Comment by Ryan O'Rourke on June 9, 2014 at 5:57pm

Nope ... looks like it was Newstalk and not Irish Central that broke that story. So much for that, Robbie.

Comment by Robbie Doyle on June 9, 2014 at 5:59pm

I've no loyalty to Irish Central. I didn't say they broke the story. But they were quick to remind the public of its existence while it was topical.

Comment by Ryan O'Rourke on June 9, 2014 at 6:01pm

For my part, Robbie, I 'd rather not drive internet traffic to this site at all costs. In other words, speculation and rumour are cheap. Verifiable facts are valuable.

Comment by Ryan O'Rourke on June 10, 2014 at 4:28am

Forbes --- That Story About Irish Babies In A Septic Tank: Here's Why It's A Hoax

"There is a moral here for those who are increasingly bewildered by the modern world: the global media are becoming less and less accountable. Sometimes the truth eventually does come out, or at least some of us have sufficient knowledge to suspect the facts are misstated.  But very often readers do not have the experience and worldly wisdom to see through the nonsense, particularly in interpreting reported developments in nations whose cultures diverge sharply from those of the West (I am thinking in particular of East Asia, a region about which on the basis of 27 years of residence I can claim some knowledge ).

While we are constantly assured that we live in an Information Age, in reality the noise to signal ratio in our media has probably never been higher. This is  an age of disinformation." 

Comment by Ryan O'Rourke on June 10, 2014 at 4:40am

Thought this would be of interest to some of you, especially those who do not live in Ireland and who may not be familiar with these mass infant burial grounds.

There are over 500 of these "unconsecrated" burial plots in County Galway alone, and tens of thousands of them throughout the entire country -- a practice I find completely ridiculous and very sad, by the way.

Below is a map with the ones that have been discovered only in County Galway.  One of them shows a plot a stone's throw (literally) from our house on the south Connemara coast.  It's a grassy knoll right on the beach, now marked by a single stone cross monument.  Until only a decade or two ago, the high tides and storms would occasionally come in and erode that plot of land; it would, from time to time, wash away some of the corpses of the infants buried there.  Gruesome and depressing.  Then a local man came along and built a strong retaining wall and the stone cross monument that sits there now.

Here's that map showing the known burial sites in Galway:

Comment by Kelly O'Rourke on June 10, 2014 at 4:54am

Interesting letter from a professor at Queens in The Irish Times today:

Sir, – The media should be very wary of using the term “septic tank” to describe the structure containing the child burials at St Mary’s mother-and-child home at Tuam. It is offensive and hurtful to all those involved. The structure as described is much more likely to be a shaft burial vault, a common method of burial used in the recent past and still used today in many part of Europe.

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. The stone could be temporarily removed to allow the addition of additional coffined burials to the vault. 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.

Many maternity hospitals in Ireland had a communal burial place for stillborn children or those who died soon after birth. These were sometimes in a nearby graveyard but more often in a special area within the grounds of the hospital. It was not a tradition until very recently to return such deceased infants to parents for taking back to family burial places.

Until proved otherwise, the burial structure at Tuam should be described as a communal burial vault. – Yours, etc,

Dr FINBAR McCORMICK

School of Geography,

Archaeology

and Palaeoecology,

University Road,

Queen’s University,

Belfast.

Comment by Kelly O'Rourke on June 10, 2014 at 5:08am

Of course the response to the letter above will be, "So what?  It really doesn't matter what the mass grave container was called!"  To which I say, "EXACTLY."  Bad reporting now has us arguing semantics instead of the real issues about the treatment of children and the stigmatisation of young women.   We will never get to discuss societal repercussions of secreting away young mothers and dehumanising babies (continued today by a very different cast of characters) because we are too busy arguing, "Was it a septic tank, or wasn't it?"  The outlook that the end justifies the means can have messy repercussions. 

Comment by Robbie Doyle on June 10, 2014 at 11:48am

Decades of local knowledge about this and other unmarked mass graves, years of research by a small group in Tuam and a 2011 Prime Time investigative programme prompted little or no reaction. Suddenly, as soon as "sensationalistic" headlines spread around the globe, the state is finally jolted to begin a official inquiry (http://www.irishtimes.com/news/politics/inquiry-into-mother-and-bab...) into what went on in these mother and baby homes. So while some are happy to fire shots from the high moral ground, it appears that these words, "dumped" and septic tank," have in fact been a catalyst for good. Q.E.D.

Comment by Ryan O'Rourke on June 10, 2014 at 3:45pm

What we have here is simply a difference in philosophy.  You, Robbie, have clearly demonstrated that you're okay with rumour being passed off as fact as long as something good might come from it.  I disagree.   The end does not justify the means.  We'll never agree with each other on this.

I think we're all in agreement, however, that there was some seriously messed up stuff happening for a long time in Ireland with regard to these mothers and children.

Comment by Robert P. Lynch on June 11, 2014 at 12:21pm

To get the full picture it helps to be aware that these types of institution were THE "social safety net" for many generations in Ireland, during some very tough times. 
Blame has to be assigned to many parts of society (and all of it) as it existed at that time. The Church, the government, all parts of the established order (what the Irish might call, derisively, the "great and the good"), and, not coincidentally, the man and woman in the street, the home, and in the pews were all complicit in this situation. 

For a variety of social, economic, political and religious reasons they did not want to know, or have to deal with, these mothers and children, and a variety of other outcasts. It was very convenient for all involved to have them locked mostly out of sight with the Sisters.

They were very tough times. My mother resided in one of these residences from age 9 to 16 (she and her siblings lost their mother when she died in childbirth with the youngest and their father migrated to New York to find work after finding himself on the losing side of the Irish Civil War).

My mother spoke only obliquely about some of the abuses which went on and our family are only now discovering more from the official reports and partially released records. 

Back when Frank McCourt's book "Angela's Ashes" came out, my mother heard some contemporaries who came from his home town of Limerick complaining that things weren't as bad as he made them out to be.

"Nonsense", my mother scoffed. She said that while she came from an rural, as compared to Frank's urban one, that she assumed that every part of his story was true; that for people like them at the time there was absolutely "nothing", and that it might actually have been worse for the urban poor. She instinctively knew that the critics were speaking from a very Irish psychological place, a combination of imposed shame, denial and survivors' guilt.

The system, to some extent was built upon an inhumane "social welfare" system of "workhouses" set up by the British and the Irish Ascendancy during the Famine. The plight of the starving was somehow deemed to be their own fault and assistance was given in a punitive way designed to encourage recipients towards supposed dependency. The Tuam home was housed in one of these buildings and the same punitive, even penal, spirit haunted it.

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