Tuam Mother and Baby Home in Ireland: the Trouble With the Septic Tank Story (Story is a Hoax)

[mdgspencer]

The Catholic Church in Ireland is facing enormous criticism because of a purported atrocity–that the bodies of 800 children were “dumped” in a septic tank decades ago at St. Mary’s Catholic home for unwed members. However, the woman historian cited by the media as the source of this information denies she is the source of such a story, and says that she never said children’s bodies were “dumped,” nor that they were put into a septic tank. She explains too that this story contains impossibilities, and insists that any such children buried on the grounds of the Catholic home would have died of natural causes over the years.
www.irishtimes.com/news/social-affairs/tuan-mother-and-baby-home-the-trouble-with-the-septic-tank-story-1.1823393

 

[McCall1981]

Glad to read this.

 

[St_Francis]

Thank you for posting this.

 

[LongingSoul]

It makes you want to flame torch the media. I know they serve a proper purpose in our world but these journalists need to be held accountable for their scurrilous scandalising at the expense of deceased children. When freedom of speech becomes abuse of a freedom… people need to be held accountable in my opinion.

 

[Dawnia]

Here is more info on the history of St. Mary’s.

 

[abucs]

Thankyou for posting this. It is incredible that news services are so quick to report lies about the Catholic Church.

 

[ConfusedTim]

Two more resources that highlight the mis quoting of facts about this case

spiked-online.com/newsite/article/the-tuam-tank-another-myth-about-evil-ireland/15140#.U5Wt78saySM

carolinefarrow.com/

 

[Joe_5859]

Here’s a few more articles along the same vein:

patheos.com/blogs/yimcatholic/2014/06/a-clarification-about-the-deaths-of-800-children-in-tuam-ireland-and-more.html

freethoughtblogs.com/butterfliesandwheels/2014/06/catherine-corless-synopsis-of-her-research-on-tuam-motherbaby-home/

 

[pepipop]

Here is more info on the history of St. Mary’s.

Very interesting facts. Unfortunately, most likely due to the other scandals in Ireland, the Church leaders have responded quite defensively - when the news first came out - although, I suppose, better to be safe than sorry.

Irish Blogger Shane, (Lux Occulta) has carried out research indicating that the mortality rate in the home at Tuam was actually LOWER than much of the rest of the country, except in Dublin, where it was the same.

*Between 1925 and 1937, 204 children died at the Home — an average of 17 per year. 17 deaths out of 200 children equals a mortality rate of 8.5%. It is interesting to compare that with the rest of the country at the time. In 1933, the infant mortality rate in Dublin was 83 per thousand (ie. a mortality rate of 8.3%), in Cork it was 89 per thousand (8.9%), in Waterford it was 102 per thousand (10.2%) and in Limerick it was 132 per thousand (13.2%). (Source: Irish Press, 12th April, 1935; below).

Also the historian Liam Logan (@limerick1914) who has done so much work in digging up the archives and sharing them, has discovered that the home never once left the hands of the County Council. In 1951, 10 years before it shut, the sisters were begging the board for a grant, saying that they were too ashamed to show councils part of the building which desperately needed renovations, the children were sleeping in attics in terrible conditions and the building were considered a fire risk. In a meeting in 1949, Senator Martin Quinn were told that the children were suffering as result of the condition of the building, to which he replied “I do not like these statements which receive such publicity”.*

 

[Modern_Revert]

The story may be false, but the damage is done.

carolinefarrow.com/2014/06/07/tuam-breaking-800-babies-were-not-dumped/

 

[MacBP]

I’ve been following this story with intense interest and it does seem that anger surrounding the Tuam home is largely misdirected. As has been noted by other posters, the Tuam home seems like it was par for the course. It was no better or no worse than anywhere else in Ireland, and it seems like the appalling level of mortality was largely a result of the economic conditions at the time. Furthermore, while the Tuam home wasn’t perfect, some evidence seems to suggest it was doing reasonably well at at its job.

With that said, I do think anger at the Church and other religious organizations is justified. We were certainly complicit in creating and enforcing a culture where illegitimate children were stigmatized and their mothers were made to suffer. This brings to mind something that Dr. Kreeft once said. In the past cultures were very good at hating the sin (which is right) but they took that hatred too far and hated the sinner (which is wrong). Today, our culture wants very much to love the sinner (which is right), but in its zeal to accomplish this goal it ends up loving the sin too (which is wrong). Neither approach is perfect. As Christians were are called to love the sinner and hate the sin, and I think it’s only fair that we receive scrutiny where we have failed to uphold this ideal.

In response to one news article, I read one point out how awful it is that the Church simultaneously prohibits abortion and contraceptives while still stigmatizing those individuals who have a child out of wedlock. In other words, once that initial mistake was made the Church will punish you whatever you do. I think this is a fair critique. If the Church wants to be effectively pro-life it needs to move away from illegitimate children and there mothers. I’m sure the Church has made these changes in the western world, but this hasn’t always been the case.

Perhaps the best way forward would be to hold a press conference where the facts of the case are laid out (admittedly that can’t be done for quite some time, but even the facts as we know them now are far less inflammatory) and where the officials in the Church might acknowledge their mistakes in past.

 

[abucs]

Where is your evidence that unwed mothers and their children were hated?

 

[MacBP]

Where is your evidence that unwed mothers and their children were hated?

Mostly anecdotal, although I’m unsure how you would provide other forms of evidence. This column does a fairly good job putting the situation into context. Its not at all anti-Catholic! His description of the culture of the the time is illuminating.

 

[Tuskar_Rock]

Mostly anecdotal, although I’m unsure how you would provide other forms of evidence.

I grew up in 1950s-60s Ireland, a country in which the word “morality” meant “sexual morality” only; I speak from my own knowledge. Then, unwed pregnant women were outcasts, often from their own families. There’s been a stream of callers to radio here over the past few days testifying to this.

Unmarried motherhood in Ireland was shameful and if it became publicly known caused reputational damage to the woman, her family and her child. Birth in secret in a Home or in England (even in an outhouse or field was not unknown) followed. Infanticide was far more common than is realised.The baby was snatched away and hastily given for adoption (sometimes illegally, to a “nice American Catholic couple”, unvetted).

The situation in Britain doesn’t seem to have been vastly different; just last night I watched a TV show “Long Lost Family” which re-united English mothers with their long-lost children forced into adoption. It won’t run out of subject matter any time soon.

There are special historical factors re the Church in Irish society. It provided moral and political leadership when there was none other, schools, hospitals and social support when we couldn’t afford them, and acquired stature as a result. We may be dirt-poor, but we are decent and moral people, witness our piety, we believed, and anything that spoiled this image was hidden away. But the Church-people interaction has never I suggest been culturally neutral. Clerics are inculturated like everyone else. Religious principles notwithstanding, it’s probable those in religious life have the same notion as everyone else of what is "respectable”. The Mother & Baby and Magdalene Homes are really a manifestation of cultural attitudes of the period.

This is not popular with anti-Catholics; they’d prefer everything to be the Church’s fault, tout á court. The current malevolent fantasy of nuns starving despised “illegitimate” children, then “dumping” their dead bodies in sewage, chimes with them, and fits their demonology rather well. You could say, ironically, that for them it’s a godsend.

 

[Denise1957]

I’m not sure that the situation in Ireland in the 1950’s and 60’s was very different than the U.S regarding out-of-wedlock pregnancy. My mother became pregnant when she was in high school in the early 1950’s, and my grandparents sent her to a home for unwed mothers. She gave the baby up for adoption, but in those days, young women were not encouraged to keep their babies. And my mom’s sister (my aunt) became pregnant when she was in college, but since she was away from home, she kept the baby, but she found a man who agreed to marry her (not the baby’s father) before the baby was born. Things began to change here in the late 1960’s and '70’s.

I think it’s good that women are no longer forced or pressured to give up their babies as they one were here, but there are also a lot of young folks who don’t have fathers around to guide them properly. Hence, the prisons are far more crowded now than they were fifty years ago, since it’s now an ‘anything goes’ type of mentality that prevails here. And with abortion being the main way of dealing with an unwanted pregnancy, there are many couples wanting to adopt, but there are few babies available for adoption anymore.

 

[abucs]

With that said, I do think anger at the Church and other religious organizations is justified.

Mostly anecdotal, although I’m unsure how you would provide other forms of evidence. This column does a fairly good job putting the situation into context. Its not at all anti-Catholic! His description of the culture of the the time is illuminating.

I’ve read the article that you have suggested and I ask again, where is the evidence that the Church and its institutions hated unwed mothers and their children?

Surely the fact that the Church invested buildings and nuns in an effort to help unwed mothers and their children would speak against the charge that they hated them.

I know there have been past attempts by secularists to argue that guilt is bad and portray the Church as evil because its dogmas ‘create’ and ‘encourage’ guilt. With this in mind it has tried to paint the Church in the most evil of lights. The worldwide beat-up with this story is just the latest attempt.

The manufactured morality of removing guilt from society has been far more socially destructive and uncompassionate than even any imagined bogey man historical Catholic Church.

Again, I ask for evidence.

The Church has invested billions of dollars in Africa caring for those with the terminal condition of AIDS. Does the Church hate those outcasts also?

Mother Theresa and her nuns cared for the poor in Calcutta. Does the Church hate those outcasts also?

I find your charge that the Catholic Church hated unwed mothers and their children to be as offensive as it is ridiculous.

 

[abucs]

I read one point out how awful it is that the Church simultaneously prohibits abortion and contraceptives while still stigmatizing those individuals who have a child out of wedlock. In other words, once that initial mistake was made the Church will punish you whatever you do. I think this is a fair critique…

I find it a critique that is shallow, self-serving and mis-representative.

You have to define what the writer means by ‘the Church will punish you’. If it is in reference to the manufactured morality mentioned above which tried to ‘eliminate guilt’ then it is the writer who should be made to defend his view in the light of modern history.

 

[Hopey]

From Forbes:

“In the 19th century, deep brick-lined shafts were constructed and covered with a large slab which often doubled as a flatly laid headstone. These were common in 19th-century urban cemeteries……Such tombs are still used extensively in Mediterranean countries. I recently saw such structures being constructed in a churchyard in Croatia. The shaft was made of concrete blocks, plastered internally and roofed with large concrete slabs. "

 

[Memaw]

From Forbes:

“In the 19th century, deep brick-lined shafts were constructed and covered with a large slab which often doubled as a flatly laid headstone. These were common in 19th-century urban cemeteries……Such tombs are still used extensively in Mediterranean countries. I recently saw such structures being constructed in a churchyard in Croatia. The shaft was made of concrete blocks, plastered internally and roofed with large concrete slabs. "

Thanks for clearing that up, but I am afraid there will still be many who will believe the original story as a way to mud at the Church. God Bless, Memaw

 

[mrsjennymulhall]

It was suggested today that the Irish government allowed the children in these homes to be used to test vaccines and medicines before they were used in the general population. Every day, a new and more horrible eye-witness account is published. My brother (father of my Godson) has vowed that he will break completely from the Church (he is essentially lapsed but had my Godson baptised) because of this new scandal.

Please pray unceasingly for the people of Ireland; it seems that there is no time to heal between one horror and the next and people are very hurt, angry and disillusioned. Pray also for the children of those poor wounded mothers and for the orders that sheltered them in an age when their own families wouldn’t, or couldn’t care for them. My beloved faith is being portrayed as the antithesis to everything it truly is and hardly a voice has been raised in defence or challenge.

Jenny x