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- [00:00]
Progressive Insurance Advertiser
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- [00:22]
Karim (Voice of Simon Fairchild)
Hi everyone, this is Karim, the voice of Simon Fairchild from the Magnus archives, and today I want to talk to you about Boost Mobile. Simon Some things quietly drain you, like an expensive phone bill, trapping your money month after month. Here's a quick money Stop paying a carrier tax when you bring your own phone and Switch to boost mobile's $25 Unlimited Forever plan. You can unlock up to $600 in savings. That's money that belongs in your life, not trapped in a phone bill. Reclaim those savings for something you're actually into an EMF meter, a thermal camera, or whatever strange corner of the universe you're currently exploring. Visit boostmobile.com to unlock your savings and take back control. After 30 gigabytes, customers may experience slower speeds. Customers pay $2025 per month as long as they remain active on the Boost Mobile Unlimited plan. Boost Mobile January 2026 survey comparing average annual payments of AT&T, Verizon and T mobile customers to 12 months on the Boost Mobile Unlimited plan. For full offer details, visit boostmobile.com when
- [01:15]
Progressive Insurance Advertiser
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- [02:30]
Katy Charlwood
Hello delicious friends, and welcome to who did what now, the history podcast. That is not your history class. With me, your host, Katy Charlwood, history harlot and reader of books. And welcome to today's episode, which is on day of release out on St. Patrick's Day, which seemed fitting. I am heading out to the local parade today because at least one of the kiddos will be in it and also we have to support local. Now, if you are from Ireland, you have definitely heard of today's piece of horrible history. And if you are out with Ireland, you may have also heard it too. It kind of blew up like 10 years ago. It was a really, really big deal and there was a lot of humming and hawing and it didn't really get told. And again, we still don't know all the answers. But. But today I am here to talk about the Chuam, which is why there was considerably less jibber jabba this episode. But yes, I am anyway going to quit my jibble jabba and fact you, fact you I will. But first we have to get our source on. Our sources are the Truam Home Survivals Network, the Abnormal Flight, the Migration and Repatriation of Irish Unmarried Mothers by Paul Michael Garrett, Chew Em Babies and Kerry Babies by Mary Burke, Mother and Baby homes by Podraig McCarthy, Republic of Shame by Kaelin Horgan. And of course we have articles from the Journal, the Irish Times, the Irish Mail on Sunday, the Guardian, the BBC, Al Jazeera, rte, CNN and more. Because this was kind of a big deal. And also we have the report on the commissions of mother and baby homes. Are you sitting comfortably? Good. Then let's begin. In 1975, two boys are playing in the overgrown field out the back of the site of the old mother and baby home in Tuam, County Galway. They messed around going through rushes and overgrown grass and the like. When they landed on top of what appeared to be a large concrete slab, boys being boys, they were curious and took a peek at what was underneath. And what they discovered was like a chamber of sort, filled, as they said to the brim, with skeletons. Ireland being Ireland, it was assumed that the bodies were that of famine victims. It wasn't unusual to find a mass grave especially so close to what was once a workhouse. And it would be another 40 years before the truth about those buried were not in fact famine victims for the 1800s, but were the remains of children who had been under the care of the home. So where does this all begin? Mother and baby homes, as they were known, were part of the same system that included the Magdalene Laundries and the County Homes, a system built on misogyny, power and profit. If you want, like a full, comprehensive deep dive into the laundries. The podcast episode preceding this one goes into great detail, so go give that a listen if you've already done that. Or in the meantime, here is the Cliff Notes version. The Magdalene laundries were. That they were laundries, right? They laundered linens and the like. And like, I swear, anytime I bring up the laundries, I have genuinely had people asking me, like, what were the laundries in this context? And I have to actually explain, like, they were commercial laundries, you know, they had an actual function. And There were about 10 official laundries run by the four separate religious orders, like, throughout the country. So these are run by the Sisters of Our lady of Charity, the Sisters of Mercy, the Good Shepherd Sisters and the Sisters of Charity. The official number of those housed in the laundries between 1922 and 1996 were about 10,000. However, with the research that has been coming out in recent years, it seems more likely that it was closer to 30,000. 30,000 women and girls. The Magdalene Laundries, sometimes referred to as the Magdalene Asylums, were institutions run by the Catholic Church and supported by the Irish state, especially post independence. These asylums and laundries housed what were seen as fallen and wayward women and girls. What makes a lass wayward or fallen? Well, I'm glad you asked because I'll tell you, and, sorry, it's a whole laundry list, pun intended. Being flirty, being vain, being assaulted, being promiscuous, being stroppy, being strong willed, having any sort of sass, like being a temptress of any sort. Because being a woman, you are the temptation. You. You are responsible. Not the men who, you know, you had dalliance with or flirted back or who assaulted you. No, no, no, no, no, no, no. If you had sex outside of marriage, whether you were a willing participant or not, you were fallen. These women and girls, and I want to make that incredibly clear, women and girls, right? Women or girls would be collected by a priest, typically a priest, and then brought to the laundry and left there. These women and girls would work in the laundries as slave labour for years. In fact, some women would spend their entire lives in them. The last laundry officially closed in 1996. That's 30 years ago. Right? That's. That is not the distant past. Conditions in the laundries were harsh and abuse was just par for the course. This was repentance. And lest we forget, Mother Teresa herself, in her own words, said that suffering brings you closer to God. These women were shameful. They deserved to be punished. And so here they were, except they were not legally bound to be there. Now, there were courts that would sometimes send women and girls to the laundries under the care of the religious order who ran them instead of sending them to, say, like some kind of, like juvenile detention or prison. But this wasn't the case for the majority of those sent there. These women had not broken any laws, not secular ones anyway. The church, I mean, the church was the law, effectively. It had the power. And they would refer to the women using legal language, using legal terms. Right. Which, again, considering this was not a penitentiary or an official penal detention centre, it is an odd route to take. Like, for example, there are actual documents from these institutions referring to young women as first time and repeat offenders. Now, again, again, they had not broken any law. Having sex out of wedlock was not illegal. Like, it wasn't illegal. Otherwise they would be putting the men in prison, wouldn't they? But of course, the Catholic Church was so powerful that it didn't matter because they were the law. Now, before I continue this episode, I. I feel like I should give a content warning. Now, I did this in the caption. However, if you are sensitive to anything ever, I'm gonna suggest you exit stage left and come back for the less depressing next episode. Yeah, you should probably just circle back next time because things are going to get dark and then they're going to get worse. And when you think, jeez, it could not actually get any worse, it will. Okay, I am going to be talking about abuse, trafficking, assaults, rape, incest, abuse. Like just a whole bunch of horrible, horrible things. And if you are triggered by anything, it's best you do not listen. You don't deserve this because it's. It's gonna be a tough one. Again, this is why we're having a palette cleanser at the end of the month. So without further ado, the Church was the law. So how. How, you ask? Well, Ireland gained independence from the UK in 1922, after which there was a civil war due to the conditions and the agreement that led to independence. But that is another story for another day and we will discuss it at some point. I won't go into it, but the UK is a Protestant nation. The monarch is the head of the Anglican Church. Right. Whereas in Catholicism, the head of the church is God. And also sometimes an old fella in Rome who was the most bishopy bishop, also known as the Pope. Right, the Bishop of Rome. So when Ireland gained its independence and became a republic, again, for your Information. It is not actually called the Republic of Ireland. It's also not called Southern Ireland. It's just called Ireland. That's the name of the country. It's just Ireland. And it is a republic. So when Ireland gained its independence from the uk, it basically pushed away as much of the Anglo as possible and reverted very much like back into good old Roman Catholicism. Like it was diving headfirst into that. It was what one might call a very swift and sharp pivot. So they really leaned into Catholicism. Now, considering that the Roman Catholic Church is an incredibly moralistic, repressive, conservative, misogynistic religion, you know, traditionally, then it is no surprise that the Irish Free State also turned into a moralistic, repressive, conservative and misogynistic country. Traditionally, one thing the Catholic Church does super well is the oppression of women. That's not to say that other religions don't do that as well, but Roman Catholicism isn't exactly the most progressive of religions. And I'm a cradle Catholic, so I get to say what I want. I had a very religious formal education. I was educated in the UK and Ireland. I went to Sunday school. I collected those little saints cards, La medallions in them like they were Pokemon cards, okay. I had a ladybug Bible, that is to say a children's illustrated Bible by like the Ladybird, like imprint the publishing. Now I could pray in both English and Irish. So a squaliga, like one of my papas. So like my grandfather, my Irish grandfather, who we call by is Scottish grandfather title. I know, right? Anyway, my papa, his best friend growing up was my local priest. Okay. And my gran was kept by nuns in Scotland for a time during World War II. And one of her jobs was cleaning coffins. Right? Very religious, like church on Sunday morning. Like, no jeans in the church, shoulders covered, very religious family, right? Grandparents super into God, right? Now, my dad's side, they're Jewish, which is again, a different story. But you know, the Catholics won on this one. Basically just throwing holy water at me as soon as I was out the womb. Get up. Anyway, so Roman Catholicism isn't really supportive of questions, especially regarding contradictory parts of the Bible. But again, that's neither here nor there. But. But a lot of it revolves around shame and punishment, which is interesting considering that the New Testament and all, you know, all the stuff that Jesus was about was very much like anti establishment, anti extravagance and generally all about social well being and care, peace and love to your, like, fellow man. Yeah. Being very much into the repression and oppression of women. It is no surprise that institutions like the laundries and the mother and baby homes and the county homes sprung up and worked in tandem. And back in the 20th century, especially early in the 20th century, the Catholic Church held, like, a lot of power in Ireland. And the person who was most revered in the community, the person who held all the power, was your priest, right? The parish priest was effectively the boss, right. Even now there are certain generations and you will see that reverence still exists. The parish priest controlled the narrative of what was good and right in the community. Their word was law. And I cannot convey this enough of just how much of Irish law and society was steeped in Catholicism, right? And in Ireland, especially if Catholic, we have two emotions, shame and guilt. Like, someone once asked me if I was, like, proud to be a Catholic because. Or, like, proud to be a Christian. I think it was when I was discussing Sidebar, when I was discussing, I think it was Israel's whole thing of how it became a country. And somebody was like, are you proud to be a Catholic? I'm like, no. Have you met us? Sorry, no, no. All we have is shame. Like, all of our emotions are just, like, compressed. Like, other people have emotional baggage. Catholics, if you're raised Catholic, what you do is you compress it all the way down until it's convenient. Little briefcase, right? And you carry that around you and that's what you have. Okay? Now, yeah. Not that I'm a practicing Catholic anymore, given all of the gestures vaguely and everything in the world, but when you're raised a certain way, it does, it. It does affect you. Now, 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. And I think, like, a little shame is good. Like, shame and moderation is a good thing to come back. Like moderation, not all encompassing, you know, destroy your life, shame. Unless you deserve it, I don't know. But shame in the eyes of the Church, you could be ostracized by society. Your neighbours, your friends, everyone could turn on you. The butcher wouldn't sell to you. Your children would be ignored at school. Like, you would be turned out of Mass like it was a big, big deal. Your life effectively would be destroyed back to the oppression of women. If a woman or girl were to gestate a fetus out of wedlock, the family would often contact the local priest because an unwed mother, that's shameful. Now, of course, there were some situations in which a Shotgun wedding would occur. However, if the man involved simply did not want to be well, then it would be off to the priest to go. It was better to go to the priest first and let him handle it like some sort of holy fixer. Because often the alternative was him screaming and accusing from the pulpit, ostracizing the family for their scandal. Right. And there are even reports of priests showing up at the houses of families after discovering that an unwed woman or girl was in the house and they were pregnant. And he would threaten the family with shame, with banishment, like, genuinely threatening to run them out of town. And it wasn't an empty threat. They had the power to do so a lot of time. Well, the priest was the authority figure, like, more so than even the guardi. So the Guardi, that's the police force in Ireland, and families would go to him for guidance because this was a problem that needed to be fixed, right? It needed to be solved. And so a priest would quite often collect the pregnant person under the COVID of darkness and cart him off to a mother and baby home. Well, they would stay for the rest of her pregnancy. And this was a whole secret affair and it required collusion. Okay. Like, there was a network designed first, right? There was a network, a justification for the departure of the woman or girl. She's sick and away getting tests done. She's gone to look after an infirm relative, she's gotten work as a domestic, so on and so forth. Right. Another family would act as a care of address. Letters would be sent to the care of address, read assessed, and then forwarded onto the home. It's like getting mail in the army. Like, they would get it. And so the woman or girl would respond to the letter, but it would be watched over to ensure they weren't, like, giving away any information. And that's only if people were, like, concerned about their friend. Oh, let's write to my friend or your cousin. Sometimes siblings wouldn't even know, like, what was going on, and they had to, like, cover it up. So eventually this young woman or girl would, like, write a letter in response, all carefully watched over by the nuns with the care of address at the top. It was then sent back to the care of address, who would then send it back to friends and family as if everything is fine and dandy. Now, depending on which home you were sent to, because some were better than others, some seem to genuinely want the best for the people who were there. So if you were sent to some homes, like, you could be with your baby for a day and then be taken home. You could be with them for three days or you could even stay with them for a year, nursing them so that they're healthy. Now, like, it's rare, but there are occasions where it happened again, just depending on the home and who was running it at the time. Typically, the baby or infant would be left in the home while the mother was collected and brought back to life on the outside. Unless, of course, they were a repeat offender, at which point they would have been sent on to the laundries. Women were often threatened with being sent to the laundries as punishment for even minor transgressions. But what of the children inside the homes? The home babies, as many of them were called, were. Well, some were kept in institutions, living there, some were sent to industrial or reformed schools, laundries, other homes, some were used in experiments, some were trafficked, I mean, adopted by wealthy American families and other children, many of them would simply die in the mother and baby homes. 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. At one point it was actually 1 in 4, when the country average was 1 in 7. Remember, this is state sponsored and state regulated. And this was the solution to what the Irish state saw as the problem. And in 1934, in the doll that the Irish government, parliament, to those of you who aren't up on the political structure of Ireland, the doll was informed of the large number of deaths occurring within this specific group of children, as opposed to the national mortality rate of this age group. So there was a report, and this report said that the most reasonable conclusion is that these children were not provided the same care as ordinary children. Now, you think that would sort of sort things out a wee bit and oh, you sweet summer child. No, unfortunately the blame game manages to point the arrow at the victims, not the perpetrators. See, a year later in 1935, another report comes out and basically says that it's not the lack of care, the abuse, or the unsanitary conditions within the mother and baby homes that are causing the inordinate deaths of these children. For no, it says that the majority of these deaths were the result of, and I quote, congenital debility, congenital malformation and other antenatal causes traceable to the condition associated with the lot of the unmarried mother. Let's just let that sink in for a wee second. A government report into the suspiciously high mortality rate of children in a state funded and regulated institution 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. Now, that's not all. This shows that there was documentation as early as 1934, 12 years, only 12 years after these institutions were supported and established by the Irish state that the government had knowledge that mother and baby homes were not places that infants should be. And to put that blame on the women yet again, like, you're more likely to be born with physical problems if you're illegitimate, specifically because your mother birthed you outside of marriage. Sir, that's not how science works. Now, I'm no epidemiologist, but even I know that being born out of wedlock does not make you genetically more susceptible to tuberculosis. Germ theory had been widely accepted since the 1880s and adopted, like, from the 1890s. The fact that sanitation isn't even queried here is absolutely ridiculous. Like, even if you take this from a purely religious angle, it does not make sense. Everyone, according to the Roman Catholic Church, is born with original sin. You are then, like, baptized, christened to be washed of that sin. I'm fairly certain that there is not a letter from St. Paul to the Corinthians that says illegitimate babies are born with extra sin. Like, when you think that 35,000 women and girls went through the homes, gave birth in those homes, and the mortality rate was anywhere between 1 in 4 and 1 in 7. Like, that's huge. And the governing body is not putting anything in place. No reforms to protect the children that are in danger? Nothing. There were several religious institutions that were involved in the mother and baby homes. For example, you have the Bon Secours Sisters, the Daughters of Charity of St. Vincent de Paul, the Sisters of St. John of God, the Congregation of the lady of the Good shepherd, the Congregation of the Sacred Hearts of Jesus and Mary, the Congregation of the Sisters of Mercy, the Legion of Mary and the Church of Ireland. And goodness, there's probably more at this point. Now, the St. Mary's mother and Baby Home in Tuam, it was run by the Bonne Sucours Sisters. The Sacred Heart sisters managed three major homes. Bessborough Mother and Baby Home in Cork, the Sean Ross Abbey in Rosscrae County Temporary, and Castle Pollard Mother and Baby Home in West Meath. Now, there was also the Daughters of Charity of St. Vincent de Paul, which ran St. Patrick's mother and Baby Home in Pelts down in Dublin. Now, these were all investigated by the state for high infant mortality rates. Forced illegal adoptions and systemic neglect. But yeah, nothing really came of it. Nothing really came of it. And these institutions turned out to be a danger to children. Speaking of children in danger, it is time to delve into the St. Mary's mother and baby home. It wasn't always a mother and baby home. Say what you want about Ireland, but we're really good at repurposing. See, the home started off as a workhouse. Workhouses were common throughout Ireland. Initially the product of the uk the concept. The concept was good. A place where the impoverished and the needy could be cared for. Now, even in the Anglican way of it, the devil makes work for idle thumbs. And so you entered the workhouse to work. You were supposed to earn your keep. And these state run institutions were established with the aim of helping. However, the conditions inside were so horrific that people preferred to take their chances on the street outside. Like there was a whole shame angle of entering a workhouse or a poor house. It's designed to tear you down. Now, I go over this, I think in the first episode of the five canonical victims of Jack the Ripper, Polly Nichols. Now, you only entered the workhouse if you were beyond desperate. Some people even chose to die outside the walls, then suffer the indignities within. And in the 1830s, the Poor Laws were passed in the United Kingdom. And in the 1830s Ireland was still under British rule and would continue to be so for the next 90 years, near enough. So the whole model of how to deal with the impoverished in Ireland was very much reflective of the British system. Over the next few years, about 120 workhouses were built across the country. What's interesting is that the population was booming. It was growing at quite a wild rate. And the class structure in Ireland wasn't really set up to handle that. Now. It had taken a dip a century before in bleu nr, which was a famine in like 1740, 1741, so blue and an ars, it was like a 11 year and it killed about 20% of the population. Now, comparatively, that's even higher than in Gortimor. So the population after that had been growing steadily in the 19th century. The workhouses had begun to be construct. And the workhouse in Chuam was built during Angora Moor or the Famine as some of you know. It was started in 1841 and finally opened its gate in 1846 in the middle of the famine and just before the most devastating year of Angortemor, Also known as Black 47, the Truam Union workhouse was Much like the rest of its kind, with high walls surrounding the structure. The entrance and administrative block were at the north east, which had a waiting room with the guardian boardroom above. The main accommodation block had the masters quarters like right in the centre, and the male and female dormitories were on either side. At the rear there were utility rooms like the bakehouse and the wash house that connected through the infirmary. And also, yes, an idiot's ward, right. And this sort of center also included the chapel and the dining hall. In the mid-1840s sheds were constructed to accommodate more inmates and patients. At the east, a fever hospital was put up two because fever. To the west of the structure, I might add, was a cemetery. Just to make it clear, there was a cemetery fairly close to the workhouse. This will be relevant later. The Churm workhouse also had a series of tunnels constructed as a drainage system. However, by the time the early of the 20th century rolled around, didn't quite function properly and resulted in an open cesspit, much to the chagrin of the locals who complained about the smell. This was covered up later. Amongst other things, many people died in the workhouse and the local newspaper reported that the moans of the dying were as familiar to the ears as the striking of the clock, which honestly feels a little bit like an Angelus reference. It had ceased to be a workhouse by the early 20th century when during the Easter Rising, which was in 1916, the British army took over the workhouse, turfed the residents out and used it as a barracks. It would be occupied by the military a few years later in 1922, after Ireland won independence from Britain. See, during the Irish Civil War, the Free State army occupied the barracks and when they were there they executed six Anti Treaty IRA Volunteers. They did this on the 11th of April 1923 and then executed another two the following week. The Free State army stayed there up until 1925 when they were made to leave the barracks as it constituted a health hazard. So they leave and the nuns move in again. Let's take a wee second to just think over that. 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 also babies and infants. So 80 years after it was created, the Chuam Union Workhouse was now the St. Mary's mother and baby Home, run by the Bon Secours sisters and headed by one mother, Hortense McNamara. Just so you know, nuns choose their own names and she chose Hortense and so, under the rule of the Bon Secours nuns, well, this would lead to a very dark history. Darker even than the history of the workhouse for nearly a century before.
- [35:21]
Karim (Voice of Simon Fairchild)
Hi, everyone. This is Kareem, the voice of Simon Fairchild from the Magnus archives. And today I want to talk to you about Boost Mobile. Some things quietly drain you like an expensive phone bill, trapping your money month after month. Here's a quick money tip. Stop paying a carrier tax when you bring your own phone and switch to boost mobile's $25 unlimited forever plan. You can unlock up to $600 in savings. That's money that belongs in your life, not trapped in a phone bill. Reclaim those savings for something you're actually into. An EMF meter, a thermal camera, or whatever strange corner of the universe you're currently exploring. Visit boostmobile.com to unlock your savings and take back control. After 30 gigabytes, customers may experience slower speeds. Customers pay $25 per month as long as they remain active on the Boost Mobile Unlimited plan. Boost Mobile January 2026 survey comparing average annual payments of AT&T, Verizon and T mobile customers to 12 months on the Boost Mobile Unlimited plan. For full offer details, visit boostmobile.com this
- [36:13]
Progressive Insurance Advertiser
episode is brought to you by Progressive Insurance. Do you ever think about switching your insurance companies to see if you could save some cash? Progressive makes it easy. Just drop in some details about yourself and see if you're eligible to save money when you bundle your home and auto policies. The process only takes minutes and it could mean hundreds more in your pocket. Visit progressive.com after this episode to see if you could save Progressive Casualty Insurance Company and affiliates. Potential savings will vary. Not available in all states,
- [36:46]
Katy Charlwood
These mother and baby homes was seen as the solution to a perceived problem by the Irish state, the Roman Catholic Church and Irish society as a whole. It was indeed the Republic of shame. I really cannot convey to you the chokehold that Catholicism had on this country. Like there is a reason that for a good chunk of the 20th century, 50% of the time when you met a nun in the wild, and I mean like anywhere in the world, right, they would be Irish priests too. Not as many monks, though. I do have a theory that continues in the vein of misogyny and pebble and Christianity, that because men by and large will aim for positions of power within the church, priest, bishop, deacon, blah, blah, and so are less likely to become monks. Granted, within Catholicism, the only option open to women is basically nunneries, right? Get thee to our nunnery. People talk about the Irish as being happy go lucky. But the thing is, the luck of the Irish, it's bad. It's bad luck. Colonialism, oppression, starvation, etc. Ireland is a country that was born with pain. Pain and trauma is part of the Irish experience, from the folklore to the history. Rarely do any of the tales have happy endings. It's one of the reasons that the Irish have a really, really good relationship with death. Like we've seen so much of it. So a culture that already exists with sorrow, shame, oppression and suffering really made it easy to fall in line with strict Catholic doctrines. And I'm not saying this as an excuse, I just need you to understand just how normal this was, how acceptable the shame that was attached to unwed mothers and their offspring. Yet no unwed fathers underwent the same fate. Granted again, sometimes shotgun weddings would come into play because it was seen as a better option than to be the mother of a bastard. Now, I know I am being about as subtle as hitting a swordfish with a hammer, but these institutions existed specifically for this problem. Because not only will society judge you, but so well got. There's even a quote in the Irish Times from 1924, before Mother Hortense gets all set up, but after other such homes are established. Dr. Webb, that's right, a medical professional, he wrote in and said that the illegitimate child being proof of the mother's shame, is in most cases sought to be hidden at all cost. The child becomes an encumbrance on the foster mother who has no interest in keeping it alive. See, here's the thing. Illegitimate children were seen as less human than other children. Like they were. That's not hyperbole. That is a direct quote from an ex nun. Home babies. Children from mother and baby homes who hadn't been adopted say they were somehow less deserving of life. Like some twisted religious eugenics, extra sinful. The mother was a beacon of shame and the apple does not fall far from the tree. Yes, I did use apple deliberately. Even if you compare legitimate children who were orphaned, they would have been treated better than a home baby. Like there was even a threat in these areas that if you didn't behave, you were going to be sent to the home and other children in the community. They were told that the home babies were the children of the devil. Like the home babies when they were old enough went to school, which was also heavily influenced by the church. The other children were told not to associate with the home babies because apparently illegitimacy is contagious. It's guilty by association. So These children were ostracized and segregated. They were sent to school to show that they were being sent and probably just to keep them out of the way. But many weren't properly educated. They were just there. They would march single file to the school and march back to the home. They would leave late in the morning, 10 minutes late, and they would leave 10 minutes early so that they wouldn't be able to associate with other children even if they were allowed to. Back at the home, the pregnant women and girls would get up and be ready for Mass at 8am they would have plain porridge for breakfast. And in some homes the babies would be nursed by their mothers and the homes in which the mothers stayed on, of course, to ensure that the babies were healthy before leaving. Not entuum in tuam, the babies had a bottle and then were put in the nursery and then they were left there. They were there while the women and girls performed chores for the rest of the day. The pregnant people would scrub floors, work in the garden, wash walls and all manner of tedious jobs because remember, this was penance and repentance for your sins. So, yeah, pregnant young women and girls, you do vigorous labor with hazardous chemicals, that's fine. Oh, and when I say girls, I mean girls, you would be shocked, or maybe you wouldn't, but the amount of 13, 12, 11 year olds that went through these homes, like, it's astounding that these children are being blamed. In Bessborough home in Cork, there was a pregnant 13 year old girl who would scream out every night in terror, begging for her mother. So I think we can put two and two together and figure out what was happening to her. And yet she was the one who was punished. Another thing about these homes is that once they were inside, the inmates were all given new names. This was another way of adding to the secrecy, but also to remove autonomy and personal identity. It also meant that they couldn't seek each other out on the outside and report, retaliate in some way. They would be sent to the home, work there throughout their pregnancy, give birth unmedicated and under supervision. Like sometimes they would be demoralized and beaten and abused during birth, like as they were in active labour. Now, some nuns, they would have been nurses. It was common. However, nuns weren't allowed to become midwives until like, I think it's the mid to late 1930s and even there was a whole thing about nuns weren't allowed to be present at births. So how this establishment got up and running in the first place is kind of you know, wild to me, these women are not allowed to be near the birth. And yet let's set up an institution which forces them to do that. Like, okay, so sometimes there would be a visiting doctor or a medical officer, like, coming to these homes. A lot of the time they wouldn't be present for births. Now, these doctors, some of them, like, there was a doctor that closed down Bespora because of the high infant mortality rate, and he got absolutely torn apart. And there was a doctor who reported on Chum and said that it would be kinder to strangle the babies at birth than to let them live there. Now, I'm paraphrasing, but that's the equivalent of what he said. In Chuam, mothers were taken from the home after the birth, sometimes a day, sometimes three. Some were collected by their families and others, repeat offenders were sent to the laundries, all without their babies. Others from the home. Oh, others never left. But we'll get back to that later. Something I want to add here that I think is very important is that the nuns did not do this for free. Galway County Council paid one punt per week for every mother and every child that was in the home. I mean, we will delve into, like, money making later, too. More of that. But they were paid for each person in their care, adult and child alike. The nuns also ran the local hospital, so Grove Hospital. And so you had the home run by the Bon Sucours nuns and Grove Hospital run by the Bon Sucours nuns. Like I said, it wasn't uncommon for nuns to also be nurses. So when the home did close down in 1961, the remaining nuns were easily dispersed and relocated. The home itself was still standing until 1972, when it was demolished and a housing estate was built on the land. Now, this wasn't straight away. It takes a long time for anything to happen in Ireland. So it was still being built, but it was partially constructed, I should say. Right. It just didn't suddenly, oh, now here's a house and estate and a children's playground. No. So although the area above ground was demolished, the area below was not. Some parts were not built over. And kids being kids, especially kids being kids in rural Ireland, well, they often went out to play in the fields and the ruins with the old walls. Right. There was also an orchard there. So, you know, of course there was. And this brings me back to the two boys from the beginning of our story. Franny Hopkins and Barry Sweeney are somewhere between, like, 7 years old and 12 years old, depending on which report you Read. So they're out scrumping for apples and messing about when they jump on a concrete slab and it echoes, right? This is a field, right? So they're curious. They push open the slab, and lo and behold, what they see are loads and loads of bones. Like, skulls and bones. And Franny, he actually pushes Barry, who's the younger of the two, into this hole, right? This hole in the ground that he can clearly see skulls in. Being a child who has been thrown into a pit full of bones. Barry starts crying, okay, so Franny's like, okay, let's. Everything's fine. Out you get. We're best friends. Let's go and tell everybody about the big pile of bones they found. And so they go back. They go back to the community, and they're like, hey, look at these bones. So they tell everyone in town that they found a big hole filled with. To the brim with bones. Now, remember, this used to be a workhouse? So the community comes to the very reasonable conclusion that these must be famine victims. So the local priest, he comes over, he says a prayer, and the community puts up this, like, little memorial, right? Because it's Ireland. Very big respect on the dead. And it's. I say memorial. It's a grotto. Skinny statue of Mary, Mother of God, also very popular here. Try and drive through a town that doesn't have one. And so there's a couple from the town, and they, like, tend to the memorial and, like, look after it up until, like, they pass away. That same year, 1975, Mary Moriarty is told that a child is running around with a skull on a stick. And Mary. Mary is just like, right, and goes looking for Martin, who does, in fact, have a skull on a stick. The Martin tries to tell her that this skull is plastic and how great it's gonna be for Halloween. And Mary, she looks at the skull and she sees that it has nearly a full set of teeth. It's small. And she's like, martin, that's not plastic. That's a human skull you've got there, Martin. So she tells Martin to put the skull back where he found it. And so he does. And so she and a few other of the neighbors, they follow him onto the site of the old home. And. And so when they start looking for other bones in this sort of undergrowth, because, again, no fear, we're used to corpses, right? They look, they can't find any. You know, there's nothing there. She's like, weird that there's just this one tiny skull. And then as they realize they're not finding any. The ground comes away from underneath Mary's feet. And Mary Moriarty falls into a dark pit. She would say that this looked like a tunnel of some sort. And when her eyes adjusted to the dark, she saw these little bundles stacked on top of each other like steps. And all of these bundles were wrapped in a cloth. This, like, very specific wrapped way. The cloth had gone black from rot and damp. And most of these bundles were about the size of a bottle. And they were packed all the way up from the ground to the ceiling. And there were hundreds of them. It wasn't long before the neighbors pulled her out of the pit. And she was very confused by what she saw. That was until she gave birth to her second son in the Grove Hospital run by the Bon Secourle sisters. And she is handed her baby by the nuns who had moved there from the home. And her son, her baby boy, was swaddled in a cloth, wrapped up just like those bundles in the hole. She decided that she needed to talk to someone, someone who had been in the home, someone who would know something, anything. So she reached out to Julia Devaney. So the home, it would also take children in orphans like Julia. She was nine when she was sent to St. Mary's mother and Baby Home, where she worked as a domestic servant. She worked there for the nuns up until the home closed down in 1961. And she didn't really know any other life for 36 years. Mary goes to her and she tells her what she saw in that tunnel. And without skipping a beat, Julia very nonchalantly says, that's where the little babies is. Many a little one I carried down in the night. Remember that. This is the life that Julia knew for 36 years. A life in service of the Bon Secours nuns. She described the home as an awful lonely place where women were just waiting to be separated from their babies. To quote, like Our lady, waiting for the crucifixion. She said that the children in the home were kept like chicken in a coop. And the nuns, they mistreated the children in their care. Suffering and punishment was normal, typical, expected. And according to them, these children deserved more punishment because they were the products of sin. Even if you look into the reports of the industrial schools, the laundries, the homes actual physical beatings were so normalized, it was very much accepted. And more than that, it was seen as the right thing to do. So Sidebar. I once grabbed a leather belt, like, because I was getting, or I was getting clothes together to get ready for the day because I get everyone's clothes ready in the morning. And so I like grabbed a leather belt, doubled it up in my hands and just like pulled it twice to make that cracking noise. And my son was like, that's loud, right? If I did that near my left handed aunt over in Scotland, right, she would flinch from the other side of the room. Which just kind of shows you the difference of that kind of act. Like I was only messing to make the noise. But for someone like my aunt who had being beaten because she was left handed, that's a very real threat, that noise. And to my son, he's like, well, you didn't. What you didn't like. It just shows you how we've moved on from that sort of barbaric way. But this, this was more than just a slap on the wrist. This was pure unadulterated abuse. So back to Mary. She's shocked about this, like what she's hearing from Julia. And being a woman raised in Ireland as a Catholic, she then comes to the conclusion that these must be stillborn babies. Right Again, Ireland, very good relationship with death. We have death notices on the radio. We have a website specifically for announcing deaths in the country. Like we have RIP ie. That's a very real thing. We have wakes at home. Our, our death to burial is like a very quick, quick timeline. Unless there's like a post mortem and other such delays, like it's a couple of days, enough time for the wake and then you're on the ground. Consecrated ground. That is if you're Catholic. Now I know I've said this before, I've brought it up, but Irish people do not put shoes on the table because the only time shoes should be on the table is when there's death in the house. And that means, yes, a dead body on your kitchen table, right? Dead body on the table, somebody making some really decent sandwiches that are cut into triangles. Very, very typical situation. And so in Roman Catholicism, every christened baptized person would be buried in consecrated ground unless that person had committed suicide, which is a mortal sin. So in the eyes of the church, you can't repent from that. You can't do three Hail Marys and Our Father and an act of contrition if you're dead out with that. Burying a Catholic in unconsecrated ground is a big no, no. It's also illegal to just inter people and not have a burial like record. Like it's that. That's not legally a thing you can do. So it made Sense to Mary Moriarty that these babies in the tunnel in Tuam must have been stillborn because obviously the nuns wouldn't bury children of God who had been christened here. Like, like you would be christened quite sharpish as well, especially if they thought the baby was ill or sickly. Okay, I'm gonna do another sidebar. I was christened in a hospital. Like, my godmother was a nun who used to send me a call every year up until, like, she died. Now I was baptized or christened because I was premature and they thought I was gonna die. Right. So they were like, bless her. Quick, we need the numbers. Now. That being said, Tad Said's Jewish. So they were like, let's get in there before he gets there. It just kind of shows you how bad it was. Like, my older siblings, they were all premature as well, but. But like my older brother, he was baptized in France, so he was taken to France and got christened there. Like, that's what happened. And that's like, great, super for you. I got emergency baptism in a hospital. So in a home run by nuns. Right. One would assume that the same situation would be going on here, that you would baptize the children in your care, especially if there was a risk of them dying and they would be buried on consecrated ground. Yeah. So the community assumed that there must have been a little cemetery on the home's grounds, but it, like, got lost and like the undergrowth and the rubble, which is a consideration, unfortunately, this theory falls flat when you realize there's nothing marked. There's no markings, there's no burial records, there's no tombstones or markers or epitaphs. Nothing. There's nothing. So Mary, she rationalises that and so forgets about this for almost 40 years until someone comes asking questions about CHUM and St. Mary's mother and baby home. An absolutely astounding woman, Catherine Corless. Now, Catherine Corless, she's not a historian or an archivist. She's a soft spoken, rather unassuming woman with anxiety and balls so big you think she'd had elephantitis, right? Catherine was from Galway. She had a typical, unassuming life, right? She did a short spell in art college. She did secretarial work. She got married in 1978 and had four kids. She's a mother, she's a grandmother. And at this point, right, she's been through all this and she was very involved in her children's life because she wanted to give them a sort of happiness and love that she didn't get now, that's not to say her mother was cruel, but she felt that her mother had a sadness about her, like this melancholy they just seemed to emit from her all the time. Like there was something that she couldn't pinpoint and couldn't connect to or communicate about. And Catherine thought there had to be a reason for this. And she felt like something was hidden. And it wasn't until her mother, Kathleen, died in 1992 and Catherine started digging that she found out the reason for her mother's sorrow. When she got her hands on her mother's birth certificate, there was a blank space where the father's name would be. Her mother was illegitimate. In a country that saw illegitimate children as half human, degraded them, told them they were worthless their whole childhoods, and even into adulthood, it's no wonder her mother was so low. Now, we don't know exactly where Kathleen was born, but we do know it was in Galway and that she was fostered growing up. But Catherine wondered, what if her mother was connected to the home? So Catherine tells a story after discovering this. Like, she thinks back to her own childhood when she was at school with home babies, and she played a prank on one. Like, one of the other kids, you know, says, do this, and she's like, okay, it's gonna be super funny. And this is like national school. So elementary, primary school age, she wraps up a stone in a sweet wrapper and gives it to a home baby. She and her friends laughed as the child excitedly unwrapped it and put it in her mouth before spitting it out onto the ground. And Catherine was a kid. She didn't know any better. She didn't understand. But looking back, she realized that this child probably never had a sweet in her life. And this idea would have been the most exciting and maybe kindest thing to happen to them. Catherine's actually tried to find out who this person was because she feels such shame for what she did. And she is a product of the system that created this, created this idea. And, like, for that child, that prank may have been one of the better instances to happen to them. Catherine, she's on a mission to learn about the home babies and the home. Like, there really wasn't a lot of info about this because she started looking and she was met with blank responses like, there was no documentation. There was no open information about any of this. And so even when she was requesting it, there was nothing coming to her. And she thought, that's weird, right? There just isn't any info on the homes and she wants to do something right. She can't make it right. You know, there's no making things right when it comes to this, but she wants to try. And you can't change the past, but you can give some sort of justice. And so she starts writing for the Journal of Old Chum Society, right? And so she's writing about local history, so she's asking around about the home and no one wanted to talk to her. She's following paper trails of women sent there. And quite often those paper trails would end up with a death certificate and a burial. In England, women would leave Ireland to start new lives. Some weren't welcomed back to their communities. And Catherine, she just keeps trying. So she even reaches out to known survivors and most of them, she says they remind her of her mother. There is a melancholy that emanates from them. They have low self esteem. And yeah, of course, you've grown up in a society that reinforces the idea that you are nothing, worthless, less than human, all because of the circumstances of your birth, which feels, I don't know, ridiculous. Catherine is looking and it's clear to her that there are a lot of deaths at this home and it's an inordinate amount. And she is looking. And one day in 2011, Mary Moriarty is in the hairdressers and she overhears two women complaining about Catherine poking around and dredging up the past. They're of the opinion of it's in the past, can't change it, no point upsetting the apple cart. And Mary, she's like, fuck this for a game of soldiers. These children deserve justice. And so she talks to Catherine. Now, between 2011 and 2013, Catherine purchased every single death certificate on public record, on public record for the children that died in the home. So a death cert costs something like, was it €4 each? And so all in all, she spent €3184 of her own money right out of her own pocket. And you might be thinking, that's expensive. And yes, yes, it is. But for Catherine, she's like, if she's not going to do it, she thinks, who will? It's been 50 years since the home closed and no one has touched on the matter. Catherine uncovers 798 recorded deaths in the home. She went looking for burial records. She searched cemetery records in Galway and even in Mayo, right? Which is comparatively. Comparatively, I understand they're much bigger. But to give you an idea, it's kind of like for my US listeners, it's kind of like looking for Burial records in Missouri and also Louisiana. Like you're going across the border. Right. She managed to find a grand total of two. Two death records, Right. Or two burial records, I should say. But these records were specifically for two orphans, two legitimate children who were orphaned. The other 796 infants, all illegitimate children. Catherine could not find one single infant burial record. Catherine at this point had been told the stories of Franny and Barry and Martin with his skull on a stick and Mary falling into the tunnel. And so she thinks she's curious, what could these be? And so she looks up, like the archives and the old schematics and she is affronted, she's shocked and she can't quite believe what she's looking at because the locations that she has marked out, where these people have been. When she's looking at this, I don't know, blueprint schematic as a proper term for it, she's looking at the locations of the old septic system and she literally says, no, that can't be a septic tank. Going over the info, it's clear that part of these are like the disconnected cesspit and part is an old septic tank. And she did not want to believe that babies bodies were being unceremoniously dumped in an old septic tank by nuns. Right? But with the lack of burial records, she just didn't have any other resolution. Here's the thing, no one associated with the Bonsicles wanted to talk to her. I mean, like, if there was a mistake, surely they'd want to clear this up. Like, one of the main things she gets back is that, oh, those children must have been reclaimed by their families. Like shit they were. You do not want the baby when it's alive, but you want that baby's corpse. Is that, is that what you're telling me? Oh, yeah, sure, jan, yeah. In December 2012, Catherine pulls up her big girl socks and publishes all her findings in the Historical Journal of Tuam. And at the end of her essay asks this. Is it possible that a large number of those little children were buried in that little plot at the rear of the former home? And if so, why is it not acknowledged as a proper cemetery? It wouldn't be that if someone saw how many tiny graves while being dug that they would start asking questions. It wouldn't be that you had to pay for a burial and it wouldn't hurt their profits. Right. It wouldn't be so that they could fake a death and sell a child across the ocean. Catherine Collis asks the question she Asks if it's a cemetery, why isn't it marked? It's very like. It's a very gentle way of asking the question, unlike me there. But she's aware that accusing the Bon Secours nuns of burying Catholic babies on unconsecrated ground was a big deal. And so she awaited the flurry of abuse and hate and all the furore that she was gonna get, but nothing happened. And so this strikes a match under her. She puts together a spreadsheet with all 796 names of the infants and the babies, right? She lists their ages, three days to eight years, and she listed the cause of death as per their death certificates for each and every one. The most common cause of death was gastroenteritis, often caused by what? What's that? Oh, yeah, poor sanitation. Then, of course, you had meningitis, measles, influenza, tuberculosis. Now, there were other causes of death, like malnutrition, starvation, and I shit you not, congenital idiot. On the 25th of May, 2014, Alison O'Reilly publishes Catherine's List in the Irish Mail on Sunday. And this, this explodes. It's big, massive. It's international news. It's on cnn, it's on Al Jazeera. It's everywhere. And so the Bon Secours nuns, they're ready for it now. And so they hire a PR person. Now, I'm sorry, but this, this specific thing, it just reminds me of Jay and Silent Bob Strikeback, when James Van Der Beek and Jason Biggs are, like, tied up in a dressing room in this movie. In this movie set. And so the security guard is outside and he's like, is anything wrong? Would you like me to call your publicist? Mr. Biggs? Mr. Van Der Beek, would you like me to call your publicist? That is what this specifically reminds me of. And it's very hard to take the nun seriously. But, yeah, they have a PR person. Not a lawyer, but a PR person. And this PR guy is like, there's no mass baby grave here. Like, they even write to, like, documentary makers and news agencies. Like, nothing to see here. No grave, no swaddled children's corpses. None of that. Like, he even says this, and this is a quote, and it's such bollocks. And I'm gonna do it in a silly voice. Ireland in the first half of the 20th century was a moralistic, inward looking, anti feminist country of exaggerated religiosity. Which is just a big bloody, like, word salad, isn't it? It's just nonsense. It's like, oh, yeah, we're shit back in the day, wasn't it? But no dead babies here, right? A representative of the nuns actually meets Catherine Corless in a hotel in Galway and they just keep throwing excuses. They're like, oh, it must be this, it must be that, it must be the famine victims. And Catherine Corless is like, nope, the famine victims are actually buried very respectfully over here in this plot, right? She's got her ordered and survey maps out like she's got everything. And they go, oh, it must have been disturbed by the construction of the housing estate. And Katherine is like, nope, because here is this map and here are these photos of the construction of the housing estate and here is the plot of land completely unaffected by it, right? She's like, nope, nope, nope. So in the end they say to her that what she's doing is very upsetting to the nuns, right? Is it? Is it? So are the members of the religious order who habitually abused women and children, then dumped the bodies of those children in the sewage upset? Oh, what a shame. Wee shame. Anyhow, the PR doesn't work and the news of nuns putting babies bodies in the latrine pit under the COVID of darkness is everywhere. In Tuum, the community is split. Some think that it should all be laid to rest and others think that the children actually deserve some justice. Everyone deserves to be connected.
- [75:22]
Progressive Insurance Advertiser
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- [76:23]
Katy Charlwood
Here's a fun little twist that nobody Talks about before Catherine's essay is published in December 2012. Earlier that year, in October, Dr. Declan McKeown, a senior member of the HSE, that is the health service Executive, think the NHS of Ireland, but America, I don't have a comparison for you. Anyway, he has notes of a teleconference, Dr. McKeown, so he is part of the HSC investigation unit. Right. So pretty important, fella. And at this time, like the country is in shock, it's 2012, there's a lot of stuff coming out about the industrial schools, about the laundries, Like a lot of things have come to light, like the industrial schools especially had come out a few years earlier and like the amount of boys who were compensated for the abuse they suffered in the industrial schools. I mean, they deserve the compensation. I know some of them, which is. I mean, they're men now, but like I met them, I know them in my real life. This, like everybody knows somebody at this point. It's so far reaching. So there was all this stuff happening and it was all sort of. And the public, in the public sort of sphere, and the country was learning more about the Magdalene Laundries specifically at this point, and there was a national inquiry into them. And so because of this, there was a social worker in Galway looking into any information that could help with this, and she comes across this archive that concerns her and she speaks to a manager who then contacts Dr. McEwen. This archive was a large archive of photographs, documentation and correspondence relating to children sent for adoption in the usa. There were also letters in the archive requesting payments from mothers for the upkeep of children that had been discharged or were dead. This note finishes with, and I quote, this may prove to be a scandal that dwarfs other more recent issues with Church and state because of the very emotive sensitivities about the adoption of babies with or without the will of the mother. A concern is that there is evidence of trafficking babies, that it must have been facilitated by doctors, social workers and a number of these health professionals may still be working in the system. So Dr. McKeown, he writes that a minister must be told as soon as possible, right? So that there should be a fully fledged, fully resourced forensic investigation and state inquiry. Right? There are more notes by the doctor with briefings about Chuam and the Bessborough home in Cork. These archives and briefings are lost. It seems the HSE says that Tuzla has them and Tuzla is like, we have no clue where these are. So this means that people did know this was happening. And this is way before Catherine Corless's list blows up, but people are finally paying attention. And the Mother and Babies Homes Commission of Investigation was formed by the Irish government in 2015. Now, considering that this briefing was sent to government ministers, to the TDs, right, the fact that this was sent to someone and was conveniently ignored as telling. So the excavation, there's like a preliminary investigation. It started in 2016, right. Then the two. This commission, it, like, it actually covers all the homes, not just Chuam, for the record, but a sort of preliminary investigation begins, like to find these septic tanks. And what they want to do is just confirm, like, are these famine bodies, are they not? Like, they want to see what the situation is. Now they examine four out of the 16 tanks, a sample size, right? And in every single one, they find the disarticulated bones of children. They carbon date the bones, so there is no confusion. And yeah, they're all from the 20th century, so definitely not famine victims. The age range of the bones was between 35 gestational weeks to 3 years old. Most of what they found were dated from the 50s, right. Which is interesting when you think that they started listing deaths in 1925. So you've got this going on. So this is during a time that the home was very much like being run by the nuns. And it's interesting that this is the 50s and the home is closed in 1961. Like it's. It's interesting because many homes, like homes were still running until 98. So the fact that this is shut in 61, I don't know, I just, I have questions. So as they're doing this research, they also discover that there are six women whose remains are also missing, which is something we also don't bring up very often when we talk about this story. But there are six women, we. We don't know where their bodies are. So the remains in the tank, like, they were spread because of like flooding and such over the years. And so there's no, there's no knowing how many are there and how many are in there. And here's the thing as well, like, this wasn't just against the rules of the Church, it was against the law. You cannot just inter remains wherever you see fit. That is a body dump. The issue, like with the commission. Here's the thing, the commission doesn't really tell us anything new. It's not a full investigation. It's as if it's afraid to turn over those stones. And due to other issues like the information regarding industrial schools and the abuse that happened there. There's a genuine suggestion that these records should be sealed for like 80, 90 years. Like what? So y' all don't have to deal with the consequences of your actions. Like. And the thing is, if they'll do it for one institution, they'll do it for the other and like it. How do I put this? It's not like anyone is accusing the Bonsicle Sisters of being straight up child murderers, right? They were, however, responsible for the children in their care, and they did illegally inter the remains, or at least some of them, because they could all be 796. All 796 could be there. But there are another few scenarios which. Well, one of which being adoption, basically, as per that briefing to Dr. McEwen. Now, there's a theory that some of the children in Tuam, like, what happened in other homes, is that some of those children were sold to wealthy Catholic families in America, sometimes Australia, sometimes England, but mainly the U.S. now, adoption policies only really go, like, stringent in Ireland in the 1930s. So maybe faking a death was the easiest option for these nuns. Right? So there's a survivor of the home, John Pascal Rogers, right? He said that whenever he made a friend, they would vanish, right? Especially if they were a boy. Like, healthy boys were on the top of the wanted list. And of course, there's Deirdre, a survivor from the Bessborough home in Cork, who said that when she was giving birth in 1980, she was being slapped while in active labour. And that the nun said that they had people waiting on a boy and if she had a girl, she's in trouble. She had her boy and he was taken from her three days later. So to say this wasn't part of some trafficking racket. Well, hymns to say. Here's the thing, legal adoption, it was happening, but this was underhand stuff. Like in illegal adoption, there were hoops to jump through and it was a free process. Illegal ones are where you purchase a child, okay? You pay for a baby and. And as well, right? There's another survivor of Chuum whose mother would show up at the home and try to get him back for five years, right? And eventually the nuns forced him out to a family because they don't want the mother getting her hands on him, right? And children were fostered out as free label. Like, that's what their purpose was. They fostered them out as free label. That was something they did, right? And in that report from Dr. Webb, he's like, yeah, the foster parents don't really care if they'll ever die. Like, you do your thing and then you're done, right? It's so horrible because they're seen as less than human, you know, and if it wasn't this, it could be an industrial school or, you know, it was very much of, well, if they died in the industrial school or in the fields or somewhere else, then it wasn't the nuns problem anymore, was it? Another horrific, horrible scenario, because there are confirmed cases of the bodies of infants who died in mother and baby homes being used for anatomical studies in medical schools. In Dublin alone, according to their own records, the medical schools and universities received more than 950 bodies of children aged between 10 minutes and five years between January 1920 and October 1977. 27 of these were wet samples. A wet sample is a stillborn baby. Eighteen children were legitimate, the rest were not. But the medical schools paid for this privilege. Some homes were given 10 shillings per dead child's body that they sent to the schools. Now, it's not too much of a stretch to think that, hey, they're getting paid to have this child, right? So when you have a mother and baby in a home, so the state is paying you money for the mother and that child, as long as that child is still there. So if that child is going up for adoption, then that mother can stay there, which is why sometimes they would keep the mother on for nursing. Now, otherwise the mother would go and the child would stay there and they would get money for the child. They would also ask for money off of parents, off of mothers who, you know, the ones who actually wanted to support their children. They would ask them for funding and sometimes they'd be asking for funding for children who were already dead or that had been adopted. Like, what, on top of this, like, considering they've got these dead bodies, do they pay to bury them or do they make money off them, considering they don't really see them as human anyway. And another thing I want to bring up actually is children from mother and baby homes, like the children that were there when they were older. Like they used to do double blind testing on them. So, like medical experiments, they would test, you know, vaccines, inoculations, like, whatever. They would test it on these children because, yeah, why not test it on the vulnerable children? Like, of course. So, yeah, scientific experimentation on children. And of course the nuns were paid for this privilege. Now, the excavation in Chum is still ongoing and the report by the commission is out. And it is, it is. Wow. It's a lot of hot air and regurgitation of the facts that we already know. The infant mortality rate was high. It was double that of other mother and baby homes. And 9,000 children had died in the 18 institutions covered by the commission's terms of reference between 1922 and 1998. The Churm home Survivors Network says that it's not finished till it's finished, until every cause of death is accounted for, and that the horrors, the full horrors of what's happened at Tuam has yet to come to light. 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. After the report came out, the Bonsicle sisters offered a 2.5 million voluntary contribution towards the cost of excavation and forensic excavation, like at the Chuam site, which. Right. The cost of this excavation is somewhere between 6 and 13 million, right? And the bonds of girl sisters are like, here's 2.5 million we just happen to have kicking about. And it's voluntary. Now. The Minister for Children, she contacted Pope Francis, right? And he's like, oh, I'll pray for you and whatever. And it's kind of a shitty response considering the reason that the head of the church was contacted was because, you know, it's regarding reparations for the victims from what the Church had done to them specifically. And he's like, thoughts and prayers. Following the release of the final report of the Mother and Baby Homes Commission of Investigation, the Bontecor Sisters released an apology. It states, the commission's report presents a history of our country in which many women and children were rejected, silenced and excluded, in which they were subjected to hardship and which their inherent human dignity was disrespected in life and in death. Our Sisters of Bonsacours were part of this sorrowful history. Our sisters of St Mary's Mother and Baby Home in Chuam from 1925 to 1961. 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 into 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. 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. We offer our profound apologies to all the women and children on St. Mary's Mother and Baby Home, to their families and to the people of this country. Healing is not possible until what happened is acknowledged. We hope and pray that healing will come to all those affected, those who are living, and those who have died. We hope that we, our church and our community can learn from this history. Yeah, it's easy to do an apology. And after all of the physical forensic evidence points to you, like, oh, I'm sorry. I did the thing that we denied doing. Like, you literally spent 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. So the excavation is still ongoing. It was properly started in July 2025, and it is a laborious process, and they're using what DNA they can to find the family and give each of these children their name and a respectful burial. Initially, they uncovered 11 remains, and as of February 2026, they have found another 22 bodies. So this is a total of 33 thus far. But because the Bon Secours also ran the Grove Hospital, there are calls to excavate those grounds too, but it's still ongoing. They need to get an archaeologist in. Like, this ground, like, it is being watched, right? Like, the excavation is happening and the area is being monitored because they need to keep an eye on it to make sure nobody tries to mess with it. Like, it's such. It's so hard because they're trying to keep whatever, like, forensic stuff they need, they're trying to keep on top of that right now. But the excavation is ongoing. You know, we don't have answers. I hope one day we will, because those who suffered, they deserve better. And these children did not get a voice. Those women didn't. Many died with a shame that they did not earn or deserve. And for every dudebro out there harking on about traditional values, I hope you choke on your protein shake. Traditional values rely on the oppression and abuse of women. Now, I will be delving more into Ireland's hidden history at some point because those children did not get to live in peace. So I'm not gonna let the debt, like, this dark history committed by the church in Ireland and abroad. Like, I'll be going into it, I'll be sharing it, but it's time. It's research and we will get there. And they don't get to hide anymore. And I don't want to say here ends the story of the Chuam 796, because it's not the end, because it's still ongoing. We still don't have the answers. It is part of a history that we still need to unravel and understand. Because I hate, I hate this covering up bullshit. I mean, I spend like, that's my focus, isn't it? It's like bullshit in history and I'm uncovering it. Like that's oh, such a thing. And I, I hate it. I hate it so much. And I also, I grew up in a society where it's like, don't air your dirty linen in public. And it's like, I'm not the one with filthy sheets here. Like, I'm not airing anything. Like, I'll name and shame. I don't give a damn. But 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. So if you liked or didn't like this episode, feel free to share. Feel free to share with everybody everywhere because it's Irish Heritage Month. Guess you should know Irish history now. Of course, sharing is caring. Cheer us, Follow on the socials, interact. Interaction is great. Interaction is what keeps the lights on. And yeah, I, I will give you another deep dive into something. Next week's episode is not going to be as long as this. I need you all to know that. Dear goodness, I'm Lizzima voice. So without further ado, I am going to give you recommendations for reading. I am going to recommend My Name is bridget by Alison O'Reilly, for listening, anything by Sinead O' Connor and for watching. You know what? You deserve something light. So running point, it's got Kate Hudson. It's kind of fun. Like it's not incredibly depressing. So go to town on that one. And with that, I'm going to bid you goodbye. Adios. Au revoir. Au revoirs, my friends. Bye bye.
- [97:36]
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