The Lost Children of Tuam,Ireland

Just read this amazing story in the NYTimes and there also is a video. Times reporter Dan Barry who is a Maplewood resident researched the story concerning one of many Mother and Baby Homes in Ireland. It is a shocking discovery and so hard to understand.

It's an absolutely brilliant piece, one of the best articles I've read in the NYTimes in ages.  It just goes to show the vital role of journalists in our society.  Bravo to Mr. Barry and, above all, brava to Catherine Corless for tirelessly uncovering the story of those poor children. 

Yes, worth reading

http://nyti.ms/2gHUhh3

Thanks apple44.

So fascinating and well done.   Great job Dan.  

In our present time frame, what happened in Ireland  is so hard to understand. The causation was as much the fault of intense, unrelieved poverty, fear of what would happened to families who could lose what little they had if word got out that “a baby was born on the other side of the blanket”. Ireland was a very poor place, offering little or no government help to the millions of destitute people. The Church was the only choice for many. 

What to do with this unwanted child? Handing children over to a home for babies where you could imagine there was a chance for survival, perhaps a bit of education — sadly, these convents or homes, with little money, offered perhaps only roofs over their heads. 

In the USA today, massive poverty still exists, and millions of unwanted babies are aborted each and every year. As a nation, America provides many safety nets for the poor, young and old alike. The Catholic Church here supports charities and hospitals and multiple helping agencies. Our family adopted three infants thru CC and we thank God for our blessings every day — and remember also the three women who courageously gave us their babies.

Fascinating and heartbreaking article. Very well done!

mtierney said:

Ireland was a very poor place, offering little or no government help to the millions of destitute people.

This has been going on for ages.  During the potato famine it was decided to stop sending help to Ireland from England because the Irish would just become dependent on it and wouldn't try to help themselves. Which sounds eerily similar to now with Trump saying that Puerto Rico wants everything done for them when they really need to start helping themselves. 

Very, very sad.

my father’s family left Ireland in the aftermath of the potato famine, in the 1850/60s. My dad, born in 1888, lived in NYC and would speak of the discrimination against the flood of  Irish-Catholic immigrants — there were no Irish need apply signs where work might be available. They found their way into construction ( NYC subways), and police, fire and sanitation opportunities. In this country, at that time, there were few places where the poor, the immigrant, or the homeless could find help. Family and Church were the glue which helped  these immigrants survive.

Wave after wave of immigrants came to America, the land of opportunity, from Europe (Austria, my mother, in 1911), seeking to work and live here. World War 1, and its aftermath, and then the 1919 flu pandemic decimated the population.

All this personal reminiscing is just a way to show how much suffering and pain took place here and worldwide before government efforts began to help others. The SS act was passed in the FDR administration! 

In the 1960s, I was a volunteer at St. Mary’s Orphanage on South Orange Ave, near Sacred Heart Church, in Vailsburg. Many of the children were placed there by parents unable to provide for them. The children received food, shelter, and an education.

Much has been done, much more still remains. By remembering the past, the future offers hope for all.

this is why I find your antipathy toward today's immigrants so puzzling.

mtierney said:

my father’s family left Ireland in the aftermath of the potato famine, in the 1850/60s. My dad, born in 1888, lived in NYC and would speak of the discrimination against the flood of  Irish-Catholic immigrants — there were no Irish need apply signs where work might be available. They found their way into construction ( NYC subways), and police, fire and sanitation opportunities. In this country, at that time, there were few places where the poor, the immigrant, or the homeless could find help. Family and Church were the glue which helped  these immigrants survive.

Getting back to the article,I'm wondering if there were similar homes in other countries at the time. All those babies that didn't survive seems so cruel. To throw them in a septic tank is horrible.  I think of the Irish as kind,loving people.My grandmother came here as a young girl with her 2 brothers and my grandfather's family was also from Ireland coming here before the Civil War. Like a lot of Irish they became lawyers and bankers.  Such cruelty is hard to comprehend.

Is there a society in the history of the world that hasn't at some point in its past harbored some terrible atrocity?  Humanity seems hardwired for cruelty to the perceived "other," if circumstances align in such a way to lay the groundwork for abuse.  It is the fundamental human tragedy that we are unable to eradicate this tendency. 

Very heartbreaking piece.

.

My mother and Hitler both were born in Austria — he in 1889 and my mom in 1901. Overall down thru the centuries, cruel, unimaginable acts have destroyed men, women and  children. The question always asked is “How could these atrocities have happened.

This minute, as I post here, people are getting slaughtered in Africa, the Middle East, and elsewhere. Often, freakishly enough, it is said to be done in the name of God! Corruptured religion is no religion. It is evil doers intent on destroying democracy.

What is the common denominator? Possibly the godlessness of society  or, take your pick of one or more of the seven deadly sins.

mtierney said:

What is the common denominator? Possibly the godlessness of society  or, take your pick of one or more of the seven deadly sins.

In the case of Tuam, it certainly wasn't godlessness.  If anything, it was specifically the oppressive, punitive, patriarchal religious practices that led to that horrifying result.

Unwed mothers in Roman Catholic oldworld Ireland were treated like trash apparently, as were their children. 

mtierney said:

My mother and Hitler both were born in Austria — he in 1889 and my mom in 1901. Overall down thru the centuries, cruel, unimaginable acts have destroyed men, women and  children. The question always asked is “How could these atrocities have happened.

This minute, as I post here, people are getting slaughtered in Africa, the Middle East, and elsewhere. Often, freakishly enough, it is said to be done in the name of God! Corruptured religion is no religion. It is evil doers intent on destroying democracy.

What is the common denominator? Possibly the godlessness of society  or, take your pick of one or more of the seven deadly sins.

But what about..... 

The existence of atrocities does not excuse atrocities. 

Religion is religion is religion. 

You can't celebrate the good it does without taking the evil into account. What religious people did here was clearly very, very evil. 

I went to high school in Ireland in the '90s. Girls were still being sent away at that point. They didn't have a Mother and Babies home but two or three girls in my high school class disappeared after they got pregnant. So the attitudes were still alive and kicking twenty years ago.

What REALLY REALLY bugs me about all this is Ireland legalized gay marriage but decent women's health care is still hard to come by there. Whatever happened to "Yes AND" - it's not an either/or - it should be "yes, all individuals are deserving of love and marriage if they chose AND women have a right to access health care".

Fundamentally this is a misogynistic strain in Irish society.