This week's post on John Grenham's blog Catherine Corless starts:
A few days ago I heard a full half-hour radio interview with Catherine Corless, the local historian responsible for tracking down the 796 death certificates of young children in the Tuam Mother and Baby Home between 1925 and 1961. It was riveting.He ends by voicing the issue of the desirability of giving each child a proper burial against the possibly invasion of privacy of now elderly mothers as well as the cost.
The article and comments, the first from Maurice Gleeson, make worthwhile reading.
1 comment:
I HAVE to comment on this John. In the fall of 2017 I was briefly in Halifax, and spent some hours sniffing around in used bookshops, as one does. Well, I do it all the time, anyway. I was astonished to discover the book "Butterbox Babies" by Bette L Cahill (1992) which describes the horrors of a similar scheme of a home for unwed mothers in Chester Nova Scotia. Many of the babies were sold to rich Americans who wished to adopt healthy white children. Many others, considered unadoptable, were systematically killed by feeding them only with sugared water, and as their tummies felt filled they did not cry, and usually they would be dead within a few weeks and be buried in the boxes used to transport butter, in unmarked graves. Yould could find out more just by googling the title of the book. Cheers, BT
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