The blue of a little shoe is made even bluer by the brown earth that fills the space destined for the foot of a child.
For Catherine Corless, the shoe symbolizes the lost childhoods that have become her life’s work, transforming her from a near-recluse finding amusement in local history to a reluctant but determined awareness of Ireland.
A decade ago, while researching the past of a long-closed home for single mothers in Tuam, County Galway, Ireland, she came across a math problem. At least 798 children had died in the St. Mary’s Mother and Baby Home during its operation from 1925 to 1961, but only two were buried in the cemetery across the street.
Where were the others?
After further investigation, Corless made the startling allegation that hundreds of children who had been in the care of Catholic nuns may be buried in the grounds of the old house in Tuam, many in a disused sewage system. Her theory was widely dismissed until forensic archaeologists emerged from a test excavation at the site with photographs of mixed-up infant bones.
That was six years ago. Since then, Corless, 68, has received awards and accolades. She has dealt with anxiety and depression, cared for her husband diagnosed with cancer, and celebrated the birth of five grandchildren; now they have 10.
In the meantime, those haunting bones have remained untouchedunder grass that for decades was a playground where children ran, joked and laughed over the skeletal remains of other children who had died of contagion, malnutrition and poor prenatal care.
“I complained every chance I got,” Corless said. “It emphasized how immoral this was. Against Catholic values. This was a sewer system!”
The resolution has finally arrived. Ireland passed a law last year allowing mass excavationone of the most challenging ever made.
But Corless said his work would end only when the country does justice for the hundreds of children it abandoned long ago. Her determination is fueled in part by what forensic archaeologists found all those years ago:
Little skulls. tiny bones. A single blue shoe.
On a clear day in Tuam in October 2016, the claw of a small bulldozer first attacked a corner of a three-hectare slum site. A huge slate-grey building once stood here. It served for 36 years as a home for mothers and babies before being demolished in the early 1970s.
This was where grief-stricken families and offended Catholic priests sent pregnant single women to give birth. The children they were forced to leave behind were given up for adoption or sent to industrial schools.
Now, forensic archaeologists were using hand shovels to remove the afflicted soil with surgical care. They had been hired by a new government entity, the Mother and Baby Home Investigation Commission, to determine if there were burials on the property. Corless, who grew up near the house, had developed a gruesome theory: that the administrators of the home, the Sisters of Good Succor, had buried children on the property.
Subterranean anomalies identified by a geophysical survey had helped archaeologists determine where to start. They were very focused on not disturbing any discovered remains, recalled Niamh McCullagh, team leader. “So it was manual all the time.”
Within hours of the first day’s excavation, archaeologists reached the concrete lid of a sewage chamber and noticed dirt falling through a coin-sized crack into a dark void. A flashlight beam revealed what lay eight feet below.
“Juvenile human remains,” McCullagh said. The works stopped. He alerted the authorities and a white tent was erected around the site, out of respect.
After more excavations in early 2017, archaeologists reported a “significant amount” of bones and bone fragments, some gnawed on by rodents. Radiocarbon tests indicated that the remains dated from the 1920s to the 1950s.
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The next step seemed obvious, at least to Corless: remove the human remains immediately. “It should have been automatic,” he said.
It was not. Instead, the children’s bones remained underground as Ireland embarked on an odyssey toward resolution—a painful journey of investigation, self-recrimination, delay, evasion, and pain.
The government presented five options, from simply erecting a monument to adopting what Corless and others had sought: excavation, identification if possible, and proper burial. He then asked Galway County Council for independent consultants to assess preferences.
Corless argued that the county council, which had regulatory responsibilities over the home, was not a disinterested party and that the resolution of an atrocity should not be subject to a popularity contest. “Like voting for the Eurovision Song Contest,” she said.
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Even decades after the closure of the foster home, after nearly all the nuns and single mothers have died, the force of their many emotions can still hit like a slap in the face.
Carmel Larkin, 73, was born at home, separated from her mother — “I don’t even have a picture of her,” she said — and placed in foster care as a child. Last year she learned that the mother she never knew, Winifred, had spent 12 years in a mental hospital not far from Larkin’s home and in that time she hadn’t had a single visitor.
And the mother of PJ Haverty, another “home baby”, continues to reveal previously confidential information many years after her death in England, where her son was lucky enough to find her and hear how she had tried many times to get it back, only to being rejected by the nuns.
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Towards the end of 2018, the Irish Government chose the excavation and a respectful burial, and the work would begin at the end of 2019. But 2019 has come and gone. “There was no will in the government,” Corless said.
However, government officials say drafting the legislation was complicated.
The year 2020 brought more delays and more stress. The Covid-19 pandemic led to lockdowns. Ireland held elections which resulted in a new government leadership.
At Corless’s urging, Roderic O’Gorman, the new Minister in charge of Children and Youth Affairs, agreed to proceed. By January 2021, he had submitted the draft for required scrutiny by a joint legislative committee. That same month, the commission investigating the maternal and child care home system issued its rueful final report, detailing profound emotional abuse in the institutions and a “appalling level of infant mortality,” twice the average rate.
The report distributed blame between government, church and society, sparking criticism that it had downplayed the influence Ireland’s once-virtual theocracy had over its people. It also drew apologies from the Irish Government, Galway County Council, the Archbishop of Tuam and, finally, the Sisters of Good Succor, who confessed to “failing to live up to our Christianity”.
Now the sisters were admitting that Corless had been right all along. “We particularly recognize that the babies and children who died at the Home were buried in a disrespectful and unacceptable manner,” the sisters wrote. “We deeply regret all of this.”
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Finally, in February 2022, O’Gorman announced the Institutional Burials Bill, which would provide a legal basis for excavating all remains at the Tuam site, along with dignified burials and DNA testing for possible identifications. The project will cost an estimated $14.3 million, with the Sisters of Good Help pledging around $2.6 million.
Corless, pleased but wary, continued her wait. In the spring, she attended a gathering to honor the site and recognized someone at the back of the crowd whom she had invited but never expected to see: Francis Duffy, the newly installed Archbishop of Tuam.
For years, the archdiocese had been largely silent about the Tuam home scandal. But here was the new Archbishop
Archbishop Duffy said in a recent interview that apologies were not enough. One of his first steps in doing more has been to listen to survivors talk about their pain, anger and deep sense of betrayal. He said that he felt the power of these emotions during his visit to the site in Tuam. Since childhood he had been careful not to walk on graves whenever possible, and he was acutely aware of what—or who—lay beneath his feet.
“It is definitely moving to see the grave of a small child or a baby,” he said. “And here we are, standing on the graves of as many as 800.”
•••
The playground is closed. Children should not play where other children are buried.
The Government established a compensation package of 830 million dollars for those eligible “in recognition of the suffering experienced while residing in Homes for Mothers and Babies and County Institutions.”
The excavation work is ready to start. Corless continues to serve as defender of the dead and grandmother of the living.
She and her husband had several of their grandchildren stay with them over the Christmas vacation period.
There were toys and candy and screaming and baths and little shoes scattered everywhere.
“I complained every chance I got. She emphasized how immoral this was. Against Catholic values. This was a sewer system!” said Catherine Corless, an amateur historian.
“It is definitely moving to see the grave of a small child or a baby. And here we are, standing on the graves of as many as 800,” said Francis Duffy, Archbishop of Tuam.
By: Dan Barry
BBC-NEWS-SRC: http://www.nytsyn.com/subscribed/stories/6528670, IMPORTING DATE: 2023-01-12 23:00:06
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