Podcast Summary

Who Did What Now
Host: Katie Charlwood
Episode: 185. The Tuam 796
Date: March 17, 2026

Episode Overview

On this St. Patrick’s Day release, host Katie Charlwood delivers a searing, meticulously researched narrative about the Tuam Mother and Baby Home scandal—the 796 children who died and were secretly buried on the grounds in Tuam, County Galway, Ireland. Accessible and uncompromising, Katie moves from the historical roots of Ireland’s institutionalization and shaming of women, into revelations by grassroots researchers and the wrenching efforts underway for justice and truth. Throughout, she connects the Tuam story not only to Irish national trauma but to the ongoing societal tendency to hide, minimize, or misattribute atrocity.

Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. The Discovery and the Horrible Truth (02:29, 36:45)

• In 1975, two boys, Franny Hopkins and Barry Sweeney, stumbled upon a concrete slab at the old Tuam mother and baby home site. Underneath, they found a chamber “filled to the brim with skeletons.”
• The community assumed they’d found famine victims (a common occurrence in Ireland), but forty years later, it emerged these were remains of children who had died in the home’s care.

“Ireland being Ireland, it was assumed the bodies were famine victims. It wasn't unusual to find a mass grave.”
—Katie Charlwood (03:50)

• Later, another local, Mary Moriarty, discovered the remains of infants wrapped in cloths, packed in a “tunnel” beneath the property—realizing only after the birth of her own son how they were swaddled identically.

2. Mother and Baby Homes, Magdalene Laundries, and Systemic Oppression (06:30, 36:45)

• Charlwood provides context about the network of Irish Catholic Church-run institutions: Magdalene Laundries, County Homes, and Mother and Baby Homes.
• Girls and women were institutionalized for being “wayward”/fallen: from being flirty or assaulted, to being sassy or simply pregnant out of wedlock.

“These women had not broken any laws, not secular ones anyway. The church, I mean—the church was the law, effectively.”
—Katie Charlwood (13:55)

• The last Magdalene laundry closed as recently as 1996.
• The role of Irish society and the dominant shame culture is underlined—ostracism, loss of livelihood, destruction of families, all wielded as tools to enforce conformity and moral “purity”.

3. Institutionalization, Secrecy, and the Everyday Cruelty (22:20, 46:45)

• Pregnant girls and women were often removed from their homes under cover of secrecy following threats by priests and families desperate to avoid “shame.”
• Institutions stripped women and girls of their names, autonomy, and subjected them to forced labor, isolation, and abuse.
• Babies were forcibly separated; women often forced into Laundries as “repeat offenders.” Babies who stayed became “home babies”—frequently neglected, experimented on, trafficked, or allowed to die from preventable causes.

“Between the 1920s and the 1960s, a child died every two weeks in the mother and baby homes. Like, 25% of children in these homes would die.”
—Katie Charlwood (28:10)

4. Denial, Documentation, Shifting Blame (25:15, 50:40)

• State and Church reports from 1934 and 1935 blamed high child mortality (“1 in 4” at its worst) on “congenital debility”, “moral failings” of unmarried mothers, rather than on neglect or institutional conditions.
• This blame game persisted, with little to no reform from state or Church—despite acknowledgment that conditions were dangerous.

“A government report basically said, ‘bastards are born with something wrong with them thanks to their mothers being whores.’ Now I hate to be a crass bitch about it, but that's basically what they’ll say.”
—Katie Charlwood (29:45)

5. Tuam Site’s History: From Workhouse to Home to Horror (32:30, 55:10)

• Originally a famine-era workhouse (opened 1846), the Tuam site was repurposed several times; army barracks during wars, then given to the Bon Secours Sisters to run as St. Mary’s Mother and Baby Home from 1925.
• The army left due to hazardous, unsanitary conditions—yet it became a nursery for the vulnerable without improvements.

“The army move out because the place is too unsanitary for them to stay there. And then this is given to nuns to run an institution for pregnant women and babies.”
—Katie Charlwood (34:55)

6. Life and Death in the Home (46:45, 55:30)

• Survivors and locals report:
  • Children from the home (“home babies”) were regarded as “less than human”—segregated, ostracized at school, denied affection, while mothers worked in drudgery.
  • The home received state payment per head (mother and child)—a perverse incentive to maintain institutionalization.

“In Tuam, the babies had a bottle and then were put in the nursery and then they were left there. While the women and girls performed chores for the rest of the day.”
—Katie Charlwood (48:20)

7. The Whistleblowers: Catherine Corless and Community Memory (67:50, 70:00)

• Catherine Corless, a local historian, painstakingly researched the home. Learning her own mother’s “illegitimacy” shaped her sorrow, Corless connected the dots with Tuam’s silence.
• She found 796 children died at the home with only two burial records—both for legitimate orphans. The rest had no record.

“Catherine purchased every single death certificate on public record for the children that died in the home. All in all, she spent €3,184 of her own money.”
—Katie Charlwood (71:00)

• Publishing the names in 2014 with journalist Alison O’Reilly, the story finally broke wide open.

8. Excuses, Evasion, and Scandal (roughly 75:00–79:00)

• Bon Secours Nuns hired PR instead of lawyers, at first denying everything (“There’s no mass baby grave here!”), then blaming famine, construction, saying investigation “upsets the nuns.”
• Catherine Corless meticulously refuted each excuse with mapped graves, construction photos, and documentary evidence.

9. Excavation and Ongoing Investigation (76:23, 87:50)

• Official State investigations were slow and incomplete.
• In 2016, excavations confirmed remains of at least 35 gestational weeks to three years old.
• Evidence revealed not just the mass graves, but also:
  • Children illegally trafficked as adoptees to the US, UK, Australia—sometimes with deaths faked on paper.
  • Some infant bodies sold to medical schools for anatomical study (“wet samples”). Nuns and institutions were paid for this.

“In Dublin, medical schools and universities received more than 950 bodies of children aged between ten minutes and five years... 27 of these were ‘wet samples.’”
—Katie Charlwood (88:30)

• Survivors’ testimonies included forced labor, abuse during childbirth, and denial of their children.

10. Apologies, Inadequate Reparations, and What Next? (94:38-end)

• The Bon Secours Sisters have offered 2.5 million euros (voluntary) toward excavation and issued an apology, but true reckoning feels lacking.
  • Official Apology Excerpt:

  “We did not live up to our Christianity... We failed to respect the inherent dignity of the women and children who came into the home...”

• Ongoing excavation as of 2026: 33 remains identified so far, but the process is incomplete and family tracing is underway.
• Calls continue for investigations at Grove Hospital and more, given the scale and unresolved disappearances.

“We only have the snippets. And it could be that some people are still not telling the whole truth and some people will have their secrets die with them.”
—Katie Charlwood (91:20)

Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On institutional misogyny:

  “The last thing you wanted in Ireland in the 20th century was shame upon your family. Shame and honour were still huge parts of society and culture. Now we seem to have no shame.”
  —Katie Charlwood (18:37)

• On children’s deaths:

  “A death certificate costs something like—what is it—four euro each? All in all, she spent over three grand... Catherine uncovers 798 recorded deaths in the home. She managed to find a grand total of two burial records. The other 796 infants—Catherine could not find one single infant burial record.”
  —Katie Charlwood (71:30)

• On religion, power, and silence:

  “I really cannot convey to you the chokehold that Catholicism had on this country.”
  —Katie Charlwood (36:45)

• On abuse of children:

  “These children were ostracized and segregated... home babies when they were old enough would go to school... the other children were told not to associate with them because apparently illegitimacy is contagious.”
  —Katie Charlwood (47:50)

• On apology and accountability:

  “Yeah, it's easy to do an apology after all of the physical, forensic evidence points to you. Like, oh, I'm sorry, I did the thing that we denied doing... years lying about it. And then you were like, ‘Oh, you're upsetting the people who abused women and children.’ Like, I don't give a fuck.”
  —Katie Charlwood (95:30)

Key Timestamps

| Timestamp | Segment/Topic | |-----------|----------------| | 02:29 | Introduction to episode theme; overview of sources | | 03:50 | Discovery of buried skeletons by local boys | | 06:30 | Systemic network of religious institutions: Magdalene Laundries and homes | | 13:55 | The Catholic Church as the law in 20C Ireland | | 22:20 | Process and secrecy of sending women to Mother and Baby Homes | | 28:10 | Startling mortality rate in homes: 1 in 4 children | | 32:30 | History of the Tuam site: Workhouse origins | | 36:45 | “Republic of Shame”: Irish culture, Christianity, and societal attitudes | | 46:45 | Daily life, degradation and forced labor of inmates | | 55:10 | Discovery in 1975: bones and children’s bundles | | 67:50 | Catherine Corless’ pivotal research journey | | 71:00 | Publication of the children’s names and death certs | | 75:00 | The Bon Secours Sisters’ denial and PR response | | 76:23 | HSE findings, state knowledge, and missing documentation | | 87:50 | Confirmation of child remains in the cesspit/septic system | | 88:30 | Trafficked, adopted, or “disappeared” children | | 91:20 | Ongoing legacy, incomplete justice, and survivors | | 94:38 | Official apology, insufficient reparations, and continued excavation |

Tone, Language & Style

Katie is candid, darkly humorous, and incendiary—a self-described “history harlot”. She holds nothing back on the brutality and hypocrisy of the institutions involved, while balancing empathy for victims and for those whose identities and lives were irreparably altered.

Recommended Further Reading/Watching

• Reading:
  • “My Name is Bridget” by Alison O’Reilly
• Listening:
  • Anything by Sinéad O’Connor (cultural relevance)
• Watching:
  • “Running Point” (“It’s kind of fun. Like, it’s not incredibly depressing.”)

Concluding Thought

The Tuam scandal remains unfinished history. As Katie insists, its real legacy is the need to keep asking, to keep exposing, and to hold institutions (not just individuals) to account—so that even after so many years, justice and acknowledgement might finally reach Ireland’s most vulnerable.

“They don’t get to hide anymore... I think we hold accountable not only, you know, the people, many of whom are now gone, but the institutions which still exist. We can hold the institutions accountable, right? And that’s all we have left.”
—Katie Charlwood (96:00)

[All timestamps MM:SS. Content focused solely on episode’s substance—intros, ads, and outros omitted.]