Why it is unfair to demonise the nuns of Tuam children’s home

There are not 800 bodies in a septic tank in the grounds of the old children’s home at Tuam. The nuns did not kill the babies or deliberately neglect them to death. In fact, the nuns ran the home about as well as they could under very difficult circumstances given the poverty of the time and the fact that the home was badly under-resourced by Galway County Council.

If you know any of this, it is not because of media reports. It is because you have taken the time to read the report of the Commission of Investigation into Mother and Baby Homes which came out in 2021. But hardly anyone has read this, and the media have not bothered to appraise the public properly of its contents.

In fact, for the most part the media still seem to want the original narrative to be true, which is that the ‘evil’ nuns of Tuam are directly responsible for 800 babies and young children dying at the home they ran, and that when the children died, they dumped them in raw sewage. That is to say, the nuns were criminals, and if any of them were alive today (none of them are), they should be behind bars.

Objective

An objective reading of the report into the mother and baby homes found no evidence the nuns who ran the Tuam children’s home (which included the children of married parents as well, by the way) were full of bad intent and wanted the children in their care to die. It did find that the mortality rate in the home was very high until the arrival of antibiotics and vaccinations, but this was chiefly because the home was very overcrowded and it was extremely hard to control an infectious disease once it broke out in the place. This is exactly what happened in our nursing homes during Covid under modern conditions.

Thanks to the public outcry that followed the revelation that 800 babies had died in the home during its period of existence from 1925 until 1961, and the allegation that the nuns had effectively murdered the children and dumped them in a septic tank, the State ordered a dig at the site to find the bodies. That dig has been underway for some time now and it is issuing periodic reports about its progress.

The latest one came out last week. It said that another 22 bodies had been found making a total of 99 so far. But here is the significant thing: they are all in coffins. This immediately disrupts the narrative that all the bodies are in a septic tank.

The dig will continue and only bit by bit get to the underground structure in which we know some bodies are to be found. We do not know how many more bodies will be found in coffins in the meantime. It could be hundreds. They have only dug up a small portion of the overall burial ground to date.

What we are likely to discover by the time this whole thing is over is that the big majority of the bodies were buried in coffins, which is to say, appropriately.

But what of the aforementioned underground structure? The Commission of Investigation did have a preliminary investigation conducted into it. The structure contains 20 different chambers and in those chambers are “significant quantities” of remains. It is not at all clear what “significant” means.

{{The Bons Secour order that ran the home has already apologised for the fact that some bodies are in this structure”

The Commission said it has “not yet determined what the purpose of this structure was but it appears to be related to the treatment/containment of sewage and/or waste water. The Commission has also not yet determined if it was ever used for this purpose.”

The Bons Secour order that ran the home has already apologised for the fact that some bodies are in this structure.

The Commission says of these particular burials: “The more difficult question to answer is why the children were ‘buried’ in such an inappropriate manner. It has not been possible to establish who actually physically conducted the burials. It seems likely that the burials were conducted on the instructions of the Sisters. As is described above, the burial process required lifting a concrete lid. It is highly unlikely that the Sisters actually conducted the burials themselves.”

But were the burials carried out on the instructions of the Sisters? Galway County Council was legally responsible for the burials. Why would lots of the bodies be buried in coffins, and then “significant quantities” be put in the underground structure, especially when the same head nun (Sr Hortense) ran the place for nearly its entire history?

Is it because the burial ground had filled up and this underground structure was the only place to put the additional bodies? Who knows? We will probably never know. But this does not stop us demonising the nuns and claiming 800 bodies were dumped in a septic tank.

Prediction

My prediction is that when the underground structure is finally properly investigated and we finally know how many bodies are in it (the number will be far smaller than 800), the nuns will instantly be blamed again and the whole media narrative will revert to the original story that the nuns effectively murdered 800 babies and ‘dumped’ them in this structure.

I would simply refer such people back to the report of the Commission and especially the insights it contains into conditions at the home in the 1940s. Back then, the official inspector was a lady named Alice Litster. It must be borne in mind that Ireland’s general economic condition was dire from Independence right through to the 1960s or so, and the 1940s were particularly awful because of World War 2.

{{When Litster filed her report into the home in 1947, she said the infants received ‘great care’ and the Sisters were ‘careful and attentive’”

The significance of Litster is that she was not a Catholic. She was Church of Ireland by background and socialist by conviction.

When Litster filed her report into the home in 1947, she said the infants received “great care” and the Sisters were “careful and attentive”.

She was well aware of the high death toll, but placed the blame for this firmly at the feet of Galway County Council which did not give the nuns the resources they needed to properly deal with disease outbreaks.

This is a very far cry from the widespread belief that the nuns wanted the babies to die. Nothing could be further from the truth.

These institutions were often dreadful places and in an ideal world should never have existed. But in the case of Tuam Children’s Home, the nuns have been unfairly pilloried and demonised. I suspect it will be a very long time before we ever give them fair and objective treatment.