for at the moment. We want it to be bronze so that it weathers better. We want to do it in honor of the children who were left there forgotten for all those years. It’s a scandal.”
Corless believes that nothing was said or done to expose the truth because people believed illegitimate children didn’t matter. “That’s what really hurts and moved me to do something,” she explains.
During its years of operation the children of The Home were referred to as “inmates” in the press. It was believed by the clergy that the harsh conditions there were in themselves a form of corrective penance. The state, the church and their families all failed these women, Corless contends.
But even now the unexpected difficulty that the local committee Corless has joined to fundraise for a plaque to remember the dead children suggests that not everyone wants to confront the truth about the building’s tragic past.
“I do blame the Catholic Church,” says Corless. “I blame the families as well but people were afraid of the parish priest. I think they were brainwashed. I suppose the lesson is not to be hiding things. To face up to reality.
“My fear is that if things aren’t faced now it’s very easy to slide back into this kind of cover-up again. I want the truth out there. If you give people too much power it’s dangerous.”
Living and dying in a culture of shame and silence for decades, the Home Babies’ very existence was considered an affront to Ireland and God.
It was a different time, some defenders argued this week, omitting to mention that the stigmatizing silence that surrounded The Home was fostered by clerics. Indeed the religious orders were so successful at silencing their critics that for decades even to speak of The Home was to risk contagion.
And now that terrifying era of shame and silence is finally lifting, we are left to ask what all their lonesome suffering was in aid of, and what did it actually achieve?
To donate to the memorial for the mothers and babies of The Home, contact Catherine Corless at catherinecorless@hotmail.com.
There is a growing international scandal around the history of The Home, a grim 1840’s workhouse in Tuam in Galway built on seven acres that was taken over in 1925 by the Bon Secours sisters, who turned it into a Mother and Baby home for “fallen women.”
The long abandoned site made headlines around the world this week when it was revealed that a nearby septic tank contained the bodies of up to eight hundred infants and children, secretly buried without coffins or headstones on unconsecrated ground between 1925 and 1961.
NOW A LOCAL HISTORIAN HAS STEPPED FORWARD TO OUTLINE THE TERRIBLE CIRCUMSTANCES AROUND SO MANY LOST LITTLE LIVES.
Catherine Corless, the local historian and genealogist, remembers the Home Babies well. “They were always segregated to the side of regular classrooms,” Corless tells IrishCentral. “By doing this the nuns telegraphed the message that they were different and that we should keep away from them.
“They didn’t suggest we be nice to them. In fact if you acted up in class some nuns would threaten to seat you next to the Home Babies. That was the message we got in our young years,” Corless recalls.
Now a dedicated historian of the site, as a schoolgirl Corless recalls watching an older friend wrap a tiny stone inside a bright candy wrapper and present it as a gift to one of them.
“When the child opened it she saw she’d been fooled,” Corless says. “Of course I copied her later and I tried to play the joke on another little Home girl. I thought it was funny at the time.”
But later – years later – Corless realized that the children she taunted had nobody. “Years after I asked myself what did I do to that poor little girl that never saw a sweet? That has stuck with me all my life. A part of me wants to make up to them.”
Surrounded by an eight-foot high wall, Tuam, County Galway locals say that they saw little to nothing of the daily life of The Home or of the pregnant young mothers who arrived and left it without a word over the decades.
In the few surviving black and white photographs taken at the site no child is smiling. Instead they simply frown at the camera, their blank stares suggesting the terrible conditions.
A local health board inspection report from April 1944 recorded 271 children and 61 single mothers in residence, a total of 333 in a building that had a capacity for 243.
The report described the children as “emaciated,” “pot-bellied,” “fragile” with “flesh hanging loosely on limbs.” The report noted that 31 children in the “sun room and balcony” were “poor, emaciated and not thriving.” The effects of long term neglect and malnutrition were observed repeatedly.
Children died at The Home at the rate of one a fortnight for almost 40 years, one report claims. Another appears to claim that 300 children died between 1943 and 1946, which would mean two deaths a week in the isolated institution.
In The Home’s 36 years of operation between 1926 and 1961 some locals told the press this week of unforgettable interactions with its emaciated children, who because of their “sinful” origins were considered socially radioactive and treated as such.
One local said: “I remember some of them in class in the Mercy Convent in Tuam – they were treated marginally better than the traveler children. They were known locally as the “Home Babies.” For the most part the children were usually gone by school age – either adopted or dead.”
Because of Corless’ efforts we now know the names and fates of up to 796 forgotten infants and children who died there, thanks to her discovery of their death records when researching The Home’s history.
“First I contacted the Bon Secours sisters at their headquarters in Cork and they replied they no longer had files or information about The Home because they had left Tuam in 1961 and had handed all their records over to the Western Health Board.”
Undaunted, Corless turned to The Western Health Board, who told her there was no general information on the daily running of the place.
“Eventually I had the idea to contact the registry office in Galway. I remembered a law was enacted in 1932 to register every death in the country. My contact said give me a few weeks and I’ll let you know.”
“A week later she got back to me and said do you really want all of these deaths? I said I do. She told me I would be charged for each record. Then she asked me did I realize the enormity of the numbers of deaths there?”
The registrar came back with a list of 796 children. “I could not believe it. I was dumbfounded and deeply upset,” says Corless. “There and then I said this isn’t right. There’s nothing on the ground there to mark the grave, there’s nothing to say it’s a massive children’s graveyard. It’s laid abandoned like that since it was closed in 1961.”
The certificates Corless received record each child’s age, name, date – and in some cases – cause of death. “I have the full list and it’s going up on a plaque for the site, which we’re fundraising for at the moment. We want it to be bronze so that it weathers better. We want to do it in honor of the children who were left there forgotten for all those years. It’s a scandal.”
Corless believes that nothing was said or done to expose the truth because people believed illegitimate children didn’t matter. “That’s what really hurts and moved me to do something,” she explains.
During its years of operation the children of The Home were referred to as “inmates” in the press. It was believed by the clergy that the harsh conditions there were in themselves a form of corrective penance. The state, the church and their families all failed these women, Corless contends.
But even now the unexpected difficulty that the local committee Corless has joined to fundraise for a plaque to remember the dead children suggests that not everyone wants to confront the truth about the building’s tragic past.
“I do blame the Catholic Church,” says Corless. “I blame the families as well but people were afraid of the parish priest. I think they were brainwashed. I suppose the lesson is not to be hiding things. To face up to reality.
“My fear is that if things aren’t faced now it’s very easy to slide back into this kind of cover-up again. I want the truth out there. If you give people too much power it’s dangerous.”
Living and dying in a culture of shame and silence for decades, the Home Babies’ very existence was considered an affront to Ireland and God.
It was a different time, some defenders argued this week, omitting to mention that the stigmatizing silence that surrounded The Home was fostered by clerics. Indeed the religious orders were so successful at silencing their critics that for decades even to speak of The Home was to risk contagion.
And now that terrifying era of shame and silence is finally lifting, we are left to ask what all their lonesome suffering was in aid of, and what did it actually achieve?
To donate to the memorial for the mothers and babies of The Home, contact Catherine Corless at catherinecorless@hotmail.com.
New unit to help Irish families stripped of Medical cards
A SPECIAL UNIT TO DEAL DIRECTLY WITH FAMILIES WHO HAVE LOST THEIR DISCRETIONARY MEDICAL CARD IS TO BE SET UP BY HEALTH SERVICE BOSSES WITHIN WEEKS.
The HSE unit will assign individual case officers to advise on the care, services and support available to those who have a severe disability or serious illness.
The promise of such a unit was given to the founders of the Our Children’s Health Campaign during a meeting with Junior Health Minister Alex White – who has declared he will contest the leadership of the Labour Party.
The campaign has 60,000 signatures calling for all children diagnosed with a serious illnesses or congenital conditions to a get a full medical card. Mr White reiterated that those who lost their cards cannot have them restored for legal reasons.
Instead, the new unit will have to follow a protocol which is aimed at helping families avoid the red tape and centralised service which they have been enduring up to now.
However, Dr Ray Walley, GP spokesman for the Irish Medical Organisation (IMO), claimed the HSE has potential to restore discretionary medical cards to those who lost them.
He said GPs proposed a system in 2010 whereby there would be a link-up between their computers and the HSE medical card list which would allow the doctor to reinstate a card on an emergency basis.
The €37m set aside for free GP care for the under-sixes could be used to fund these discretionary cards, he added.
He told RTE radio’s ‘This Week’ programme that attention also needs to be focused on prescription charges which are leading to some patients not taking their medicines.
Our Children’s Health Campaign founders Peter Fitzpatrick and Kevin Shortall said: “If it transpires that the range of services available under the protocol does not meet all the needs as required by those with serious illness, as currently available under the full medical card, that would represent a completely unacceptable situation.”
HSE director of primary care, John Hennessy, has already said that the HSE will aim to provide around 2,000 to 4,000 people who have lost the cards with a “package of practical supports”.
These could include therapies or medical appliances. Some of those will qualify for the long-term illness scheme.
How to help smokers quit? Three tools that could help
Every May 31, the World Health Organization marks World No Tobacco Day by highlighting the toll that smoking is taking on people’s health, reminding governments that smoking is the single most preventable cause of death around the world, killing up to half of smokers through cancer, heart attacks, strokes and other causes.
Here’s a look at three simple ideas that could encourage more smokers to quit.
Many older smokers who have been lighting up for years are reluctant to quit, perhaps feeling there’s little point to give up the habit so late in life.
But quitting improves health and reduces lung cancer risk no matter what age smokers stop. Brock University epidemiologist Martin Tammemagi wanted to know whether performing a CT scan (computer tomography) on smoker’s lungs, and showing them what effect their smoking had, would encourage them to quit.
His team used data from the U.S. National Lung Screening Trial (NLST), a large study that has already found that annual CT chest scans can spot lung cancer early, and reduce death rates. Tammemagi’s team focused on close to 15,000 current smokers, aged 55 to 70 years old, with a 30 or more “pack year” smoking history. (A pack year is defined as 20 cigarettes smoked every day for one year.)
Some of the scans came back normal; others showed small problems that weren’t suspicious for lung cancer, while others revealed significant abnormalities either with the lungs, or other areas of the chest. The team excluded smokers who developed lung cancer within five years.
No matter what the tests showed, many smokers decided to quit smoking within a year of seeing the results. Their smoking rates continued to fall with each year after the scans. But what Tammemagi’s team found was, the more worrisome the CT results were, the more likely smokers were to quit.
In relative terms, those who had a result that was the most worrisome and that looked suspicious for lung cancer were 13 per cent more likely to quit smoking than smokers whose results were normal.
Tammemagi tells CTVNews.ca his results suggest that cancer screening can be “a teachable moment” to talk to smokers about their habit and encourage them to quit. It’s also, he says, a great chance for doctors to offer smokers information on what tools and medications are available to help them butt out.
But there are no annual screening programs for current and former smokers in Canada. That’s because studies are only recently beginning to show the screening tests are effective at lowering death rates.
The biggest hurdle for bringing in nationwide screening programs is cost, Tammemagi says ; annual CT scans are not cheap. There have also been questions about the safety of the scan’s radiation, and concerns about the psychological cost of “false positives.”
But with the NLST study showing screening cuts cancer deaths by 20 per cent, and with the influential U.S. Preventive Services Task Force formally recommending CT lung cancer screening for older current and former smokers, lung cancer screening could soon become a reality.
SMARTPHONE APP
Plenty of young people want to quit smoking, but find it difficult when the temptation to light up is all around them. Enter the Crush the Crave app, designed by researchers at the University of Waterloo with funding from Health Canada and support from the Canadian Cancer Society.
The smartphone app lets smokers who are trying to quit to create a customized plan complete with an end-goal date. They can then share their quit progress and gain support from friends online through Facebook, Twitter and other social media.
They can also hit the app when they have a cigarette craving and monitor their own craving patterns and triggers. The app reminds them of how much money they’ve saved and how much their health is improving. Or users can amuse themselves with videos or chat with friends online to distract them until a craving passes.
Catherine Burns, a systems design engineering professor at the University of Waterloo says the app is ideal for young smokers because so many younger smokers carry smartphones with them everywhere. She says the app cleverly encourages users to come back regularly to re-engage with the app by offering rewards for each day smokers go without smoking.
“We’re taking the techniques that are appealing to young people in other apps and using it for their health. I think that’s exciting,” she says.
Burns says her team is now beginning a study on the effectiveness of the app as a medical intervention, comparing its success at getting smokers to quit for one month with other smoking cessation techniques.
With young people forming the largest proportion of smokers, the Waterloo team says they hope the app can help smokers break their habit while young, saving them from the health effects of a lifelong addiction.
RAISE TOBACCO TAXES
The World Health Organization says there’s no simpler and more effective way to encourage smokers to quit than by raising the price of cigarettes through taxes.
The WHO says raising the price of tobacco by 10 per cent cuts smoking rates by 4 per cent in high-income countries, and by approximately 5 per cent in low- and middle-income countries.
If all countries boldly raised taxes on tobacco by 50 per cent, the WHO estimates the number of smokers around the world would be cut by 49 million within three years — 38 million fewer adult smokers and 11 million fewer future smokers. That would ultimately save 11 million lives, they say.
High prices are particularly effective in discouraging young people from taking up smoking, because they often have more limited incomes than older adults, says Dr. Douglas Bettcher, the director of the Department for Prevention of Noncommunicable Diseases at WHO.
France, for example, tripled its cigarette prices through higher taxes between the early 1990s and 2005. That led to a 50 per cent drop in sales. Within a few years, the number of young men dying from lung cancer in France also started to decline.
And yet, only 32 countries – representing less than 8 per cent of the world’s population — have tobacco tax rates greater than 75 per cent of the retail price.
The WHO calculates that if all countries hiked tobacco taxes by 50 per cent per pack, governments would earn an extra US$101 billion in global revenue. These additional funds could – and should – be used to advance health programs, says Bettcher.
“Tax policy can be divisive, but this is the tax rise everyone can support. As tobacco taxes go up, death and disease go down,” he said in a statement this week.
Scientists warn about Earth’s impending doom
Experts have revealed that Earth on the verge of extinction and plants and wildlife will die out long before humans.
Scientists have revealed that the sixth great extinction is coming with species dying 10 times faster than it was earlier expected, the Daily Star reported.
Stuart Pimm, of Duke University, lead researcher of the landmark project, said that he believes humans must act now to slow down the process and avoiding or not avoiding the extinction depends on our actions.
The researchers have found that 1000 out of one million species become extinct each year, which was higher than the 100 species they originally estimated.
Researchers said that species are suffering because humans are taking away a number of animal habitats through man-made constructions and it is also down to a changing climate with species struggling to survive in hotter or colder conditions, while a number of species are becoming instinct because they are being hunted by humans.
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