Tony Flannery: The Lost Children of Tuam
(This article appeared in the Connacht Tribune newspaper. It was a topic of discussion on RTÉ Radio 1 Lifeline programme today. Link to the radio discussion today: https://www.rte.ie/radio/radio1/liveline/episodes/4bdbd7b4-56b0-4bc5-88ce-b4ec00ea4b76/)
It was about twelve years ago, when I was on a speaking tour of the United States organised by the Church Reform movement, that the dramatic news from Ireland about nuns ‘dumping babies bodies into a septic tank’ had reached the U.S. I was asked many questions about it by the different gatherings I addressed. This was the year when Catherine Corless released the story about the Tuam mother and baby home. I know Catherine asserts now that she never said the babies were put in the septic tank, but she certainly did nothing to correct the version that was being reported. It was precisely that image, of the nuns, the babies and the septic tank that made it such a sensational story around the world, a godsend especially to the tabloid outlets, and of course to social media. Currently a dig of the area is progressing, and I know that much more excavation is outstanding but so far over a hundred bodies have been discovered, all buried carefully in coffins.
We are also aware of a couple of basic facts that are generally overlooked in the media presentation of this story.
The building, which had previously been a workhouse, was owned by the County Council, not the Bon Secour Sisters, who largely depended on the Council for the resources to run the home.
During the decade of the nineteen forties the home was over-crowded, and diseases of various types were rampant. In some instances even whole families arrived for shelter. The nuns appealed to the Council for resources to provide an isolation area for those with disease, but were constantly refused. As a result there were a great number of deaths during those years. And it is also known that the supply of coffins had run out, and for a time they were unable to acquire any, so they had to improvise as best they could. It must have been extremely difficult trying to run the home during those years. But still the Bon Secour nuns continued to do their best in providing a service that no one else in society was willing to provide. It is ironic that now they are being vilified, when in fact they were the only people that I know of, in the society of that period, who did not abandon the children. In the way this story is being portrayed in the public domain the focus is almost totally on the nuns. There is scarcely a mention of the families from which the mothers of the children came, and even less so of the person who in all probability is most to blame, the father of the child, the one who most of all abandoned both mother and child.
Even as someone who, during my work with the Church Reform movement, and in my own personal life, haven’t been short on criticism of various aspects of the Catholic Church, I find the ease with which commentators and media discussions so quickly and easily conclude that a great many of the problems in society, both past and present, are the fault of the Church. Over and over again I find myself recoiling from the superficiality, the lack of depth or breadth in the thinking that underlies the regular attacks particularly on nuns in this country.
Recently a relation of my own, a woman in her eighties living in the U.S., of whom we had no knowledge, came to light. Her birth and parents are uncertain, but she is clearly part of our extended family. She was an abandoned baby, and was brought to the Tuam mother and baby home. In a recent conversation with her, having met her for the very first time, she told me she had spent the first seven and a half years of her life in that home. She has good, even happy memories of those years, and she asserted very strongly that the nuns were extremely kind and caring, and that she had never seen any of them abuse a child in any way. She was quite upset and annoyed by the current depiction of the Tuam home in Ireland today.
From the reviews I have read, and from the discussion Liam Neeson had with Patrick Kielty, it would appear that his movie fits in with this prevailing narrative. It is sad that someone of his stature and experience has probably done a lot to lend credence to the septic tank version of the burial of the children who died in the Tuam mother and baby home.
I won’t be going to see the movie.
Tony Flannery
Catherine Corless corrected the septic tank story early on. https://www.bishop-accountability.org/2014/06/tuam-mother-and-baby-home-the-trouble-with-the-septic-tank-story/ but no one listened to her. The sensationalist media and prejudiced public opinion prevailed. Her input on the Late Late Show left it to be understood that the nuns had victimized the children and she did not contest Liam Neeson’s talk of “the horror.” But what exactly was the Bon Secours nuns’ alleged crime? Today the children would have been aborted, without a Christian burial. A forensic examination of the dishonesty surrounding this scandal, on the part of the media, the State, the Irish people, would lead to intelligent diagnosis of the ills of our society then and now.
Church teaching at the time was that sex was strictly for procreation and for married couples only. So, there was little value placed on the mothers or their offspring born in these Homes as a result of so called “mortal sin”. Devoted Irish Catholics, taking their lead from the Church at the time, would have had little compassion for these unfortunates, (bringing disgrace on the families, etc.)
Church teaching, poverty and class distinction meant that the Ireland of the times was, in many ways, an unforgiving place. Perhaps if the Church had led the way and been more compassionate and less about “hell and damnation”, our history with regard to Mother and Baby Homes might be quite different.
Marian, I think it has been instructive in these last few decades at just how defensive far too many people are about the responsibility of individuals, families, and the State were in several features of the past. The responsibilities of those parties might just be admitted to, but always with a minimisation of their role and a loading of the main part of the responsibility to the Church.
One of my aunts in the 1960s had a child ‘outside of marriage’. My very devout working-class Gran and my devout Grandfather (a convert to Catholicism) were upset, but my aunt was not packed off to a home, laundry, or to the UK. Instead, her parents cared for her, and my cousin came into this world loved. A little afterwards, a more middle-class devout Catholic family, the husband of whom had delivered a judgemental comment to my Grandfather at the time of my aunt’s pregnancy, discovered that their own daughter was in a similar predicament. She disappeared for several months and came back with no child – most likely the child was adopted out.
My grandparents’ neighbours chose ‘respectability’; my grandparents chose love. All were devout Catholics. I would give blame and credit, and responsibility for their contrasting actions to the individuals involved – others would load the blame onto the Church alone and the credit to my grandparents. Why?
The State locked tens of thousands of people up in mental health homes, often in horrific conditions and subjected to torture. Thousands of them lie in unmarked graves. Yet nothing but silence greets this. Yet, even though the State was up to its neck in the laundries, industrial schools, and mother and baby homes, all of the blame is placed on the Church – why is the State given a free pass? I’ve no issue with the Church being judged to have had a share in the responsibility – but why are so many determined that the State should not similarly be held to account?
In Tuam, the religious sisters were aware of issues with infection control, health, and infant mortality rates. They correctly identified all of the issues and went to the body responsible to seek remedies for them – that body was Galway County Council, a part of the State. The council had to be dragged kicking and screaming to do right by the women and their children and their delay cost lives. Yet all of the public blame lands on the sisters who tried their best in appalling circumstances to do the right thing (as found by a government inspector at the time – a socialist, Protestant lady).
The Church needs to atone for what it was responsible for – it would be great to see individuals, families and the State do likewise.
It would also be great to see people not deflect away from the responsibility of individuals, families and the State …
So well said.