DUBLIN, Ireland, June 4 (UPI) -- A local historian has revealed the dark secret of a mass children's grave at a home for unwed mothers in Tuam, County Galway, Ireland.
From 1925 to 1961, the bodies of up to 800 children were disposed of on the seven acre property run by the Bon Secours sisters.
The children born to the unwed mothers were known as the "Home Babies." Catherine Corless, the local historian, told IrishCentral, "They were always segregated to the side of regular classrooms. By doing this the nuns telegraphed the message that they were different and that we should keep away."
Records of a health inspection at The Home in 1944 described "emaciated," "pot-bellied," "fragile" children with "flesh hanging loosely on limbs." Over its 36 years in operation, The Home's death rate was recorded as one death every two weeks. Between 1943 and 1946, another report numbered 300 deaths, at a rate of two deaths each week.
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Corless' search for death records resulted in the latest discovery: a list of 796 children. She was shocked.
"I could not believe it. I was dumbfounded and deeply upset... There and then I said this isn't right. There's nothing on the ground 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 bodies of the infants and children had been buried in a septic tank on the property, without coffins or headstones.
Corless is determined to commemorate the children who lived and died on the property. "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."
