The_Banker
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796 Irish babies in a septic tank
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Duke of Marmalade
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Well that is infanticide, motive self enrichment. You have clearly bought the line that the British Mail is peddling.
We certainly need an enquiry to address that vile accusation. If the enquiry finds that the nuns used the £1 a week to dine on wood pigeon and caviar washed down with fine wines then the State would have a moral right to do a Henry VIII and confiscate all the Church's property. The churches could then be converted into offices for the civil service.
In that context, the average industrial wage at the time of the £1 per child payment was £3. Today's equivallent would be AIW of €803.98 p/w and €268 per child. Also bear in mind that this was a time of overcrowding and essentially slums in housing areas too.
However, based on a dad earning £3 per week and this probably going towards food, clothing and rent for a family of at least 4, there was still an infant mortality rate half that of the Mother and Child homes.
However, the £1 per child isn't the case because the stipend was for the child and mother which worked out to the average industrial wage. They essentially got £1 for the child, but £2 for the mother.
The other context is:
CICA report (Vol iii) lists the cases of physcial, mental and sexual abuse at institutions. It lists evidence of maltreatment.
We have recorded witness testimony of nuns putting pillows over a child's face to stop it from crying (it was hungry). Mothers forced to work in laundries and cleaning while heavily pregnant and immediately after birth. The healthy children being put work which the nuns charged money for.
Mothers and children forced to work for money paid only to the homes despite the stipend being equal to the industrial wage that families had to survive on alone (and appeared to survive better than those in the homes).
Then you have the disposal of babies into an in use septic tank. It was too much to even dig a separate hole for the mass burial.
Taken into the greater context than the burial of babies it is clear that there was abuse (physical, mental and sexual) at these institutions.
It is clear that those homed there were seen as inhumane and lacking the same attention or respect as other humans.
It is clear that on death, this view carried through to how the remains were treated.
Yet we are expected to believe that despite this whole record of abuse and mistreatement, those in charge of the homes did their best on £1 per child and couldn't do anything or any more about the mortality rate?
The weight of evidence is completely against such a conclusion.
Nobody is disputing that terrible things happened but once again people are drawing conclusions based on the media's recent fascination with the story and their dramatic headlines.
Read the proper story. Even Catherine Corless has said that the nature of the burial of the children and even the causes of death in many cases have been misrepresented. She never said 796 babies were abused, starved, murdered or dumped into a septic tank.
Have an inquiry and come up with the facts but people should stop reaching conclusions based on headlines and stop judging everything through 21st Century eyes. As I said before, we can all get up on our high moral horse about how these poor women and children were treated but maybe we should we look at ourselves and see how we treat some women and children ourselves. As Fintan O'Toole says, have a look at how we house asylum seeking children today and then tell me how people are going to judge us in 100 years.
Duke of Marmalade
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Nice one, Sunny, I am trying to avoid defending the indefensible and am certainly no supporter of the suffocating Catholic ethos, but you have expressed it well - we should look for the facts not hysterical caricatures.
Latrade, it is always difficult to compare the domestic economics of quite different periods. Here is a spreadsheet of UK prices of food and other things going back. Given that we tracked the British Pound it is a reasonable indicator of RoI data. I pick out one in particular. The price of a pint of milk increased from 7.3 in 1955 to 35 in 2004. So in the currency of pints of milk (which seems relevant to me) £1 per week in 1955 was the equivalent of £5 per week in 2004. A contemporary commentator described the payment as a "pittance". And this was 1955. What was it like in 1935 in the middle of the economic war? I think arguments that these institutions were money making abuse centres detracts from the case. I hope that an enquiry probes the finances of these institutions. My guess is that not withstanding the indentured labour and the baby exports and the State subsidy they were probably further subsidised from the Sunday collections and the nuns were not wallowing in a life of luxury. I also think that reference to sexual abuse in the context of nuns dealing with infants must be very wide of the mark.
I doubt that any enquiry will find that the nuns were predators seeking out mothers and babies for financial exploitation and sexual gratification.
A more correct interpretation is that society dumped its problem at the hands of the nuns and expected them to get by on a pittance of conscience money.
Latrade, it is always difficult to compare the domestic economics of quite different periods. Here is a spreadsheet of UK prices of food and other things going back. Given that we tracked the British Pound it is a reasonable indicator of RoI data. I pick out one in particular. The price of a pint of milk increased from 7.3 in 1955 to 35 in 2004. So in the currency of pints of milk (which seems relevant to me) £1 per week in 1955 was the equivalent of £5 per week in 2004. A contemporary commentator described the payment as a "pittance". And this was 1955. What was it like in 1935 in the middle of the economic war? I think arguments that these institutions were money making abuse centres detracts from the case. I hope that an enquiry probes the finances of these institutions. My guess is that not withstanding the indentured labour and the baby exports and the State subsidy they were probably further subsidised from the Sunday collections and the nuns were not wallowing in a life of luxury. I also think that reference to sexual abuse in the context of nuns dealing with infants must be very wide of the mark.
I doubt that any enquiry will find that the nuns were predators seeking out mothers and babies for financial exploitation and sexual gratification.
A more correct interpretation is that society dumped its problem at the hands of the nuns and expected them to get by on a pittance of conscience money.
The economic comparisson was that the nuns recieved the average industrial wage to take care of the mother and child. This is the same average industrial wage that families had to survive on and in many cases in much much worse and deprived conditions.
I reject the argument or supposition that there is any hysterical caricatures in my post. The issue of those housed in the homes working is not disputed in any report. The fact that children were also asked to work is also not disputed. The fact that they worked indentured labour/slavory for money paid to the homes is also not disputed.
I never said they lived in luxury, at least to my recollection, but it is indesputable that they recieved the stipend while making the mother and child work to "pay" for their time there (even though the nuns were paid the stipend for this) and that the stipend was supplimented by the labour.
The reference to all abuse (lets not just isolate sexual abuse) was from the CICA report. However, if you wish remove the finding of sexual abuse and just leave it at physical abuse, mental abuse and maltreatment, then sobeit.
The point being that investigations have shown a specific picture of abuse and cruelty at all institutions. It is natural and not a hysteria to conclude that there was negligence and cruelty that played a part in the high mortality rate.
Sunny, I read the proper story, it seems to imply that there may "only" be 200 bodies in the septic tank. I fail to see how that in any way tempers the utter disrespect to those placed there. Also Catherine's main issue is that she never used the word "dumped". The IT article was 3 pages around her research, how she never actually said "dumped" (does it matter what verb is used for this act?) and all without once mentioning the church.
As to Fintan's comments; why can't we do both? Why can't we judge how these mothers and babies were treated and judge how we treat asylum seakers too?
Former residents at these institutions are still alive and have been judged all their lives. They've been called liars. In some cases those involved in running the institutions are still alive.
I reject the argument that just because it happened to a different generation that we shouldn't judge. I'm not judging through 21st century eyes, I'm judging from a humanitarian's eyes.
This wasn't the dark ages where all involved are dust in the ground, many are still alive today.
It was a different time, but also better that we use any outrage to judge ourselves and our attitudes to any institutionalised abuse. Our treatment of the mentally ill and the stigma attached to mental illness has hardly improved from then.
Catherine Corless isn't the only source on what happened in the Mother and Baby Homes. Many have tried to get heard for years, even when there was acceptance of the abuse at laundries and other institutions, this one area was ignored and stigmatised.
Just because the Mail is leading with it, doesn't mean its all hyperbole. We ignored it and the Irish media ignored it until the point when they couldn't any more. Sometimes it takes this one incident (even one so old) to get full public attention.
And as I said in an earlier post, the same issues are found across the world wherever we had these institutions. I do not accept that it is simply an Irish or an Irish state issue.
Why do you think the media suddenly woke up to this story in the past week? This story has been around for years. The reason this story was picked up my worldwide media was the fact that we seemed to have a story about 796 babies dumped in a septic tank and evil nuns who starved hundrerds of children to death.
Again, no-one is denying that terrible things happened. No-one is defending the Catholic Church. No-one is defending a cruel and sadistic society that turned their backs on these women and babies for decades. All I saying is that if you read this thread and other media reports, it is clear that people are jumping up and down with outrage when the facts are not not yet clearly established.
The Septic Tank angle is a perfect example. It has not even been verified that it was a septic tank. Mass graves for babies who died at childbirth are not exclusive to these homes either. Indeed people are rightly outraged at the lack of respect shown to the dead babies and yet it wasn't exactly 100 years ago that we had our own national maternity hospital admit they kept dead babies organs without parents consent. I don't remember people saying that they hoped the doctors and nurses involved rotted in hell for the lack of repsect shown to babies bodies.
The starving babies is the other aspect of the story that has got the most media coverage and yet we have no idea how many babies died of malnutrition and how that compared to the national average considering what was known about breastfeeding and baby nutriants at the time. We know the mortality rate was twice as high in some of these homes but again we don't know how much of this was down to infections spreading easier in a confined spaces with hundreds of other babies and adults.
I was horrified when I read this story but when I read more into it, it is clear that the facts have not been established and I would like to hear the full story before we start adding infanticide of a nazi concentration camp scale to the list of religious orders crimes in this Country.
Duke of Marmalade
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Latrade, it's hard to get a fix on what £1 a week was worth. This article would seem to suggest that an infant could do rather well on £1 a week and yet we have that contemporary view that it was a "pittance".
I still firmly suspect that lack of resources, for which society at large was to blame, had a lot to do with the malnutrition.
I still firmly suspect that lack of resources, for which society at large was to blame, had a lot to do with the malnutrition.
Sophrosyne
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You might need to read the article again.
"Between them the boys levered up the slab. “There were skeletons thrown in there. They were all this way and that way. They weren’t wrapped in anything, and there were no coffins,” he says. “But there was no way there were 800 skeletons down that hole. Nothing like that number. I don’t know where the papers got that.” How many skeletons does he believe there were? “About 20.”
and
“Even if a number of children are indeed interred in what was once a sewage tank, horrific as that thought is, there cannot be 796 of them. The public water scheme came to Tuam in 1937. Between 1925, when the home opened, and 1937 the tank remained in use. During that period 204 children died at the home. Corless admits that it now seems impossible to her that more than 200 bodies could have been put in a working sewage tank.”
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Which is what I said.
Sunny, the assumption seems to be that just because I hold the opinion that negligence (deliberate or otherwise) played a part in the high death rate that I also buy every aspect of the Daily Mail's story.
Not everyone who is angered by the story (and the numerous factual reports and anecdotal evidence of residents) and has come to the same conclusion is just buying media hype. I'd have hoped for some of us, maybe on this forum, we've not displayed a tendancy in the past to leap to extreme reactions based upon the say so of a notoriously anti-Irish, facist newspaper report.
So that when we point to reports that demonstrate actual neglect (even when there was a lack of cooperation from institutions) and find it hard to believe that it was ok to smother babies to stop them crying, strike them, scratch them, make them work long hours, send them to be the "help" for a visiting priest who was a know sexual offender and treated the instutions like a child brothel (all recorded reports) and on death of the child didn't even register the plot of land they were using as a grave (as required by law) or who they put into the grave, that this doesn't demonstrate a pattern of behaviour that might suggest the wellbeing and health of these children wasn't a priority.
If you run a care home and look after children and the health and wellbeing of that child isn't your priority (and I don't mean the pattern of making a child do pennance for the imorality of its conception) then that, to me at least, is neglect. And if you knowingly neglect a child as such, I'm sorry but that to me is evil.
The comparisson that is being missed and ignored while the defence of the high death rate is given is how does it compare to the Dublin slums? Overcrowded, abject poverty, not even amenities, no jobs, or seldom casual labour at way below the average industrial wage (£3, the same stipend the homes got for mother and child).
We can agree that the conditions between the tenements and the M&B homes were worlds apart at least? One being utter depravation, the other offering some comfort?
Also, not untypical would be 17 families in one home. that could work out at over 800 people in one street. A typical MB home catered for around 50-100.
In every way and by every measure the life and conditions at the tenements were far worse than the conditions and resources at the MB home.
Yet.
The infant mortality rate was the same.
So the M&B homes had a decent stiped (at least compared to those who lived in tenements), were nowhere near as crowded, had better access medical assistance, had further income from its contracted work and it had the same infant mortality rate as a slum.
Kimmagegirl
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My own son and his partner had a baby in the early 2000's. My elderly father was horrified that his great grandchild was born outside of marriage and never asked about the baby and even stopped asking after my son, his grandson. (Then he conveniently didn't have to ask after the baby). When I challenged him about not asking after his grandson he replied that "how was he expected to remember all his grandchildren". He had 7 at the time.
I often wonder why my father held on to the views of 1940/50's Ireland despite living through the 60's, 70's, 80's. 90's and into the 00's himself.
I often wonder why my father held on to the views of 1940/50's Ireland despite living through the 60's, 70's, 80's. 90's and into the 00's himself.
Duke of Marmalade
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Latrade
We have come a long way in this thread from OPs comparisons with mass ethnic cleansing to asking why M&C Homes were no better than Dublin slums.
Meanwhile we have been duped by an "anti Irish, fascist" (your words) British newspaper into digging into all aspects of this going back over 80 years, even into comparatively trivial issues about why adoptions did not follow the Queensbury rules.
The nuns welcome the enquiry and I don't think that is tongue in cheek. I think a fair enquiry will properly contextualise all these matters.
Why do you keep dragging in paedo priests? Now that is a whole different ball game for which there is no contextualisation possible.
Nuns I sense were, by and large, themselves victims of the oppressive culture of the times.
We have come a long way in this thread from OPs comparisons with mass ethnic cleansing to asking why M&C Homes were no better than Dublin slums.
Meanwhile we have been duped by an "anti Irish, fascist" (your words) British newspaper into digging into all aspects of this going back over 80 years, even into comparatively trivial issues about why adoptions did not follow the Queensbury rules.
The nuns welcome the enquiry and I don't think that is tongue in cheek. I think a fair enquiry will properly contextualise all these matters.
Why do you keep dragging in paedo priests? Now that is a whole different ball game for which there is no contextualisation possible.
Nuns I sense were, by and large, themselves victims of the oppressive culture of the times.
I compared it to slums because that represented the worst possible conditions imaginable to raise a child at the same period in time as the M&C homes. They had the same infant mortality rate, yet I don't think any person would say that the resources and facilities available to the nuns was at the same level of the tenements, yet they had comparable infant mortality rates.
I'm dragging peado priests into it because you initially questioned why I used the term abuse and I referenced the CICA report that lists the abuse in institutions. This is separated into physical, mental, negligence and sexual. I can't just leave out the issue of documented sexual abuse that occurred in all the institutions just because it is uncomfortable. It doesn't devalue the argument as it is part of large scale documented pattern of abuse and neglect that is indicative of the attitude of those in charge as to the human value of the people they were responsible for.
It has context because the CICA report puts all abuse in into the same context. It has context because it is again indicative of a culture and belief that the individuals subjected to abuse were not worthy of basic humanitarian treatment. The nuns may not have taken part in the sexual abuse, but they facilitated it and tacitly allowed it to occur. Again, it is indicative of the view of those responsible for the care of these children.
I do not just focus on the sexual abuse, note that I always mention it in the context of the complete range of abuse that was common at these institutions. It supports the conclusion that given the widespread and wide ranging abuse, on the balance of probabilities it seems unlikely that the health and wellbeing of the children was a high priority. Unless it was ok to smother, hit, beat, scratch, humiliate and work to exhaustion children and pregnant women but they made sure they had a good meal.
I used those words about the mail because that is how I view the mail. it doesn't devalue the argument. It's a pity that as a nation it took the mail to get our attention to this issue, no matter how much they exaggerated the story. I doubt the nuns or anyone in the church hierarchy would have called for an investigation if it wasn't for the mail not dropping the issue.
And I'm sorry, but the issue of the adoptions is not trivial and minor rule breaches. It involved church hierarchy lobbying ministers to exempt the M&C homes from the adoption legislation. It involved mothers being forced to enter the M&C home, but only being allowed to (where else could they go?) if they signed a form that away all rights to their child. It involved church run third parties to sell the babies in America. It involved no record at all of the adoption (they were exempted from that). In some cases mothers were lied to about where their child was.
It was immoral and (prepare to more hyperbole) akin to human trafficking rather than a minor breach of adoption protocol.
And I'm delighted that after 3 pages, we're now at the point where we have made the nuns the victims. Maybe we should have an investigation into how the nuns have suffered by people becoming infomed of the practices they took part in.
Duke of Marmalade
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Latrade
The extent to which RC bishops lobbied Irish ministers 80 years ago is of interest only to historians and those with an anti Irish, anti RC agenda.
It is very much in the public interest to refute a malicious insinuation, now gone international, that Ireland had its own secret holocaust.
In clearing its name of that ultimate crime against humanity we will unfortunately reveal to the world what we all here already knew. Ireland back then was an impoverished, ignorant, intolerant, hyprocritical priest ridden society.
The extent to which RC bishops lobbied Irish ministers 80 years ago is of interest only to historians and those with an anti Irish, anti RC agenda.
It is very much in the public interest to refute a malicious insinuation, now gone international, that Ireland had its own secret holocaust.
In clearing its name of that ultimate crime against humanity we will unfortunately reveal to the world what we all here already knew. Ireland back then was an impoverished, ignorant, intolerant, hyprocritical priest ridden society.
Latrade, I agree 100% with everything you say but I do have problems with how this story is being picked up. Look at how it is being reported and why the discovery of these bodies have suddenly led to a commission to be set up. Why has it taken us so long?
My point is that this story is being broadcast as a story about 796 babies who were dumped in a septic tank. I am not saying that is what you are focusing on but look at how it is been reported on. The truly horrific stories of individuals are in danger of getting lost because of the clamour over one aspect.
For a start, we don't know for sure it was a septic tank. Secondly, while the idea of mass faces for babies is horrific today, they have been used in the past. There is plot in Glasnevin with over 50000 babies in it. Some Hospitals in the UK used mass burial sites up to the 1980's for still born babies or babies who died during childbirth. Often done without parents permission and some parents still don't know where their babies are buried. I am sure what hospitals here have done in the past but wouldn't be surprised if it was something similar.
To say we don't have records of who is buried there is also not true as far as I know. All I have heard is that nuns said all records were handed over to the State when it closed. I don't know what records exists but considering we have death certs for the babies, it is obvious that records were kept.
We also hear stories about starving babies but again, we don't know the facts.
I have no doubt that babies died through neglect in these places but lets find out the facts that before we start accusing nuns who can't defend themselves of mass murder.
Also, for those who think this was simply a problem in Religious Homes, I suggest you read about Ireland's problem with infanticide in 1920's or how many people took advantage of these children to obtain cheap labour when they left these schools. We can hide behind blaming the church for having power over us but every country has a shameful chapter in their history. We need to face ours.
My point is that this story is being broadcast as a story about 796 babies who were dumped in a septic tank. I am not saying that is what you are focusing on but look at how it is been reported on. The truly horrific stories of individuals are in danger of getting lost because of the clamour over one aspect.
For a start, we don't know for sure it was a septic tank. Secondly, while the idea of mass faces for babies is horrific today, they have been used in the past. There is plot in Glasnevin with over 50000 babies in it. Some Hospitals in the UK used mass burial sites up to the 1980's for still born babies or babies who died during childbirth. Often done without parents permission and some parents still don't know where their babies are buried. I am sure what hospitals here have done in the past but wouldn't be surprised if it was something similar.
To say we don't have records of who is buried there is also not true as far as I know. All I have heard is that nuns said all records were handed over to the State when it closed. I don't know what records exists but considering we have death certs for the babies, it is obvious that records were kept.
We also hear stories about starving babies but again, we don't know the facts.
I have no doubt that babies died through neglect in these places but lets find out the facts that before we start accusing nuns who can't defend themselves of mass murder.
Also, for those who think this was simply a problem in Religious Homes, I suggest you read about Ireland's problem with infanticide in 1920's or how many people took advantage of these children to obtain cheap labour when they left these schools. We can hide behind blaming the church for having power over us but every country has a shameful chapter in their history. We need to face ours.
I havent been in a position to read much beyond when the story first broke (or to follow this thread - so I might be missing some vital info), but as it was presented there were "dying rooms", i.e. the babies left to die. Maybe the cause of death was malnutrition but it was wilfully letting children die when you could have saved them - as opposed to an African type situation where they wasnt the food to feed them (with the best will in the world). So they fed the healthy ones and let those with Downs Syndrome or whatever just die.
So that, to me, is fairly close to the definition of evil, and unless the story was mis-presented I dont think I need to apologise for surmising that those responsible have gone to their eternal "reward".
Duke of Marmalade
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You bet
Absolute max is 200 (if every single baby who died over the 20 odd years is involved) but the smart money is little more than 20 and they weren't "dumped in a septic tank". Admit it Betsy, you fell for what Latrade would call a fascist, anti Irish smear.You bet
I dont rightly see where you're coming from??, or is this just trolling? I dont have to defend bad journalism or "admit" to anything. With the benefit of your greater knowledge are you telling me that 'just the 20' were let starve or did that element of the story die too? If one was let starve to death I think I'd be justified in my view (although admittedly it would make it a less systemic issue and there would be fewer culpable). As you've said I'm very fair, I only want to convict the guilty ones...
This isn’t about the Catholic Church or even particularly about Catholic Ireland. It’s about what Ireland was, ethically, morally, culturally and theologically.
Duke summed it up well; “Ireland back then was an impoverished, ignorant, intolerant, hypocritical priest ridden society.”
The RC Church was a major part of the problem, front and centre, but where did the Church stop influencing broader culture and broader culture start influencing the Church? This was a country where female sexuality was feared and considered sinful by a male dominated political and church elite. They couldn’t accept that women wanted sex, that they got horny (for want of a better phrase). The solution was to hide the truth and punish those women, and their children, for perfectly natural urges and practices. Mother and baby homes were a repository for that national guilt. I know that there were incidents of pregnancies through incest and clerical rape, as well as underage sex etc. These homes also acted as a place to hide the victim and so hide the crime so the perpetrators escaped justice and the victims were punished. It’s like what we read about happening in Iran or Saudi Arabia now.
The Nuns ran the homes and priests and bishops imposed a moral authority that validated their practices and hid them from scrutiny but our political leaders were just as much part of that than any priest or nun. The fathers and mothers of these young women and girls were usually the ones that sent their child away to hide the shame they had brought to the family.
Almost everything about our society was repressive. Women were especially repressed and this was an expression of that repression.
Ireland in 2014, for all its many faults, is a much better place than Ireland pre 1990.
The RC Church in 2014 is a much better church than it was back then but crucially that change was brought by the influence of broader society. Without that external pressure a monolithic organisation like that would never have changed.
Duke summed it up well; “Ireland back then was an impoverished, ignorant, intolerant, hypocritical priest ridden society.”
The RC Church was a major part of the problem, front and centre, but where did the Church stop influencing broader culture and broader culture start influencing the Church? This was a country where female sexuality was feared and considered sinful by a male dominated political and church elite. They couldn’t accept that women wanted sex, that they got horny (for want of a better phrase). The solution was to hide the truth and punish those women, and their children, for perfectly natural urges and practices. Mother and baby homes were a repository for that national guilt. I know that there were incidents of pregnancies through incest and clerical rape, as well as underage sex etc. These homes also acted as a place to hide the victim and so hide the crime so the perpetrators escaped justice and the victims were punished. It’s like what we read about happening in Iran or Saudi Arabia now.
The Nuns ran the homes and priests and bishops imposed a moral authority that validated their practices and hid them from scrutiny but our political leaders were just as much part of that than any priest or nun. The fathers and mothers of these young women and girls were usually the ones that sent their child away to hide the shame they had brought to the family.
Almost everything about our society was repressive. Women were especially repressed and this was an expression of that repression.
Ireland in 2014, for all its many faults, is a much better place than Ireland pre 1990.
The RC Church in 2014 is a much better church than it was back then but crucially that change was brought by the influence of broader society. Without that external pressure a monolithic organisation like that would never have changed.