Latest / Who Did What Now With Katie Charlwood / 185. The Tuam 796

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185. The Tuam 796 · Who Did What Now With Katie Charlwood

• 0:12
  Speaker 1: Hello, delicious friends, and welcome to Who Did What Now?
• 0:16
  Speaker 1: The history podcast that is not your history class with
• 0:20
  Speaker 1: me your host Katie Charlwood, History Harlotte and reader of books,
• 0:25
  Speaker 1: and welcome to today's episode, which is on their release
• 0:28
  Speaker 1: out on Saint Patrick's Day, which seemed fitting. I am
• 0:32
  Speaker 1: heading out to the local parade today because at least
• 0:34
  Speaker 1: one of the Kils will be in it, and also
• 0:36
  Speaker 1: we have to support local. Now, if you are from Ireland,
• 0:41
  Speaker 1: you have definitely heard of today's piece of horrible history,
• 0:44
  Speaker 1: and if you are out with Ireland you may have
• 0:47
  Speaker 1: also heard it too. It kind of it kind of
• 0:50
  Speaker 1: blew up. Like ten years ago. It was a really
• 0:53
  Speaker 1: really big deal and there was a lot of homin
• 0:56
  Speaker 1: and haran and it didn't really get told.
• 0:58
  Speaker 2: And again we still don't.
• 0:59
  Speaker 1: Know all the an. But today I am able to
• 1:02
  Speaker 1: talk about the Chum seven nine six, which is why
• 1:07
  Speaker 1: there was considerably less gibble jaba this episode. But yes,
• 1:10
  Speaker 1: I am anyway going to quit my jibbil jabba in
• 1:12
  Speaker 1: fact tube, in fact you I will, but first we
• 1:15
  Speaker 1: have to get our source on. Our sources are the
• 1:20
  Speaker 1: Chuum Home Survivors Network, the Abnormal Flight, the Migration and
• 1:26
  Speaker 1: Repatriation of Irish unmarried Mothers by Paul Michael Garrett, Chuum
• 1:32
  Speaker 1: Babies and Kerry Babies by Mary Burke, Mother and Baby
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  Speaker 1: Homes by Podrug McCarthy, Republic of Shame by Caln Horgan.
• 1:43
  Speaker 1: And of course we have articles from the Journal, the
• 1:46
  Speaker 1: Irish Times, the Irish Mail on Sunday, The Guardian, the BBC,
• 1:51
  Speaker 1: Al Jazeera, Arties, CNN and more because this was kind
• 1:57
  Speaker 1: of a big deal. And also we have the report
• 2:01
  Speaker 1: on the commissions of Mother and Baby Homes. I was
• 2:07
  Speaker 1: hitting comfortably good then. Lates begin in nineteen seventy five.
• 2:15
  Speaker 1: Two boys are playing in the overgrown field out the
• 2:18
  Speaker 1: back of the site of the old Mother and Baby
• 2:20
  Speaker 1: Home in Cheuham, County, Galway. They messed around, going through
• 2:24
  Speaker 1: rushes and overgrowing grass and the like, when they landed
• 2:27
  Speaker 1: on top of what appeared to be a large concrete slab.
• 2:32
  Speaker 1: Boys being boys, they were curious and took a peek
• 2:35
  Speaker 1: at what was underneath, and what they discovered was like
• 2:39
  Speaker 1: a chamber of sort, filled, as they said, to the brim,
• 2:44
  Speaker 1: with skeletons. Ireland being Ireland, it was assumed that the
• 2:48
  Speaker 1: bodies were that of famine victims. It wasn't unusual to
• 2:52
  Speaker 1: find a mass grave, especially so close to what was
• 2:55
  Speaker 1: once a workhouse, and it would be another forty years
• 2:59
  Speaker 1: before the about Those buried were not in fact famine
• 3:03
  Speaker 1: victims for the eighteen hundreds, but were the remains of
• 3:07
  Speaker 1: children who had been under the care of the home.
• 3:13
  Speaker 1: So where does this all begin. Mother and baby homes,
• 3:17
  Speaker 1: as they were known, were part of the same system
• 3:19
  Speaker 1: that included the Magdalen laundries and the county homes, a
• 3:24
  Speaker 1: system built on misogyny, pillar and profit.
• 3:29
  Speaker 2: If you want like a.
• 3:29
  Speaker 1: Full comprehensive deep dive into the laundries, the podcast episode
• 3:34
  Speaker 1: preceding this one goes into great details. To go give
• 3:36
  Speaker 1: that a listen if you've already done that, or in
• 3:39
  Speaker 1: the meantime, here is the cliff notes version the Magdalen
• 3:44
  Speaker 1: laundries were. They were laundries, right, They laundered linens and
• 3:50
  Speaker 1: the like. And like I swear, anytime I bring up
• 3:53
  Speaker 1: the laundries, I have genuinely had people asking me what
• 3:57
  Speaker 1: were the laundries in this content and I have to
• 4:00
  Speaker 1: actually explain, like they were commercial laundries, you know, they
• 4:05
  Speaker 1: had an actual function and they were about ten official
• 4:09
  Speaker 1: laundries run by the four separate religious orders. Like throughout
• 4:13
  Speaker 1: the country, so these are run by the Sisters of
• 4:16
  Speaker 1: Our Lady of Charity, the Sisters of Mercy, the Good
• 4:19
  Speaker 1: Shepherd Systems and the Sisters of Charity. The official number
• 4:24
  Speaker 1: of those housed in the laundries between nineteen twenty two
• 4:27
  Speaker 1: and nineteen ninety six were about ten thousand. However, with
• 4:33
  Speaker 1: the research that has been coming out in recent years,
• 4:36
  Speaker 1: it seems more likely that it was closer to thirty thousand.
• 4:41
  Speaker 1: Thirty thousand women and girls. The Magdalen Laundries, sometimes referred
• 4:49
  Speaker 1: to as the Magdalene Asylums, were institutions run by the
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  Speaker 1: Catholic Church and supported by the Irish state, especially post independence.
• 4:59
  Speaker 1: These asylums in Laundry's house to what we're seeing as
• 5:02
  Speaker 1: fallen and wayward women and girls. What makes a lass
• 5:08
  Speaker 1: wayward or fallen? Well, I'm glad you asked, because I'll
• 5:12
  Speaker 1: tell you, and sorry, it's a whole laundry list. Punintended
• 5:18
  Speaker 1: being flirty, being vain, being assaulted, being promiscuous, being strappy,
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  Speaker 1: being strong willed, having any sort of sass, like being
• 5:30
  Speaker 1: a temptress of any sort. Because being a woman, you
• 5:34
  Speaker 1: are the temptation. You are responsible, not the men who
• 5:38
  Speaker 1: you know you had a dallianceweather flirted back, or who
• 5:41
  Speaker 1: assaulted you. No, no, no, no no anew. If you
• 5:45
  Speaker 1: had sex outside of marriage, whether you were a willing
• 5:47
  Speaker 1: participant or not, you were fallen. These women and girls,
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  Speaker 1: and I want to make that incredibly clear. Women and girls, right,
• 6:01
  Speaker 1: Women or girls would be collected by a priest, now
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  Speaker 1: typically a priest, and then brought to the laundry and
• 6:07
  Speaker 1: left there. These women and girls would work in the
• 6:10
  Speaker 1: laundries as slave labor for years. In fact, some women
• 6:14
  Speaker 1: would spend their entire lives in them. The last laundry
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  Speaker 1: officially closed in nineteen ninety six. That's thirty years ago, right,
• 6:24
  Speaker 1: that's that is not the distant past. Conditions in the
• 6:29
  Speaker 1: laundries were harsh and abuse was just par for the course.
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  Speaker 1: This was repentance. And lest we forget, Mother Teresa herself
• 6:37
  Speaker 1: and her own words said that suffering brings you closer
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  Speaker 1: to God. These women were shameful, they deserved to be punished,
• 6:46
  Speaker 1: and so here they were, except they were not legally
• 6:49
  Speaker 1: bound to be there.
• 6:51
  Speaker 2: Now, there were courts that.
• 6:52
  Speaker 1: Would sometimes send women and girls to the laundries under
• 6:55
  Speaker 1: the care of the religious order who ran them instead
• 6:57
  Speaker 1: of sending them to say like some kind of like
• 7:00
  Speaker 1: juvenile detention or prison. But this wasn't the case for
• 7:05
  Speaker 1: the majority of those sent there. These women had not
• 7:09
  Speaker 1: broken any laws, not secular ones. Anyway, The church, I
• 7:14
  Speaker 1: mean the church was the law effectively, it had the power,
• 7:18
  Speaker 1: and they would refer to the women using legal language,
• 7:23
  Speaker 1: using legal terms right, which, again, considering this was not
• 7:27
  Speaker 1: a penitentiary or an official penal detention center, it is
• 7:32
  Speaker 1: an odd route to take. Like, for example, there are
• 7:36
  Speaker 1: actual documents from these institutions referring to young women as
• 7:40
  Speaker 1: first time and repeat offenders. Now again, again, they had
• 7:47
  Speaker 1: not broken any law. Having sex out of wedlock was
• 7:51
  Speaker 1: not illegal, like it wasn't illegal. Otherwise they would be
• 7:55
  Speaker 1: putting the men in prison, wouldn't they. But of course
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  Speaker 1: the Catholic Church was so powerful that it didn't matter
• 8:01
  Speaker 1: because they well the law.
• 8:04
  Speaker 2: Now, before I.
• 8:05
  Speaker 1: Continue this episode, I feel like I should give a
• 8:08
  Speaker 1: content warning.
• 8:10
  Speaker 2: Now I did this.
• 8:12
  Speaker 1: In The Captain. However, if you are sensitive to anything ever,
• 8:18
  Speaker 1: I'm gonna suggest you exit stage left and come back
• 8:21
  Speaker 1: for the less depressing next episode. Yeah, you should probably
• 8:25
  Speaker 1: just go back next time, because things are going to
• 8:27
  Speaker 1: get dark and then they're going to get worse. And
• 8:29
  Speaker 1: when you think, jeez, it could not actually get any worse,
• 8:32
  Speaker 1: it will. Okay, I am going to be talking about abuse, trafficking, assaults, rape,
• 8:42
  Speaker 1: incest abuse, like just a whole bunch of horrible, horrible things.
• 8:50
  Speaker 1: And if you were triggered by anything, it's best you
• 8:53
  Speaker 1: do not listen. You don't deserve this because it's it's
• 8:59
  Speaker 1: gonna be a tough one. Again. This is why we're
• 9:02
  Speaker 1: having a palate cleanser at the end of the month. So,
• 9:05
  Speaker 1: without further ado, the Church was the law, so how
• 9:13
  Speaker 1: how you ask? Well, Ireland gained independence from the UK
• 9:17
  Speaker 1: in nineteen twenty two, after which there was a civil
• 9:20
  Speaker 1: war due to the conditions in the agreement that led
• 9:22
  Speaker 1: to independence. But that is another story for another day
• 9:25
  Speaker 1: and we will discuss it at some point. I will
• 9:28
  Speaker 1: go into it. But the UK is a Protestant nation.
• 9:33
  Speaker 1: The monarch is the head of the Anglican Church, right,
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  Speaker 1: whereas in Catholicism there the Church is God and also
• 9:41
  Speaker 1: sometimes an old fellow in Rome who was the most
• 9:44
  Speaker 1: bishopy bishop also known as the Pope. Right, the Bishop
• 9:47
  Speaker 1: of Rome. So when Ireland gained its independence and became
• 9:52
  Speaker 1: a republic again, for your information, it is not actually
• 9:56
  Speaker 1: called the Republic of Ireland. It's also not called Southern Ireland.
• 10:01
  Speaker 1: It's just called Ireland. That's the name of the country.
• 10:07
  Speaker 1: It's just Ireland, and it is a republic.
• 10:11
  Speaker 2: So when Ireland.
• 10:13
  Speaker 1: Gained its independence from the UK, it basically pushed away
• 10:17
  Speaker 1: as much of the Anglo as possible and reverted very
• 10:21
  Speaker 1: much like back into good old Roman Catholicism. Like it
• 10:26
  Speaker 1: was diving headfirst into that. It was what one might
• 10:29
  Speaker 1: call a very swift and sharp pivot. So they really
• 10:36
  Speaker 1: leaned into Catholicism. Now, considering that the Roman Catholic Church
• 10:43
  Speaker 1: was an incredibly moralistic, repressive, conservative, misogynistic religion, you know, traditionally,
• 10:50
  Speaker 1: then it is no surprise that the Irish Free State
• 10:53
  Speaker 1: also turned into a moralistic, repressive, conservative, and misogynistic country.
• 11:02
  Speaker 2: One thing the Catholic.
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  Speaker 1: Church does super well is the oppression of women. That's
• 11:08
  Speaker 1: not to say that other religions don't do that as well,
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  Speaker 1: but Roman Catholicism isn't exactly the most progressive of religions.
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  Speaker 1: And I'm a cradle Catholic so I get to say
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  Speaker 1: what I want. I had a very religious formal education.
• 11:24
  Speaker 1: I was educated in the UK and Ireland. I went
• 11:28
  Speaker 1: to Sunday School. I collected those little Saints cards wey
• 11:32
  Speaker 1: medallions in them, like.
• 11:33
  Speaker 2: They were Pokemon cards. Okay.
• 11:35
  Speaker 1: I had a Ladybird Bible, that is to say, a
• 11:38
  Speaker 1: children's illustrated Bible by like the Ladybird like imprint the publishing.
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  Speaker 1: Now I could pray in both English and Irish, so
• 11:48
  Speaker 1: as quelia like one of my papas. So like my grandfather,
• 11:53
  Speaker 1: my Irish grandfather who we call by a Scottish grandfather title.
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  Speaker 1: I know right anyway, my papa, his best friend growing
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  Speaker 1: up was my local priest.
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  Speaker 2: Okay.
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  Speaker 1: And my gran was kept by nuns in Scotland for
• 12:08
  Speaker 1: a time during World War two, and one of her
• 12:12
  Speaker 1: jobs was cleaning coffins. Right, very religious, like church on
• 12:19
  Speaker 1: Sunday morning, Like no jeans in the church, shoulders covered.
• 12:24
  Speaker 1: Very religious family, right, grandparents super into God right now.
• 12:31
  Speaker 1: My dad's side, they're Jewish, which is again a different story.
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  Speaker 2: But you know, the Catholic's won on this one.
• 12:39
  Speaker 1: Basically just throwing holy water at me as soon as
• 12:42
  Speaker 1: I was out the womb get up anyway. So Roman
• 12:47
  Speaker 1: Catholicism isn't really supportive of questions, especially regarding contradictory parts
• 12:52
  Speaker 1: of the Bible. But again that's neither here nor there.
• 12:55
  Speaker 1: But a lot of it revolves around shame and punishment,
• 12:59
  Speaker 1: which is interesting considering that the New test event and all,
• 13:03
  Speaker 1: you know, all the stuff that Jesus was about was
• 13:05
  Speaker 1: very much like anti establishment, anta extravagance and generally all
• 13:10
  Speaker 1: about social well being and care, peace and love to
• 13:14
  Speaker 1: your like fellow man. Yeah, being very much into the
• 13:19
  Speaker 1: repression and oppression of women, it is no surprised that
• 13:23
  Speaker 1: institutions like the laundries and the mother and baby homes
• 13:26
  Speaker 1: and the county homes sprung up and worked in tandem
• 13:30
  Speaker 1: and back in the twentieth century, especially early in the
• 13:34
  Speaker 1: twentieth century, the Catholic Church held like a lot of
• 13:39
  Speaker 1: power in Ireland, and the person who was most revered
• 13:42
  Speaker 1: in the community, the person who held all the power,
• 13:47
  Speaker 1: was your priest. Right, the parish priest was effectively the boss.
• 13:51
  Speaker 1: Right even now there are certain generations and you will
• 13:57
  Speaker 1: say that reverence still exists. The parish priest controlled the
• 14:02
  Speaker 1: narrative of what was good and right in the community.
• 14:07
  Speaker 1: Their word was law.
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  Speaker 2: And I cannot.
• 14:10
  Speaker 1: Convey this enough of just how much of Irish law
• 14:15
  Speaker 1: and society was steeped in Catholicism, right and in Ireland,
• 14:22
  Speaker 1: especially if Catholic, we have two emotions shame and guilt.
• 14:28
  Speaker 1: Like someone once asked me if I was like proud
• 14:31
  Speaker 1: to be a Catholic because or like proud to be
• 14:34
  Speaker 1: a Christian. I think it was when I was discussing sidebar.
• 14:37
  Speaker 1: When I was discussing I think it was Israel's whole
• 14:44
  Speaker 1: thing of how it became a country, and somebody was like,
• 14:47
  Speaker 1: are you proving to be a Catholic? I'm like, no,
• 14:50
  Speaker 1: have you met us? Sorry no, no, Oh, we have
• 14:55
  Speaker 1: a shame like all of our emotions are just like
• 15:00
  Speaker 1: compressed like other people have emotional baggage. Catholics. If you're
• 15:05
  Speaker 1: raised Catholic, what you do is you compress it all
• 15:09
  Speaker 1: the way down until it's convenient little grief case, right,
• 15:12
  Speaker 1: and you carry that awey with you and that's what
• 15:14
  Speaker 1: you have, Okay now, Yeah, not that I'm a practicing
• 15:19
  Speaker 1: Catholic anymore, given all of the gestures vaguely and everything
• 15:24
  Speaker 1: in the world. But when you're raised a certain way,
• 15:28
  Speaker 1: it does. It does affect you.
• 15:33
  Speaker 2: Now.
• 15:34
  Speaker 1: The last thing you wanted in Ireland in the twentieth
• 15:37
  Speaker 1: century was shame upon your family. Shame and honor were
• 15:42
  Speaker 1: still huge parts of society and culture. Now we seem
• 15:47
  Speaker 1: to have no shame. When I think, like a little
• 15:49
  Speaker 1: shame is good like shame, and moderation is a good
• 15:53
  Speaker 1: thing to come back.
• 15:53
  Speaker 2: Like moderation not all encompassing, you know, destroy your life.
• 15:59
  Speaker 1: Shame unless you deserve it, I don't know, but shame
• 16:03
  Speaker 1: in the eyes of the church. You could be ostracized
• 16:06
  Speaker 1: by society, your neighbors, your friends, everyone could turn on you.
• 16:10
  Speaker 1: The butcher wouldn't sell to you. Your children would be
• 16:13
  Speaker 1: ignored at school like you, would be turned out of
• 16:17
  Speaker 1: mass like it was a big big deal. Your life
• 16:20
  Speaker 1: effectively would be destroyed. Back to the oppression of women.
• 16:26
  Speaker 1: If a woman or girl were to just state a
• 16:29
  Speaker 1: fetus out of wedlock, the family would often contact the
• 16:32
  Speaker 1: local priest because an on web mother.
• 16:35
  Speaker 2: That's shameful.
• 16:37
  Speaker 1: Now. Of course, there were some situations in which a
• 16:39
  Speaker 1: shotgun wedding would occur. However, if the man involved simply
• 16:43
  Speaker 1: did not want to be well, then it would be
• 16:46
  Speaker 1: off to the priest. To go.
• 16:48
  Speaker 2: It was better to go to.
• 16:49
  Speaker 1: The priest first and let him handle it like some
• 16:53
  Speaker 1: sort of holy fixer, because often the alternative was him
• 17:00
  Speaker 1: screaming and accusing from the pulpit, ostracizing the family for
• 17:06
  Speaker 1: their scandal right, And there were even reports of priests
• 17:11
  Speaker 1: showing up at the houses of families after discovering that
• 17:14
  Speaker 1: an unwed woman or girl was in the house and
• 17:18
  Speaker 1: they were pregnant, and he would threaten the family with shame,
• 17:23
  Speaker 1: with banishment, like genuinely threatening to run them out of town.
• 17:28
  Speaker 1: And it wasn't an empty threat. They had the pible
• 17:31
  Speaker 1: to do so. A lot of time, well, the priest
• 17:36
  Speaker 1: was the authority figure like more so than even the guardy,
• 17:40
  Speaker 1: so the guardi that's the police force in Ireland, and
• 17:44
  Speaker 1: families would go to him for guidance because this was
• 17:47
  Speaker 1: a problem that needed to be fixed, right, he needed
• 17:50
  Speaker 1: to be solved, And so a priest would quite often
• 17:53
  Speaker 1: collect the pregnant person under the cover of darkness and
• 17:57
  Speaker 1: cut them off to a mother and baby home, but
• 17:59
  Speaker 1: they would stay for the rest of her pregnancy. And
• 18:04
  Speaker 1: this was a whole secret affair and it required collusion, okay,
• 18:13
  Speaker 1: like there was a network designed first, right, there was
• 18:17
  Speaker 1: a network, a justification for the departure of the women
• 18:21
  Speaker 1: or girl. She's sick and away getting tests done, she's
• 18:26
  Speaker 1: gone to look after an infirm relative, she's gotten work
• 18:29
  Speaker 1: as a domestic so on and so forth. Right, another
• 18:33
  Speaker 1: family would act as a care of address. Letters would
• 18:37
  Speaker 1: be sent to the care of address, read, assessed, and
• 18:40
  Speaker 1: then forwarded onto the home. It's like in a mail
• 18:44
  Speaker 1: in the army, like they would get it, and so
• 18:47
  Speaker 1: the women or girl would respond to the letter, but
• 18:50
  Speaker 1: it would be watched over to ensure they weren't like
• 18:52
  Speaker 1: giving away any information. And that's only if people were
• 18:56
  Speaker 1: like concerned about their friend, Oh, write to my friend
• 19:01
  Speaker 1: or your cousin. Sometimes siblings wouldn't even know, like what
• 19:04
  Speaker 1: was going on, and they had to cover it up.
• 19:07
  Speaker 1: So eventually this young woman or girl would write a
• 19:10
  Speaker 1: letter in response, all carefully watched over by the nuns,
• 19:14
  Speaker 1: with the care of address at the top. It was
• 19:17
  Speaker 1: then sent back to the care of address, who would
• 19:20
  Speaker 1: then send it back to friends and family. Is if
• 19:24
  Speaker 1: everything is fine in Tandy now, depending on which home
• 19:28
  Speaker 1: you were sent to, because some were better than others,
• 19:31
  Speaker 1: some seem to genuinely want the best for the people
• 19:35
  Speaker 1: who were there. So if you were sent to some homes,
• 19:39
  Speaker 1: like you could be with your baby for a day
• 19:42
  Speaker 1: and then be taken home.
• 19:44
  Speaker 2: You could be with them.
• 19:44
  Speaker 1: For three days, or you could even stay with them
• 19:47
  Speaker 1: for a year, nursing them so that they're healthy. Now, like,
• 19:52
  Speaker 1: it's rare, but there are occasions where it happened again,
• 19:55
  Speaker 1: just depending on the home and who was running it
• 19:58
  Speaker 1: at the time. Typically, the baby or infant would be
• 20:03
  Speaker 1: left in the home while the mother was collected and
• 20:05
  Speaker 1: brought back to life on the outside, unless, of course,
• 20:09
  Speaker 1: they were a repeat offender, at which point they would
• 20:12
  Speaker 1: have been sent on to the laundries. Women were often
• 20:15
  Speaker 1: threatened with being sent to the laundries as punishment for
• 20:18
  Speaker 1: even minor transgressions.
• 20:22
  Speaker 2: But what of the.
• 20:23
  Speaker 1: Children inside the homes? The home babies, as many of
• 20:27
  Speaker 1: them were called, were while some were kept in institutions
• 20:32
  Speaker 1: living there, some were sent to industrial or reform schools, laundries,
• 20:38
  Speaker 1: other homes. Some were used in experiments, some were trafficked
• 20:43
  Speaker 1: i mean, adopted by wealthy American families and other children
• 20:48
  Speaker 1: many of them would simply die in the mother and
• 20:52
  Speaker 1: baby homes. Between the nineteen twenties and the nineteen sixties,
• 20:58
  Speaker 1: a child died every two weeks in the mother and
• 21:00
  Speaker 1: baby homes. Twenty five percent of children in these homes
• 21:06
  Speaker 1: would die. At one point it was actually one in four,
• 21:09
  Speaker 1: when the country average was one in seven. Remember this
• 21:14
  Speaker 1: is state sponsled and state regulated. And this was the
• 21:20
  Speaker 1: solution to what the Irish state saw as the problem.
• 21:25
  Speaker 1: And in nineteen thirty four, in the Doll that the
• 21:28
  Speaker 1: Irish government Parliament. To those of you who aren't up
• 21:31
  Speaker 1: on the political structure of Ireland, the Doll was informed
• 21:36
  Speaker 1: of the large number of deaths occurring within this specific
• 21:39
  Speaker 1: group of children as opposed to the national mortality rate
• 21:43
  Speaker 1: of this age group. So there was a report and
• 21:47
  Speaker 1: this report said that the most reasonable conclusion is that
• 21:51
  Speaker 1: these children were not provided the same care as quote
• 21:55
  Speaker 1: ordinary children. Now you think that would sort of sort
• 21:59
  Speaker 1: things in bits and oh you sweet summer child. No. Unfortunately,
• 22:06
  Speaker 1: the blame game manages to point the arrow at the victims,
• 22:09
  Speaker 1: not the perpetrators. See a year later, in nineteen thirty five,
• 22:14
  Speaker 1: another report comes out and basically says that it's not
• 22:17
  Speaker 1: the lack of care, the abuse, or the unsanitary conditions
• 22:22
  Speaker 1: within the mother and baby homes that are causing the
• 22:24
  Speaker 1: inordinate deaths of these children. No, it says that the
• 22:30
  Speaker 1: majority of these deaths were the result of and I quote,
• 22:37
  Speaker 1: congenital debility, congenital malformation, and other antienatal causes traceable to
• 22:42
  Speaker 1: the condition associated with the lot of the unmarried mother.
• 22:48
  Speaker 1: Let's just let that sink in for a way. Second,
• 22:51
  Speaker 1: a government report into the suspiciously high mortality rate of
• 22:55
  Speaker 1: children in a state funded and regularly institution basically said
• 23:04
  Speaker 1: bastards are born with something wrong with them thanks to
• 23:07
  Speaker 1: the mothers being whores. Now, I had to be a
• 23:12
  Speaker 1: crass bitch about it, but that's basically what they'll say. Now,
• 23:16
  Speaker 1: that's not all. This shows that there was documentation as
• 23:20
  Speaker 1: early as nineteen thirty four, twelve years only twelve years
• 23:25
  Speaker 1: after these institutions were supported.
• 23:28
  Speaker 2: It established by the Irish state that.
• 23:32
  Speaker 1: The government had knowledge that mother and baby homes were
• 23:35
  Speaker 1: not places that infants should be.
• 23:39
  Speaker 2: And about that blame on.
• 23:40
  Speaker 1: The women yet again, Like, you're more likely to be
• 23:44
  Speaker 1: born with physical problems if you're illegitimate, specifically because your
• 23:49
  Speaker 1: mother birth to outside of marriage. Sir, that's not how
• 23:53
  Speaker 1: science works. No, I'm not epidemiologist, but even I know
• 23:59
  Speaker 1: that being born out of wedlock does not make you
• 24:01
  Speaker 1: genetically more susceptible to tuberculosis. Gem theory had been widely
• 24:07
  Speaker 1: accepted since the eighteen eighties and adopted like from the
• 24:11
  Speaker 1: eighteen nineties. The fact that sanitation isn't even queried here
• 24:16
  Speaker 1: is absolutely ridiculous. Like, even if you take this from
• 24:20
  Speaker 1: a purely religious angle, it does not make sense. Everyone,
• 24:26
  Speaker 1: according to the Roman Catholic Church, is born with original sin.
• 24:31
  Speaker 1: You are then like baptized slash christened, to be washed
• 24:35
  Speaker 1: of that sin. I'm fairly certain that there is not
• 24:39
  Speaker 1: a letter from Saint Paul to the Corinthians that says
• 24:42
  Speaker 1: illegitimate babies are born with extra sin. Like when you
• 24:47
  Speaker 1: think that thirty five thousand women and girls went through
• 24:50
  Speaker 1: the homes, gave birth in those homes, and the mortality
• 24:55
  Speaker 1: rate was anywhere between one and four and one in seven, like,
• 25:01
  Speaker 1: that's huge, and the governing body is not putting anything
• 25:07
  Speaker 1: in place, no reforms to protect the children that are
• 25:09
  Speaker 1: in danger.
• 25:11
  Speaker 2: Nothing. There were several.
• 25:14
  Speaker 1: Religious institutions that were involved in the mother and baby homes.
• 25:18
  Speaker 1: For example, you have the Bonn Succurs Sisters, the Daughters
• 25:22
  Speaker 1: of Charity, of Saint Vincent DePaul, the Sisters of Saint
• 25:26
  Speaker 1: John of God, the Congregation of the Lady of the
• 25:30
  Speaker 1: Good Shepherd, the Congregation of the Sacred Hearts of Jesus
• 25:33
  Speaker 1: and Mary, the Congregation of the Sisters of Mercy, the
• 25:36
  Speaker 1: Legion of Mary, and the Church of Ireland and Goodness
• 25:41
  Speaker 1: is probably more at this point. Now the Saint Mary's
• 25:45
  Speaker 1: Mother and Baby Home and chum it was run by
• 25:48
  Speaker 1: the Bon Succurs Sisters. The Sacred Heart Sisters managed three
• 25:53
  Speaker 1: major homes best for a mother and Baby home in Cork,
• 25:56
  Speaker 1: the Sean Ross Abbey and Ross Cray County, Timbrairie and
• 25:59
  Speaker 1: Castle Mother and Baby Home in West Mayth. Now there
• 26:04
  Speaker 1: was also the Daughters of Charity of Saint Vincent de Paul,
• 26:06
  Speaker 1: which ran Saint Patrick's Mother and Baby Home in Peltsdown
• 26:09
  Speaker 1: in Dublin. Now, these were all investigated by the state
• 26:14
  Speaker 1: for high infant mortality rates, forced and legal adoptions and
• 26:19
  Speaker 1: systemic neglect. But yeah, nothing really came of it. Nothing
• 26:25
  Speaker 1: really came of it, and these institutions turned out to
• 26:29
  Speaker 1: be a danger to children. Speaking of children in danger,
• 26:34
  Speaker 1: it is time to delve into the Saint Mary's Mother
• 26:36
  Speaker 1: and Baby Home. It wasn't always a mother and baby home.
• 26:41
  Speaker 1: Say what you want about Ireland, but were really good
• 26:43
  Speaker 1: at repurposing. See the home started off as a workhouse.
• 26:48
  Speaker 1: Workhouses were common through Ireland, initially the product of the UK.
• 26:53
  Speaker 1: The concept the concept was good, a place where the
• 26:57
  Speaker 1: impoverished and the needy could be called for. Now, even
• 27:01
  Speaker 1: in the Anglican way of it, the devil makes work
• 27:04
  Speaker 1: for idle thumbs. And so you entered the workhouse to work.
• 27:09
  Speaker 1: You were supposed to earn your keep, and these state
• 27:12
  Speaker 1: run institutions were established.
• 27:13
  Speaker 2: With the aim of helping.
• 27:15
  Speaker 1: However er the conditions inside were so horrific that people
• 27:18
  Speaker 1: prefelled to take their chances on the street outside. There
• 27:24
  Speaker 1: was a whole shame angle of entering a workhouse or
• 27:27
  Speaker 1: a poor house. It's designed to tear you down. Now
• 27:31
  Speaker 1: I go over this, and I think in the first
• 27:32
  Speaker 1: episode of the five canonical Victims of Jack the Ripper
• 27:36
  Speaker 1: Polly Nichols, Now you only entered the workhouse if you
• 27:40
  Speaker 1: were beyond desperate. Some people even chose to die outside
• 27:45
  Speaker 1: the walls then suffer the indignities within.
• 27:50
  Speaker 2: And in the.
• 27:50
  Speaker 1: Eighteen thirties the poor laws were passed in the United Kingdom,
• 27:54
  Speaker 1: and in the eighteen thirties Ireland was still under British
• 27:58
  Speaker 1: rule and would continue to be so for the next
• 28:01
  Speaker 1: ninety years near enough, so the whole model of how
• 28:05
  Speaker 1: to deal with the impoverished in Ireland was very much
• 28:08
  Speaker 1: reflective of the British system. Over the next few years,
• 28:12
  Speaker 1: about one hundred and twenty workhouses were built across the country.
• 28:16
  Speaker 1: What's interesting is that the population was booming, it was
• 28:20
  Speaker 1: growing at a quite a wild rate, and the class
• 28:23
  Speaker 1: structure in Ireland wasn't really set up to handle that. Now.
• 28:27
  Speaker 1: It had taken a dip a century before in blaeing
• 28:30
  Speaker 1: an Art, which was a famine in like seventeen forty
• 28:34
  Speaker 1: seventeen forty one, so Blue and Ours. It was like
• 28:37
  Speaker 1: a one one year and it killed about twenty percent
• 28:42
  Speaker 1: of the population. Now comparatively, that's even higher than in Gortimore.
• 28:51
  Speaker 1: So the population after that had been growing steadily in
• 28:54
  Speaker 1: the nineteenth century. The workhouses had begun to be constructed,
• 28:58
  Speaker 1: and the workhouse in Chum was built during a Gottamore
• 29:02
  Speaker 1: or the famine as some of you know. It was
• 29:05
  Speaker 1: started in eighteen forty one and finally opened its gate
• 29:09
  Speaker 1: in eighteen forty six, in the middle of the famine
• 29:12
  Speaker 1: and just before the most devastating year of and Gottimore,
• 29:19
  Speaker 1: also known as Black forty seven. The Trail Union workhouse
• 29:25
  Speaker 1: was much like the rest of its kind, with high
• 29:29
  Speaker 1: walls surrounding the structure. The entrance and administrative block were
• 29:33
  Speaker 1: at the northeast, which had a waiting room with the
• 29:36
  Speaker 1: guardian boardroom above. The main accommodation block had the master's
• 29:40
  Speaker 1: quarters like right in the center, and the male and
• 29:43
  Speaker 1: female dormitories were on either side. At the rear there
• 29:48
  Speaker 1: were utility rooms like the bakehouse and the wash house
• 29:52
  Speaker 1: that connected through the infirmary and also yes an idiot's
• 29:56
  Speaker 1: ward right and the sort of center also included the
• 30:02
  Speaker 1: chapel and the dining hall. In the mid eighteen forties,
• 30:08
  Speaker 1: sheds were constructed to accommodate more inmates and patients. At
• 30:13
  Speaker 1: the east, a fever hospital was put up too because fever.
• 30:18
  Speaker 1: To the west of the structure, I might add was
• 30:21
  Speaker 1: a cemetery, just to make it clear there was a
• 30:25
  Speaker 1: cemetery fairly close to the workhouse. This will be relevant later.
• 30:32
  Speaker 1: The ChIL workhouse also had a series of tunnels constructed
• 30:35
  Speaker 1: as a drainage system. However, by the time the early
• 30:39
  Speaker 1: of twentieth century rolled around, didn't quite function properly and
• 30:43
  Speaker 1: resulted in an open cesspit, much to the charging of
• 30:47
  Speaker 1: the locals, who complained about the smell. This was covered
• 30:51
  Speaker 1: up later. Amongst other things, many people died in the workhouse,
• 30:57
  Speaker 1: and the local newspaper reported that the moans of the
• 30:59
  Speaker 1: die were as familiar to the ears as the striking
• 31:03
  Speaker 1: of the clock, which honestly feels a little bit like
• 31:07
  Speaker 1: an Angelus reverence. It had ceased to be a workhouse
• 31:12
  Speaker 1: by the early twentieth century, when during the Easter Rising,
• 31:16
  Speaker 1: which was in nineteen sixteen, the British Army took over
• 31:20
  Speaker 1: the workhouse, turfed the residents out, and used it as
• 31:23
  Speaker 1: a barracks. It would be occupied by the military a
• 31:27
  Speaker 1: few years later in nineteen twenty two, after Ireland won
• 31:30
  Speaker 1: independence from Britain see during the Irish Civil War, the
• 31:35
  Speaker 1: Free State Army occupied the barracks and when they were
• 31:38
  Speaker 1: there they executed six anti Treaty Iway volunteers. They did
• 31:44
  Speaker 1: this on the eleventh of April nineteen twenty three, and
• 31:48
  Speaker 1: then executed another two the following week.
• 31:52
  Speaker 2: The Free State Army stayed there.
• 31:54
  Speaker 1: Up until nineteen twenty five when they were made to
• 31:57
  Speaker 1: leave the barracks as it constituted a health hazards. So
• 32:02
  Speaker 1: they leave and the nuns move in. Again. Let's take
• 32:07
  Speaker 1: away second to just think over that. The army move
• 32:11
  Speaker 1: out because the place is too unsanitary for them to
• 32:14
  Speaker 1: stay there. And then this is given to nuns to
• 32:17
  Speaker 1: run an institution for pregnant women and also babies and infants.
• 32:24
  Speaker 1: So eighty years after it was created, the true Union
• 32:28
  Speaker 1: Workhouse was now the Saint Mary's Mother and Baby Home,
• 32:32
  Speaker 1: run by the Bonsacles Sistels and headed by one mother,
• 32:37
  Speaker 1: Hortense McNamara to so you know, nuns choose their own names,
• 32:43
  Speaker 1: and she chose Hortense, and so under the rule of
• 32:47
  Speaker 1: the bonsaccurs nuns well. This would lead to a very
• 32:51
  Speaker 1: dark history, darker even than the history of the workhouse.
• 32:55
  Speaker 1: For nearly a century before, these mother and Baby Homes
• 33:05
  Speaker 1: were seen as the solution to a perceived problem by
• 33:08
  Speaker 1: the Irish state, the Roman Catholic Church, and Irish society
• 33:12
  Speaker 1: as a whole. It was indeed the republic of shame.
• 33:19
  Speaker 1: I really cannot convey to you the chokehold that Catholicism
• 33:23
  Speaker 1: had on this country. Like there is a reason that
• 33:26
  Speaker 1: for a good chunk of the twentieth century, fifty percent
• 33:29
  Speaker 1: of the time when you met a none in the wild,
• 33:32
  Speaker 1: and I mean like anywhere in the world, right, they
• 33:35
  Speaker 1: would be Irish priests too. Not as many monks though,
• 33:40
  Speaker 1: And to have a theory that continues in the vein
• 33:42
  Speaker 1: of misogyny and pivot and Christianity that because men by
• 33:46
  Speaker 1: and large will aim for positions of power within the
• 33:49
  Speaker 1: church priest, bishop, taken, blah blah, and so are less
• 33:54
  Speaker 1: likely to become monks. Granted, within Catholicism, the only option
• 33:59
  Speaker 1: open to women is basically nunneries, right, get thee to
• 34:03
  Speaker 1: a nunnery. People talk about the Irish as being happy,
• 34:08
  Speaker 1: go lucky, but the thing is the look of the Irish.
• 34:12
  Speaker 1: It's bad. It's bad luck, colonialism, oppression, starvation, et cetera.
• 34:19
  Speaker 1: Ireland is a country that was born with pain. Pain
• 34:23
  Speaker 1: and trauma is part of the Irish experience, from the
• 34:27
  Speaker 1: folklore to the history.
• 34:29
  Speaker 2: Rarely do any of the.
• 34:30
  Speaker 1: Tales have happy endings. It's one of the reasons that
• 34:34
  Speaker 1: the Irish have a really, really good relationship with death.
• 34:37
  Speaker 1: Like we've seen so much of it. So a culture
• 34:41
  Speaker 1: that already exists with sorrow, shame, oppression and suffering really
• 34:46
  Speaker 1: made it easy to fall in line with stripped Catholic doctrines.
• 34:50
  Speaker 1: And I'm not saying this as an excuse. I just
• 34:54
  Speaker 1: need you to understand just how normal this was, how
• 35:00
  Speaker 1: acceptable the shame that was attached to unwed mothers and
• 35:05
  Speaker 1: their offspring. Yet no unweeded fathers underwent the same fate.
• 35:10
  Speaker 1: Granted again, sometimes shotgun weddings would come into play because
• 35:13
  Speaker 1: it was seen as a better option than to be
• 35:16
  Speaker 1: the mother of a bastard. Now I know I am
• 35:19
  Speaker 1: being about as subtle as hitting a saldfish with a hammer,
• 35:22
  Speaker 1: But these institutions existed specifically for this problem, because not
• 35:30
  Speaker 1: only will society judge you, but so well got There's
• 35:37
  Speaker 1: even a quote in the Irish Times from nineteen twenty four,
• 35:40
  Speaker 1: before mother her tense gets all set up, but after
• 35:43
  Speaker 1: other such homes are established, doctor Webb, that's right, americal professional.
• 35:50
  Speaker 1: He wrote in and said that the illegitimate child, being
• 35:55
  Speaker 1: proof of the mother's shame, is in most cases sought
• 35:58
  Speaker 1: to be hidden at all costs. The child becomes an
• 36:02
  Speaker 1: encumbrance on the foster mother who has no interest in
• 36:06
  Speaker 1: keeping it alive. See here's the thing. Illegitimate children were
• 36:13
  Speaker 1: seen as less human than other children like they were.
• 36:18
  Speaker 1: That's not hyperbole. That is a direct quote from an
• 36:22
  Speaker 1: ex nun. Home babies, children from mother and baby homes
• 36:27
  Speaker 1: who hadn't been adopted, say they were somehow less deserving
• 36:31
  Speaker 1: of life, like some twisted religious eugenics, extra sinful. The
• 36:37
  Speaker 1: mother was a beacon of shame, and the apple does
• 36:40
  Speaker 1: not fall far from the tree. Yes, I did use
• 36:44
  Speaker 1: apple deliberately. Even if you compare legitimate children who were orphaned,
• 36:51
  Speaker 1: they would have been treated better than a homebaby like
• 36:55
  Speaker 1: There was even a threat in these areas that if
• 36:57
  Speaker 1: you didn't behave you were going to be sent to
• 36:59
  Speaker 1: the whole and other children in the community they were
• 37:03
  Speaker 1: told that the home babies were the children of the devil.
• 37:08
  Speaker 1: Like the home babies, when they were old enough went
• 37:12
  Speaker 1: to school, which was also heavily influenced by the church,
• 37:17
  Speaker 1: the other children were told not to associate with the
• 37:19
  Speaker 1: home babies because apparently illegitimacy is contagious, it's guilty by association.
• 37:28
  Speaker 1: So these children were ostracized and segregated. They were sent
• 37:32
  Speaker 1: to school to show that they were being sent and
• 37:34
  Speaker 1: probably just to keep them out of the way, but
• 37:37
  Speaker 1: many weren't properly educated. They were just there.
• 37:41
  Speaker 2: They would march single.
• 37:43
  Speaker 1: File to the school and march back to the home.
• 37:47
  Speaker 1: They would leave late in the morning, ten minutes late,
• 37:51
  Speaker 1: and they would leave ten minutes early so that they
• 37:55
  Speaker 1: wouldn't be able to associate with other children even if
• 37:58
  Speaker 1: they were allowed to back At the home, the pregnant
• 38:04
  Speaker 1: women and girls would get up and be ready for
• 38:06
  Speaker 1: Mass at eight am. They would have plain porridge for breakfast,
• 38:11
  Speaker 1: and in some homes, the babies would be nursed by
• 38:13
  Speaker 1: their mothers. In the homes in which the mother stayed on,
• 38:18
  Speaker 1: of course, to ensure that the babies were healthy before leaving,
• 38:22
  Speaker 1: not in cheuum.
• 38:24
  Speaker 2: In cheum, the.
• 38:25
  Speaker 1: Babies had a bottle and then were put in the
• 38:28
  Speaker 1: nursery and then they were left there. They were there
• 38:32
  Speaker 1: while the women and girls performed chores for the rest
• 38:35
  Speaker 1: of the day. But pregnant people would scrub floors, work
• 38:38
  Speaker 1: in the garden, wash walls, and all manner of tedious
• 38:42
  Speaker 1: jobs because remember this was penance and repentance for your sins.
• 38:47
  Speaker 1: So yeah, pregnant young women and girls. You do vigorous
• 38:51
  Speaker 1: labor with hazardous chemicals, that's fine. Oh and when I
• 38:57
  Speaker 1: say girls, I mean girls. You would be shocked, or
• 39:01
  Speaker 1: maybe you wouldn't. But the amount of thirteen, twelve, eleven
• 39:08
  Speaker 1: year olds that went through these homes, like, it's astounding
• 39:14
  Speaker 1: that these children are being blamed and bespera home. And Clark,
• 39:21
  Speaker 1: there was a pregnant thirteen year old girl who would
• 39:24
  Speaker 1: scream out every night in tower, begging for her mother.
• 39:28
  Speaker 1: So I think we can put two and two together
• 39:30
  Speaker 1: and figure out what was happening to her. And yet
• 39:32
  Speaker 1: she was the one who was punished. Another thing about
• 39:37
  Speaker 1: these homes is that once they were inside, the inmates
• 39:41
  Speaker 1: were all.
• 39:41
  Speaker 2: Given new names.
• 39:43
  Speaker 1: This was another way of adding to the secrecy, but
• 39:45
  Speaker 1: also to remove autonomy and personal identity. It also meant
• 39:51
  Speaker 1: that they couldn't seek each other out on the outside
• 39:53
  Speaker 1: and report. We taligate in some way. They would be
• 39:58
  Speaker 1: sent to the home. Work they are throughout their pregnancy,
• 40:01
  Speaker 1: give birth unmedicated and under supervision like sometimes they would
• 40:08
  Speaker 1: be demoralized and beat it and abused during birth like
• 40:16
  Speaker 1: as they were in act of labor. Now some nuns,
• 40:23
  Speaker 1: they would have been nuss.
• 40:24
  Speaker 2: It was common.
• 40:26
  Speaker 1: However, nuns weren't allowed to become midwives until like I
• 40:30
  Speaker 1: think it's the mid to late nineteen thirties, and even
• 40:34
  Speaker 1: there was a whole thing about nuns weren't allowed to
• 40:36
  Speaker 1: be present at births. So how this establishment got up
• 40:41
  Speaker 1: and running in the first place is kind of, you know,
• 40:45
  Speaker 1: wild to me. These women are not allowed to be
• 40:49
  Speaker 1: near the birth, and yet let's set up an institution
• 40:54
  Speaker 1: which forces them to do that. Like so sometimes there
• 41:02
  Speaker 1: would be a visiting doctor or a medical officer like
• 41:06
  Speaker 1: coming to these homes. A lot of the time, they
• 41:08
  Speaker 1: wouldn't be present for births. Now these doctors, some of them,
• 41:16
  Speaker 1: Like there was a doctor that closed down Besper because
• 41:18
  Speaker 1: of the high infant mortality rate, and he got absolutely
• 41:23
  Speaker 1: torn apart. And there was a doctor who reported on
• 41:28
  Speaker 1: Cheuam and said that it would be kinder to strangle
• 41:34
  Speaker 1: the babies at birth then to let them live there.
• 41:37
  Speaker 1: Now I'm paraphrasing, but that's the equivalent of what he said.
• 41:42
  Speaker 2: In Chuam.
• 41:43
  Speaker 1: Mothers were taken from the home after the birth, sometimes
• 41:47
  Speaker 1: a day, sometimes three. Some were collected by their families
• 41:51
  Speaker 1: and others, repeat offenders was sent to the laundries. All
• 41:55
  Speaker 1: without their babies. Others from the home, well, others never left,
• 42:01
  Speaker 1: but we'll get back to that letter. Something I want
• 42:07
  Speaker 1: to add here that I think is very important is
• 42:09
  Speaker 1: that the nuns did not do this for free. Galway
• 42:13
  Speaker 1: County Council paid one punt per week for every mother
• 42:18
  Speaker 1: and every child that was in the home. I mean,
• 42:23
  Speaker 1: we will delve into money making letter two more of that,
• 42:26
  Speaker 1: but they were paid for each person in their care,
• 42:31
  Speaker 1: adult and child alike. The nuns also ran the local hospital,
• 42:38
  Speaker 1: so Grove Hospital, and so you had the home run
• 42:42
  Speaker 1: by the Bone Succors nuns and Grove Hospital run by
• 42:47
  Speaker 1: the Bon Succors Nuns. Like I said, it wasn't uncommon
• 42:52
  Speaker 1: for nuns to also be nurses. So when the home
• 42:56
  Speaker 1: did close down in nineteen sixty one, there remain nuns
• 43:00
  Speaker 1: were easily dispersed and relocated. The home itself was still
• 43:06
  Speaker 1: standing until nineteen seventy two when it was demolished and
• 43:10
  Speaker 1: a housing estate was built on the land. Now this
• 43:13
  Speaker 1: wasn't straight away. It takes a long time for anything
• 43:17
  Speaker 1: to happen in Ireland, so it was still being built.
• 43:20
  Speaker 1: It was partially constructed, I should say, it just didn't
• 43:25
  Speaker 1: suddenly oh, now here's a house and estate and a
• 43:28
  Speaker 1: children's playground. No. So although the area above ground was demolished,
• 43:36
  Speaker 1: the area below was not. Some parts were not built over,
• 43:41
  Speaker 1: and kids being kids, especially kids being kids in rural Ireland, well,
• 43:47
  Speaker 1: they often went out to play in the fields and
• 43:49
  Speaker 1: the ruins with the old walls.
• 43:51
  Speaker 2: Right, there was also an orchard there, so you know,
• 43:55
  Speaker 2: of course there was.
• 43:57
  Speaker 1: And this brings me back to the two boys from
• 44:00
  Speaker 1: the beginning of our story. Franny Hopkins and Barry Sweeney
• 44:05
  Speaker 1: are somewhere between like seven years old and twelve years old,
• 44:10
  Speaker 1: depending on which report you read. So they're out scrumping
• 44:15
  Speaker 1: for apples and messing about when they jump on a
• 44:18
  Speaker 1: concrete slab and it echoes. Right, this is a field, right,
• 44:24
  Speaker 1: so they're curious. They push open the slab and lo
• 44:27
  Speaker 1: and behold what they say are loads and loads of bones,
• 44:32
  Speaker 1: like skulls and bones. And Franny he actually pushes Barry,
• 44:37
  Speaker 1: who's the younger of the two, into this hole right,
• 44:41
  Speaker 1: this hole on the ground that he can clearly see
• 44:44
  Speaker 1: skulls in. Being a child who has been thrown into
• 44:47
  Speaker 1: a pit full of bones, Barry starts crying. Okay, so
• 44:52
  Speaker 1: Franny's like, okay, let's everything's fine out, you get we're
• 44:55
  Speaker 1: best friends. Let's go and tell everybody about the big
• 44:57
  Speaker 1: pill of bonds they found. And so they go back.
• 45:01
  Speaker 1: They go back to the community and they're like, hey,
• 45:03
  Speaker 1: look at these bones. So they tell everyone in town
• 45:09
  Speaker 1: they found a big hole filled to the brim with bones.
• 45:14
  Speaker 1: Now remember this used to be a workhouse. So the
• 45:16
  Speaker 1: community comes to the very reasonable conclusion that these must
• 45:19
  Speaker 1: be famine victims. So the local priest, he comes over,
• 45:24
  Speaker 1: he says a prayer, and the community puts up this
• 45:28
  Speaker 1: like little memorial, right because it's Ireland, very big respect
• 45:33
  Speaker 1: on the dead. And it's I say memorial, it's a grotto.
• 45:37
  Speaker 2: It's going to be statue.
• 45:38
  Speaker 1: And Mary, mother or God also very popular here. Try
• 45:42
  Speaker 1: and drive through a town that doesn't have one. And
• 45:44
  Speaker 1: so there's a couple from the town and they like
• 45:47
  Speaker 1: tend to the memorial and like look after it up
• 45:50
  Speaker 1: until like they pass away. That same year, nineteen seventy five,
• 45:57
  Speaker 1: Mary Moriarty is told that a child is running around
• 46:00
  Speaker 1: with a skull on a stick and Mary Mary.
• 46:06
  Speaker 2: Is just like right.
• 46:10
  Speaker 1: And goes looking for Martin, who does in fact have
• 46:15
  Speaker 1: a skull on a stick. Now, Martin tries to tell
• 46:20
  Speaker 1: her that this skull is plastic and how great it's
• 46:25
  Speaker 1: gonna be for Halloween. And Mary she looks at the
• 46:31
  Speaker 1: skull and she says that it has nearly a full
• 46:33
  Speaker 1: set of teeth. It's small, and she's like, Martin, that's
• 46:41
  Speaker 1: not plastic. That's a human skull. You've got there, Martin.
• 46:46
  Speaker 1: So she tells Martin to put the skull back where
• 46:48
  Speaker 1: he found it, and so he does, and so she
• 46:52
  Speaker 1: and a few other of the neighbors they follow him
• 46:55
  Speaker 1: onto the site of the old home. And so when
• 46:57
  Speaker 1: they start looking for other bones in this of undergrowth,
• 47:02
  Speaker 1: because again no fear were used to corpses, right, they look,
• 47:07
  Speaker 1: they can't find any, you know, there's nothing there. She's like,
• 47:12
  Speaker 1: weird that there's just this one tiny skull. And then
• 47:18
  Speaker 1: as they realize they're not finding any, the ground comes
• 47:22
  Speaker 1: away from underneath Mary's feet and Mary Moriarty falls into
• 47:29
  Speaker 1: a dark pit. She would say that this looked like
• 47:33
  Speaker 1: a tunnel of some sort, And when her eyes adjusted
• 47:37
  Speaker 1: to the dark, she saw these little bundles stacked on
• 47:41
  Speaker 1: top of each other like steps, and all of these
• 47:45
  Speaker 1: bundles were wrapped in a cloth. This like very specific
• 47:49
  Speaker 1: wrapped way. The cloth had gone black from rot and damp,
• 47:55
  Speaker 1: and most of these bundles were about the size of
• 47:58
  Speaker 1: a bottle, and they were packed all the way up
• 48:03
  Speaker 1: from the ground to the ceiling, and there were hundreds
• 48:07
  Speaker 1: of them. It wasn't long before the neighbors pulled her
• 48:11
  Speaker 1: out of the pit, and she was very confused by
• 48:15
  Speaker 1: what she saw. That was until she gave birth to
• 48:20
  Speaker 1: her second son in the Grove hospital run by the
• 48:24
  Speaker 1: bon secol Systels and she has handed her baby by
• 48:30
  Speaker 1: the nuns who had moved there from the home, and
• 48:34
  Speaker 1: her son, her baby boy, was swaddled in a cloth,
• 48:38
  Speaker 1: wrapped up just like those bundles in the hole. She
• 48:42
  Speaker 1: decided that she needed to talk to someone, someone who
• 48:45
  Speaker 1: had been in the home, someone who would know something anything,
• 48:50
  Speaker 1: So she reached out to Julia Devanny so the home
• 48:55
  Speaker 1: it would also take children in orphans like Julia. She
• 49:00
  Speaker 1: was nine when she was sent to Saint Mary's Mother
• 49:02
  Speaker 1: and Baby Home, where she worked as a domestic servant.
• 49:06
  Speaker 1: She worked there for the nuns up until the home
• 49:09
  Speaker 1: closed down in nineteen sixty one, and she didn't really
• 49:12
  Speaker 1: know any other life for thirty six years. Mary goes
• 49:17
  Speaker 1: to her and she tells her what she saw in
• 49:18
  Speaker 1: that tunnel, and without skipping a beat, Julia very nonchalantly says,
• 49:26
  Speaker 1: that's where the little babies is many a little one
• 49:29
  Speaker 1: I carried down in the night. Remember that this is
• 49:34
  Speaker 1: the life that Julia knew for thirty six years, a
• 49:37
  Speaker 1: life in service of the Bonsucur's nuns. She described the
• 49:42
  Speaker 1: home as an awful, lonely place where women were just
• 49:46
  Speaker 1: waiting to be separated from their babies. To quote like
• 49:52
  Speaker 1: her lady waiting for the crucifixion. She said that the
• 49:56
  Speaker 1: children in the home were kept like chicken coop and
• 50:02
  Speaker 1: the nuns they mistreated the children in their care. Suffering
• 50:07
  Speaker 1: and punishment was normal, typical expected, and according to them,
• 50:14
  Speaker 1: these children deserved more punishment because they were the products
• 50:17
  Speaker 1: of sin. Even if you look into the reports of
• 50:23
  Speaker 1: the industrial schools, the laundrits, the homes, actual physical beatings
• 50:30
  Speaker 1: were so normalized it was very much accepted, and more
• 50:34
  Speaker 1: than that, it was seen as the right thing to do.
• 50:38
  Speaker 1: So Sidebar, I once grabbed a leather belt like because
• 50:43
  Speaker 1: I was getting or I was getting closed together to
• 50:45
  Speaker 1: get ready for the day, because I get everyone's close
• 50:47
  Speaker 1: ready in the morning, and so I like crambed a
• 50:50
  Speaker 1: leather belt, doubled it up in my hands and just
• 50:52
  Speaker 1: like pulled it twice to make that shsh cracking noise.
• 50:56
  Speaker 2: And my son was.
• 50:57
  Speaker 1: Like, eugh, that's loud.
• 51:00
  Speaker 2: Right.
• 51:02
  Speaker 1: If I did that near my left handed aunt over
• 51:05
  Speaker 1: in Scotland, right, she would flinch from the other side
• 51:09
  Speaker 1: of the room, which just kind of shows you the
• 51:12
  Speaker 1: difference of that kind of act. Like I was only
• 51:16
  Speaker 1: messing to make the noise, but for someone like my
• 51:20
  Speaker 1: aunt who had been beating because she was left handed,
• 51:23
  Speaker 1: that's a very real threat that noise. And so my
• 51:26
  Speaker 1: son he's like waiting like we did. Like it just
• 51:30
  Speaker 1: shows you how we've moved on from that sort of
• 51:34
  Speaker 1: barbaric way. But this, this was more than just a
• 51:40
  Speaker 1: slap on the wrist. This was pure unadulterated abuse. So
• 51:48
  Speaker 1: back to Mary, She's shocked about this, like what she's
• 51:52
  Speaker 1: hearing from Julia, and being a woman raised in Ireland
• 51:57
  Speaker 1: as a Catholic, she then comes to the conclusion that
• 52:00
  Speaker 1: these must be stillborn babies. Right again, Ireland very good
• 52:06
  Speaker 1: relationship with death. We have death notices on the radio,
• 52:10
  Speaker 1: we have a website specifically for announcing deaths in the country,
• 52:15
  Speaker 1: like we have rip dot I e. That's a very
• 52:18
  Speaker 1: real thing.
• 52:20
  Speaker 2: We have wakes at home.
• 52:22
  Speaker 1: Our death to burial is like a very quick quick
• 52:26
  Speaker 1: timeline unless there's like a postmotem and other such delays,
• 52:30
  Speaker 1: Like it's a couple of days, enough time for the
• 52:33
  Speaker 1: wake and then you're on the ground, consecrated ground, that is,
• 52:38
  Speaker 1: if you're Catholic. I know I've said this before, I've
• 52:42
  Speaker 1: brought up but Irish people do not put shoes on
• 52:46
  Speaker 1: the table because the only time shoes should be on
• 52:49
  Speaker 1: the table is when there's death in the house. And
• 52:52
  Speaker 1: that means, yes, a dead body on your kitchen table, right,
• 52:57
  Speaker 1: dead body on the table, somebody making from decent sandwiches
• 53:01
  Speaker 1: that are cut into triangles, very very typical situation. And
• 53:06
  Speaker 1: so a Norman Cantholicism, every christened baptized person would be
• 53:12
  Speaker 1: buried in consecrated ground unless that person had committed suicide,
• 53:19
  Speaker 1: which is a mortal sin. So in the eyes of
• 53:22
  Speaker 1: the church, you can't repent from that. You can't do
• 53:26
  Speaker 1: three hill Mary's and our Father and an act to
• 53:28
  Speaker 1: contrition if you're dead, out with that burying a Catholic
• 53:33
  Speaker 1: and unconsecrated ground is a big no no. It's also
• 53:39
  Speaker 1: illegal to just interror people and not have a burial
• 53:44
  Speaker 1: like record, like it's that that's not legally a thing
• 53:47
  Speaker 1: you can do. So it made sense to Mary Moriality
• 53:52
  Speaker 1: that these babies in the tunnel into them must have
• 53:56
  Speaker 1: been stillborn, because obviously the nuns wouldn't bury children of
• 54:01
  Speaker 1: God who had been christened here, like like you would
• 54:06
  Speaker 1: be christened quite sharpish as well, especially if they thought
• 54:09
  Speaker 1: the baby was ill or sickly. Okay, I'm gonna do
• 54:13
  Speaker 1: another sidebar. I was christened in a hospital. Like my
• 54:18
  Speaker 1: godmother was a nun who used to send me a
• 54:22
  Speaker 1: card every year up until like she died. Now, I
• 54:26
  Speaker 1: was baptized or christened because I was premature and they
• 54:30
  Speaker 1: thought I was gonna die right, so they were like,
• 54:33
  Speaker 1: bless her quick, we need the numbers now. That being said,
• 54:37
  Speaker 1: dadside's Jewish, so they were like, let's get in there
• 54:39
  Speaker 1: before he gets there. It just kind of shows you
• 54:42
  Speaker 1: how bad it was. Like my older siblings, they were
• 54:46
  Speaker 1: all premature as well. But like my older brother, he
• 54:52
  Speaker 1: was baptized in France, so he was taken to France
• 54:56
  Speaker 1: and got christened there, like that's what happened, and that's
• 54:59
  Speaker 1: like great super for you. I got emergency baptism in
• 55:05
  Speaker 1: a hospital. So in a home run by nuns, right,
• 55:10
  Speaker 1: one would assume that the same situation would be going
• 55:13
  Speaker 1: on here, that you would baptize the children in your care,
• 55:18
  Speaker 1: especially if there was a risk of them dying, and
• 55:23
  Speaker 1: they would be buried.
• 55:24
  Speaker 2: On consecrated ground.
• 55:25
  Speaker 1: Yeah, so the community assumed that there must have been
• 55:30
  Speaker 1: a little cemetery on the homes grounds, but it got
• 55:33
  Speaker 1: lost and like the undergrowth in the rubble, which is
• 55:37
  Speaker 1: a consideration. Unfortunately, this theory falls flat when you realize
• 55:42
  Speaker 1: there's nothing marked. There's no markings, there is no burial records,
• 55:49
  Speaker 1: there's no tombstones or markers or epitaphs, nothing, there's nothing.
• 55:57
  Speaker 1: So Mary, she rationalized, is that and so forgets about
• 56:02
  Speaker 1: this for almost forty years until someone comes asking questions
• 56:07
  Speaker 1: about Chum and Saint Mary's mother and baby home and
• 56:11
  Speaker 1: absolutely astounding woman Katherine Corlis now Katherine Corliss. She's not
• 56:17
  Speaker 1: a historian or an archivist. She's a soft spoken, rather
• 56:23
  Speaker 1: unassuming woman with anxiety and all so big you think
• 56:27
  Speaker 1: she'd had elephant titus. Right. Catherine was from Galwy. She
• 56:32
  Speaker 1: had a typical, unassuming life. Right. She did a short
• 56:36
  Speaker 1: spell in art college, she did secretarial work. She got
• 56:40
  Speaker 1: married in nineteen seventy eight and had four kids. She's
• 56:44
  Speaker 1: a mother, she's a grandmother, and at this point, right,
• 56:48
  Speaker 1: she's been through all this, and she was very involved
• 56:52
  Speaker 1: in her children's life because she wanted to give them
• 56:56
  Speaker 1: a sort of happiness and love the she didn't get.
• 57:01
  Speaker 1: Now that's not to say her mother was cruel, but
• 57:05
  Speaker 1: she felt that her mother had a sadness about her,
• 57:10
  Speaker 1: like this melancholy. They just seemed to emit from her
• 57:15
  Speaker 1: all the time, like there was something that she couldn't
• 57:18
  Speaker 1: pinpoint and couldn't connect to or communicate about. And Catherine
• 57:26
  Speaker 1: thought there had to be a reason for this, and
• 57:28
  Speaker 1: she felt like something was hidden. And it wasn't until
• 57:31
  Speaker 1: her mother, Kathleen, died in nineteen ninety two and Catherine
• 57:35
  Speaker 1: started digging that. She found out the reason for her
• 57:38
  Speaker 1: mother's sorrow when she got her hands on her mother's
• 57:42
  Speaker 1: birth certificate. There was a blank space where the father's
• 57:47
  Speaker 1: name would be. Her mother was illegitimate in a country
• 57:54
  Speaker 1: that saw illegitimate children as half human degraded them, told
• 57:59
  Speaker 1: them they were worthless their whole childhoods and even into adulthood.
• 58:04
  Speaker 1: No wonder her mother was so low. Now we don't
• 58:09
  Speaker 1: know exactly where Kathleen was born, but we do not
• 58:11
  Speaker 1: was in Galway and that she was fostered growing up.
• 58:16
  Speaker 1: But Catherine wondered what if her mother was connected to
• 58:19
  Speaker 1: the home. So Catherine tells his story after discovering this, like,
• 58:26
  Speaker 1: she thinks back to her own childhood when she was
• 58:29
  Speaker 1: at school with homebabies and she played a prank on one.
• 58:34
  Speaker 1: Like one of the other kids you know, says do
• 58:37
  Speaker 1: this and she's like, Okay, it's gonna be super funny.
• 58:40
  Speaker 1: And this is like National school, so elementary primary school age.
• 58:45
  Speaker 1: She wraps up a stone in a sweet wrapper and
• 58:47
  Speaker 1: gives it to a homebaby. She and her friends laughed
• 58:51
  Speaker 1: as the child excitedly unwrapped it and put it in
• 58:54
  Speaker 1: her mouth before spitting it out onto the ground.
• 59:00
  Speaker 2: Eim A was a kid.
• 59:00
  Speaker 1: She didn't know any better, She didn't understand, but looking back,
• 59:04
  Speaker 1: she realized that this child probably never had a sweet
• 59:07
  Speaker 1: in her life, and this idea would have been the
• 59:10
  Speaker 1: most exciting and maybe kindest thing to happen to them.
• 59:17
  Speaker 1: Catherine's actually tried to find out who this person was
• 59:21
  Speaker 1: because she feels such shame for what she did and
• 59:24
  Speaker 1: she is a product of the system that created this,
• 59:27
  Speaker 1: created this idea, and like for that child, that prank
• 59:33
  Speaker 1: may have been one of the better instances to happen
• 59:37
  Speaker 1: to them. Catherine, she's on a mission to learn about
• 59:45
  Speaker 1: the home, babies and the home. Like there really wasn't
• 59:48
  Speaker 1: a lot of info about this, because she started looking
• 59:52
  Speaker 1: and she was met with blank responses, like there was
• 59:55
  Speaker 1: no documentation, there was no open information about any of this,
• 59:58
  Speaker 1: and so when she was requesting it, there was nothing
• 1:00:02
  Speaker 1: coming to her, and she thought, that's weird, right, there
• 1:00:07
  Speaker 1: just isn't any info on the homes. And she wants
• 1:00:11
  Speaker 1: to do something right. She can't make it right, you know,
• 1:00:15
  Speaker 1: there's no making things right when it comes to this,
• 1:00:17
  Speaker 1: but she wants to try. And you can't change the past,
• 1:00:22
  Speaker 1: but you can give some sort of justice. And so
• 1:00:26
  Speaker 1: she starts writing for the journal of Old Chum Society, right,
• 1:00:30
  Speaker 1: and so she's writing about local history. So she's asking
• 1:00:34
  Speaker 1: around about the home, and no one wanted to talk
• 1:00:36
  Speaker 1: to her. She's following paper trails of women sent that
• 1:00:40
  Speaker 1: and quite often those paper trails would end up with
• 1:00:43
  Speaker 1: a death certificate and a burial. In England, women would
• 1:00:48
  Speaker 1: leave Ireland to start new lives. Some weren't welcome back
• 1:00:52
  Speaker 1: to their communities. And Catherine, she just keeps trying. So
• 1:01:01
  Speaker 1: she even reaches out to known survivors, and most of them,
• 1:01:05
  Speaker 1: she says, they remind her of her mother. There's a
• 1:01:09
  Speaker 1: melancholy that emanates from them. They have low self esteem
• 1:01:13
  Speaker 1: and yeah, of course you've grown up in a society
• 1:01:16
  Speaker 1: that reinforces the idea that you are nothing worthless, less
• 1:01:21
  Speaker 1: than human, all because of the circumstances of your birth,
• 1:01:24
  Speaker 1: which feels, I don't know, ridiculous. Catherine is looking and
• 1:01:31
  Speaker 1: it's clear to her that there are a lot of
• 1:01:32
  Speaker 1: deaths at this home, and it's an anordinate amount.
• 1:01:36
  Speaker 2: And she is looking.
• 1:01:40
  Speaker 1: And one day in twenty eleven, Mary Mariarty is in
• 1:01:43
  Speaker 1: the hairdressers and she overhels two women complaining about Catherine
• 1:01:48
  Speaker 1: poking around and dredging up the past. They were of
• 1:01:52
  Speaker 1: the opinion of it's in the past, can't change it,
• 1:01:55
  Speaker 1: no point upset in the apple cut and Mary She's like,
• 1:01:59
  Speaker 1: fuck this for game of soldiers, These children to serve justice,
• 1:02:04
  Speaker 1: and so she talks to Catherine. Now. Between twenty eleven
• 1:02:09
  Speaker 1: and twenty thirteen, Catherine purchased every single death certificate on
• 1:02:15
  Speaker 1: public record, on public record for the children that died
• 1:02:20
  Speaker 1: in the home. So a death sirt costs something like
• 1:02:24
  Speaker 1: was it four year old? Each?
• 1:02:26
  Speaker 2: And so on.
• 1:02:27
  Speaker 1: All she spent three thousand, one hundred and eighty four
• 1:02:31
  Speaker 1: year od of her own money, right out of her
• 1:02:34
  Speaker 1: own pocket. And you might be thinking that's expensive, and yes,
• 1:02:39
  Speaker 1: yes it is. But for Catherine, she's like, if she's
• 1:02:45
  Speaker 1: not going to do it, she thinks, who will. It's
• 1:02:49
  Speaker 1: been fifty years since the home closed and no one
• 1:02:51
  Speaker 1: has touched on the matter. Catherine uncovers seven hundred and
• 1:02:57
  Speaker 1: ninety eight recorded deaths in the home. She went looking
• 1:03:01
  Speaker 1: for burial records. She searched cemetery records in Goalwie and
• 1:03:05
  Speaker 1: even in Mayo, right, which is comparatively comparatively, I understand
• 1:03:11
  Speaker 1: the much bigger, But to give you an idea, it's
• 1:03:13
  Speaker 1: kind of like for my US listeners, it's kind of
• 1:03:17
  Speaker 1: like looking for burial records in Missouri and also Louisiana,
• 1:03:23
  Speaker 1: like you're going across the border. Right.
• 1:03:26
  Speaker 2: She managed to find a grand.
• 1:03:28
  Speaker 1: Total love two two death records, right, or two burial records,
• 1:03:35
  Speaker 1: I should say, But these records were specifically for two orphans,
• 1:03:42
  Speaker 1: two legitimate children who were orphaned. The other seven hundred
• 1:03:50
  Speaker 1: and ninety six infants all illegitimate children. Catherine could not
• 1:03:56
  Speaker 1: find one single burial records. Catherine at this point had
• 1:04:02
  Speaker 1: been told the stories of Franny and Barrye and Martin
• 1:04:05
  Speaker 1: with a skull on a stick and Mary falling into
• 1:04:08
  Speaker 1: the tunnel, and so she thinks she's curious, what could
• 1:04:14
  Speaker 1: these be, And so she looks up like the archives
• 1:04:19
  Speaker 1: and the old schematics, and she is affronted. She's shocked,
• 1:04:26
  Speaker 1: and she can't quite believe what she's looking at because
• 1:04:30
  Speaker 1: the locations that she has marked out where these people
• 1:04:34
  Speaker 1: have been. When she's looking at this blueprint schematic is
• 1:04:40
  Speaker 1: a proper term for it, she's looking at the locations
• 1:04:46
  Speaker 1: of the old septic system and she literally says, no,
• 1:04:50
  Speaker 1: that can't be a septic tank. Going over the info,
• 1:04:55
  Speaker 1: it's clear that part of these are like the disconnected
• 1:04:59
  Speaker 1: cess in part is an old septic tank. And she
• 1:05:05
  Speaker 1: did not want to believe that baby's bodies were being
• 1:05:08
  Speaker 1: unceremoniously dumped in an old septic tank by nuns, right,
• 1:05:15
  Speaker 1: But with the lack of burial records, she just didn't
• 1:05:19
  Speaker 1: have any other resolution. Here's the thing, no one associated
• 1:05:25
  Speaker 1: with the boncycles wanted to talk to her. I mean, like,
• 1:05:29
  Speaker 1: if there was a mistake, surely they'd want to clear
• 1:05:31
  Speaker 1: this up. Like. One of the main things she gets
• 1:05:35
  Speaker 1: back is that, oh, those children must have been reclaimed
• 1:05:41
  Speaker 1: by their families. Like shit, they well, you do not
• 1:05:46
  Speaker 1: want the baby when it's alive, but you want that
• 1:05:49
  Speaker 1: baby's cops.
• 1:05:50
  Speaker 2: Is that what you'll tell me?
• 1:05:52
  Speaker 1: Oh? Yeah, sill jan Yeah. In December twenty twelve, Catherine
• 1:05:59
  Speaker 1: pulls up her big girl's socks and publishes all her
• 1:06:01
  Speaker 1: findings in the Historical Journal of Chum and at the
• 1:06:06
  Speaker 1: end of her essay asks this question, is it possible
• 1:06:12
  Speaker 1: that a large number of those little children were buried
• 1:06:15
  Speaker 1: in that little plot at the rear of the former home,
• 1:06:19
  Speaker 1: And if so, why is it not acknowledged as a
• 1:06:23
  Speaker 1: proper cemetery. It wouldn't be that if someone saw how
• 1:06:29
  Speaker 1: many tiny graves will be and dug that they would
• 1:06:31
  Speaker 1: start asking questions. It wouldn't be that you had to
• 1:06:34
  Speaker 1: pay for a burial, and it wouldn't hurt their profits. Right,
• 1:06:37
  Speaker 1: it wouldn't be so that they could fake a death
• 1:06:40
  Speaker 1: and sell a child across the ocean. Catherine Collus asks
• 1:06:45
  Speaker 1: the question. She asks, if it's a cemetery, why isn't
• 1:06:48
  Speaker 1: it marked. It's very like it's a very gentle way
• 1:06:54
  Speaker 1: of asking the question, unlike me there. But she's a
• 1:07:00
  Speaker 1: where they're accusing the Bonsucules nuns of burying Catholic babies
• 1:07:05
  Speaker 1: on unconsecrated ground. Was a big deal, and so she
• 1:07:10
  Speaker 1: awaited the flurry of abuse and hate and all the
• 1:07:13
  Speaker 1: forrow that she was gonna get. But nothing happened. And
• 1:07:20
  Speaker 1: so this strikes a match under her. She puts together
• 1:07:23
  Speaker 1: a spreadsheet with all seven hundred and ninety six names
• 1:07:26
  Speaker 1: of the infants and the babies. Right, she lists their
• 1:07:29
  Speaker 1: ages three days to eight years, and she listed the
• 1:07:34
  Speaker 1: cause of death as per their death certificates. For each
• 1:07:38
  Speaker 1: and everyone. The most common cause of death was gastroenteritis
• 1:07:44
  Speaker 1: oven cause by what what's that? Oh yeah, poor sanitation.
• 1:07:49
  Speaker 1: Then of course you had meningitis, measles, influenza, tuberculosis. Now
• 1:07:56
  Speaker 1: there were other causes of death like malnutrition, starvation, and
• 1:08:03
  Speaker 1: I shit you not congenital idiot on the twenty fifth
• 1:08:10
  Speaker 1: of May twenty fourteen, Alison o'reiley publishes Catherine's list in
• 1:08:15
  Speaker 1: the Irish Mail on Sunday, and this this explodes. It's big, massive,
• 1:08:24
  Speaker 1: it's international news, it's on CNN, it's on Al Jazeera,
• 1:08:29
  Speaker 1: it's everywhere.
• 1:08:30
  Speaker 2: And so the Bonscurls Nuns.
• 1:08:32
  Speaker 1: They're ready for it now, and so they hire a
• 1:08:35
  Speaker 1: PR person. I'm sorry, but this, this specific thing, it
• 1:08:41
  Speaker 1: just reminds me of Jay and Silent Bob strike back
• 1:08:45
  Speaker 1: when James Vanderbeek and Jason Biggs are like tied up
• 1:08:49
  Speaker 1: in a dressing room in this movie in this movie set,
• 1:08:53
  Speaker 1: and so the security guard is outside and he's like,
• 1:08:56
  Speaker 1: there's anything wrong. Would you like me to call your publicist,
• 1:09:01
  Speaker 1: mister Biggs, mister van Derbeek, would you like me to
• 1:09:04
  Speaker 1: call your publicist? That is what this specifically reminds me of.
• 1:09:08
  Speaker 1: And it's very hard to take the nun seriously. But yeah,
• 1:09:14
  Speaker 1: they have a PR person, not a lawyer, but a
• 1:09:17
  Speaker 1: PR person. And this PR guy is like, there's no
• 1:09:21
  Speaker 1: mass baby graveyere like the even right to like documentary
• 1:09:25
  Speaker 1: makers and news agencies like nothing to see here, no grave,
• 1:09:30
  Speaker 1: no swaddled children's copses none of that, Like he even
• 1:09:35
  Speaker 1: says this, and this is a quote and it's such
• 1:09:39
  Speaker 1: bollocks and.
• 1:09:39
  Speaker 2: I'm gonna do it in a silly voice.
• 1:09:41
  Speaker 1: M hmm. Ireland in the first half of the twentieth
• 1:09:46
  Speaker 1: century was a moralistic, inward looking, anti feminist country of
• 1:09:49
  Speaker 1: exaggerated religiosity, which is just a big bloody like word style,
• 1:09:54
  Speaker 1: doesn't it.
• 1:09:54
  Speaker 2: It's just nonsense.
• 1:09:55
  Speaker 1: It's like, oh, yeah, we're shit back in the day,
• 1:09:58
  Speaker 1: wasn't it. But no dead babies here, right. A representative
• 1:10:04
  Speaker 1: of the Nuns actually meets Katherine Corlis in a hotel
• 1:10:07
  Speaker 1: in go Away and they just keep throwing excuses. They're like, oh,
• 1:10:13
  Speaker 1: it must be this, it must be that, it must
• 1:10:15
  Speaker 1: be the famine victims.
• 1:10:18
  Speaker 2: And Katherine Corliss is like.
• 1:10:19
  Speaker 1: Nope, the famine victims are actually buried very respectfully all
• 1:10:23
  Speaker 1: over here in this plot. Right, She's got her ordered
• 1:10:26
  Speaker 1: and survey maps out like she's got everything. And they go, oh,
• 1:10:30
  Speaker 1: it must have been disturbed by the construction of the
• 1:10:33
  Speaker 1: housing estate, and Catherine is like nope, because here is
• 1:10:37
  Speaker 1: this map, and here are these photos of the construction
• 1:10:40
  Speaker 1: of the housing estate, and here is the plot of
• 1:10:42
  Speaker 1: land completely unaffected by it. Right, She's like nope, noop, noop.
• 1:10:49
  Speaker 1: So in the end they say to her that what
• 1:10:54
  Speaker 1: she's doing is very upsetting to the nuns, right is it?
• 1:11:00
  Speaker 1: Is it? So are the members of the religious order
• 1:11:03
  Speaker 1: who habitually abused women and children then dubbed the bodies
• 1:11:06
  Speaker 1: of those children in the sewage upset? Oh what a shame,
• 1:11:11
  Speaker 1: way shame AnyWho? The pr doesn't work in the news
• 1:11:15
  Speaker 1: of nuns putting baby's bodies in the latrine pit under
• 1:11:18
  Speaker 1: the cover of darkness is everywhere Nanteum. The community is split.
• 1:11:27
  Speaker 1: Some think that it should all be led to rest,
• 1:11:29
  Speaker 1: and others think that the children actually deserve some justice.
• 1:11:40
  Speaker 1: Here's a fun little twist that nobody talks about before
• 1:11:44
  Speaker 1: Catherine's essay is published in December twenty twelve.
• 1:11:48
  Speaker 2: Earlier that year, in.
• 1:11:49
  Speaker 1: October, doctor Declan mckown a senior member of the HS,
• 1:11:54
  Speaker 1: that is the Health Service Executive. Think the NHS of Ireland,
• 1:11:59
  Speaker 1: but America, I don't have a comparison for you anyway.
• 1:12:05
  Speaker 1: He has notes of a teleconference, doctor mceowan. So he
• 1:12:09
  Speaker 1: is part of the HS investigation unit. Right, so pretty important, fella,
• 1:12:16
  Speaker 1: and at this time, like the country is in shock.
• 1:12:20
  Speaker 1: It's twenty twelve. There's a lot of stuff coming out
• 1:12:22
  Speaker 1: about the industrial schools, about the laundries, Like a lot
• 1:12:27
  Speaker 1: of things have come to light, like the industrial schools
• 1:12:31
  Speaker 1: especially had come out a few years earlier, and like
• 1:12:34
  Speaker 1: the amount of boys who were compensated for the abuse
• 1:12:38
  Speaker 1: they suffered in the industrial skills. I mean, they deserve
• 1:12:42
  Speaker 1: the compensation. I know some of them, which is what
• 1:12:46
  Speaker 1: I mean. They're men now, but like I met them,
• 1:12:51
  Speaker 1: I know them in my real life. This like everybody
• 1:12:55
  Speaker 1: knows somebody at this point, it's so far reaching. So
• 1:13:00
  Speaker 1: there was all this stuff happening, and it was all
• 1:13:02
  Speaker 1: sort of in the public, in the public sort of sphere,
• 1:13:08
  Speaker 1: and the country was learning more about the Magdalen laundries
• 1:13:11
  Speaker 1: specifically at this point, and there was a national inquiry
• 1:13:15
  Speaker 1: into them. And so because of this, there was a
• 1:13:18
  Speaker 1: social worker in Galway looking into any inflammation that could
• 1:13:21
  Speaker 1: help with this, and she comes across this archive that
• 1:13:25
  Speaker 1: concerns her and she speaks to a manager who then
• 1:13:28
  Speaker 1: contacts doctor McEwen. This archive was it was a large
• 1:13:33
  Speaker 1: archive of photographs, documentation, and correspondence relating to children sent
• 1:13:39
  Speaker 1: for adoption in the USA. There were also letters in
• 1:13:42
  Speaker 1: the archive requesting payments from mothers for the upkeep of
• 1:13:46
  Speaker 1: children that had been discharged or were dead. This note
• 1:13:52
  Speaker 1: finishes with and I quote this may prove to be
• 1:13:58
  Speaker 1: a scandal that dwarfs other more and issues with church
• 1:14:01
  Speaker 1: in state because of the very emotive sensitivities about the
• 1:14:04
  Speaker 1: adoption of babies with or without the will of the mother.
• 1:14:08
  Speaker 1: A concern is that there was evidence of trafficking babies,
• 1:14:11
  Speaker 1: that it must have been facilitated by doctors, social workers
• 1:14:15
  Speaker 1: and a number of these health professionals may still be
• 1:14:18
  Speaker 1: working in the system. So doctor mcow and he writes
• 1:14:24
  Speaker 1: that a minister must be told as soon as possible,
• 1:14:27
  Speaker 1: right so that there should be a fully fledged, fully
• 1:14:31
  Speaker 1: resourced for forensic investigation and state inquiry. Right. There are
• 1:14:36
  Speaker 1: more notes by the doctor with briefings about Chum and
• 1:14:39
  Speaker 1: the Best Borough Home in Cork. These archives and briefings
• 1:14:44
  Speaker 1: are lost. It seems the HSA says that Tusla has them,
• 1:14:50
  Speaker 1: and TUSLA is like, we have no clue where these are.
• 1:14:55
  Speaker 1: So this means that people did know this was happening.
• 1:15:00
  Speaker 1: This is way before Catherine Corliss's list blows up. That
• 1:15:05
  Speaker 1: people are finally playing attention and the Mother and Babies
• 1:15:08
  Speaker 1: Homes Commission of Investigation was formed by the Irish government
• 1:15:12
  Speaker 1: in twenty fifteen. Now, considering that this briefing was sent
• 1:15:17
  Speaker 1: to government ministers to the ties, right, the fact that
• 1:15:22
  Speaker 1: this was sent to someone and was conveniently ignored is telling.
• 1:15:31
  Speaker 1: So the excavation, there's like a preliminary investigation. It started
• 1:15:36
  Speaker 1: in twenty sixteen, right then. The so this commission, it
• 1:15:41
  Speaker 1: actually covers all the homes, not just chum for the record,
• 1:15:45
  Speaker 1: but a sort of preliminary investigation begins, like to find
• 1:15:50
  Speaker 1: these septic tanks, and what they want to do is
• 1:15:55
  Speaker 1: just confirm, like are these famine bodies? Are they not?
• 1:16:01
  Speaker 1: Like they want to see what the situation is. Now,
• 1:16:06
  Speaker 1: they examine four out of the sixteen tanks a sample size, right,
• 1:16:12
  Speaker 1: and in every single one they find the disarticulated bones
• 1:16:18
  Speaker 1: of children. They carbon date the bones so there is
• 1:16:22
  Speaker 1: no confusion, and yeah, they're all from the twentieth century,
• 1:16:26
  Speaker 1: so definitely not famine victims. The age range of the
• 1:16:31
  Speaker 1: bones was between thirty five gestational weeks to three years old.
• 1:16:37
  Speaker 1: Most of what they found were dated from the fifties,
• 1:16:41
  Speaker 1: which is interesting when you think that they started listing
• 1:16:44
  Speaker 1: deaths in nineteen twenty five, so you've got this going on.
• 1:16:50
  Speaker 1: So this is during a time that the home was
• 1:16:54
  Speaker 1: very much like being run by the nuns. And it's
• 1:16:58
  Speaker 1: interesting that this is the fifties and the home is
• 1:17:00
  Speaker 1: closed in nineteen sixty one, Like it's it's interesting because
• 1:17:06
  Speaker 1: many homes like homes were still running until ninety eight.
• 1:17:12
  Speaker 1: So the fact that this is shut in sixty one,
• 1:17:15
  Speaker 1: I don't know. I just I have questions. So as
• 1:17:20
  Speaker 1: they're doing this research, they also discover that there are
• 1:17:26
  Speaker 1: six women whose remains are also missing, which is something
• 1:17:31
  Speaker 1: we also don't bring up very often when we talk
• 1:17:33
  Speaker 1: about this story. But there are six women. We don't
• 1:17:39
  Speaker 1: know where their bodies are. So the remains in the tank,
• 1:17:44
  Speaker 1: like they were spread because of like flooding and such
• 1:17:46
  Speaker 1: over the yells, and so there's no there's no knowing
• 1:17:50
  Speaker 1: how many are there and how many are in there.
• 1:17:53
  Speaker 1: And ye's the thing as well, like this wasn't just
• 1:17:58
  Speaker 1: against the rules of the church, it was against the law.
• 1:18:02
  Speaker 1: You cannot just in teil remains wherever you see fit.
• 1:18:05
  Speaker 1: That is a body dump. The issue, like with the commission,
• 1:18:12
  Speaker 1: here's the thing that the Commission doesn't really tell us
• 1:18:15
  Speaker 1: anything new. It's not a full investigation. It's as if
• 1:18:18
  Speaker 1: it's a fraid to turn over those stones. And due
• 1:18:21
  Speaker 1: to other issues like the inflamation regarding industrial schools and
• 1:18:24
  Speaker 1: the abuse that happened there, there's a genuine suggestion that
• 1:18:28
  Speaker 1: these records would be sealed for like eighty ninety years.
• 1:18:31
  Speaker 1: Like what, so y'all don't have to deal with the
• 1:18:34
  Speaker 1: consequences of your actions, like And the thing is, if
• 1:18:38
  Speaker 1: they'll do it for one institution, they'll do it for
• 1:18:39
  Speaker 1: the other, and like it. How about this. It's not
• 1:18:45
  Speaker 1: like anyone is accusing the bondscle systems of being strayed
• 1:18:49
  Speaker 1: up child murderers, right. They will, however, responsible for the
• 1:18:55
  Speaker 1: children in their care, and they did illegally entel the
• 1:18:58
  Speaker 1: remains or at least some of them, because they could
• 1:19:02
  Speaker 1: all be seven nine six or seven nine six could
• 1:19:05
  Speaker 1: be there. But there are another few scenarios which well,
• 1:19:13
  Speaker 1: one of which being adoption. Basically, as per that briefing
• 1:19:18
  Speaker 1: to doctor McEwen, now that was a theory that some
• 1:19:23
  Speaker 1: of the children in chumb like what happened in other homes,
• 1:19:26
  Speaker 1: is that some of those children were sold to wealthy
• 1:19:29
  Speaker 1: Catholic families in America, sometimes Australia, sometimes England, but mainly
• 1:19:34
  Speaker 1: the US. Now. Adoption policies only really got like stringent
• 1:19:41
  Speaker 1: in Ireland in the nineteen thirties. So maybe faking a
• 1:19:46
  Speaker 1: death was the easiest option for these nuns. Right. So
• 1:19:52
  Speaker 1: there's a survivor of the home, John Pascal Rodgers, right,
• 1:19:56
  Speaker 1: he said that whenever he made a friend, they would vanish, right,
• 1:20:02
  Speaker 1: especially if they were a boy, like healthy boys were on.
• 1:20:07
  Speaker 2: The top of the wanted list.
• 1:20:09
  Speaker 1: And of course there's Deirdre, a survivor from the Besper
• 1:20:12
  Speaker 1: Home in Cork. I said that when she was giving
• 1:20:15
  Speaker 1: birth in nineteen eighty she was being slapped well in
• 1:20:19
  Speaker 1: active labor, and that the nun said that they had
• 1:20:22
  Speaker 1: people waiting on a boy and if she had a girl,
• 1:20:25
  Speaker 1: she's in trouble. She had her boy and he was
• 1:20:29
  Speaker 1: taken from her three days later. So to say this
• 1:20:32
  Speaker 1: wasn't part of some trafficking racket, well hymns to say,
• 1:20:37
  Speaker 1: here's the thing, legal adoption. It was happening, but this
• 1:20:41
  Speaker 1: was underhand stuff like in illegal adoption. There were hoops
• 1:20:44
  Speaker 1: to jump through and it was a free process. Illegal
• 1:20:48
  Speaker 1: ones or where you purchase a child. Okay, you pay
• 1:20:51
  Speaker 1: for a baby, and as well, Right, there's another survivor
• 1:20:55
  Speaker 1: of Chum whose mother would show up at the home
• 1:20:58
  Speaker 1: and try to get him back for five years, right,
• 1:21:02
  Speaker 1: and eventually the nuns forced him out to a family
• 1:21:05
  Speaker 1: because they don't want the mother getting her hands on him. Right,
• 1:21:09
  Speaker 1: And children are fosters out as free label, Like that's
• 1:21:13
  Speaker 1: what their purpose was. They fostered them out as free label.
• 1:21:16
  Speaker 1: That was something they did, right, And in that report
• 1:21:21
  Speaker 1: from doctor Webb, he's like, yeah, the foster parents don't
• 1:21:25
  Speaker 1: really care if they'll ever die, Like you do your
• 1:21:27
  Speaker 1: thing and then you're done. Right. It's so horrible because
• 1:21:32
  Speaker 1: they're seen us less than human, you know. And if
• 1:21:36
  Speaker 1: it wasn't this, it could be an industrial school or
• 1:21:39
  Speaker 1: you know, it was very much of Well, if they
• 1:21:43
  Speaker 1: died in the industrial school or in the fields or
• 1:21:47
  Speaker 1: somewhere else, then it wasn't the nuns problem anymore. Was
• 1:21:50
  Speaker 1: it another horrific, horrible scenario.
• 1:21:56
  Speaker 2: Because there are.
• 1:22:00
  Speaker 1: Confirmed cases of the bodies of infants who died in
• 1:22:04
  Speaker 1: mother and baby homes being used for anatomical studies in
• 1:22:08
  Speaker 1: medical schools in Dublin alone. According to their own records.
• 1:22:13
  Speaker 1: The medical schools and universities received more than nine hundred
• 1:22:17
  Speaker 1: and fifty bodies of children aged between ten minutes and
• 1:22:22
  Speaker 1: five years between January nineteen twenty and October nineteen seventy seven.
• 1:22:29
  Speaker 1: Twenty seven of these were wet samples. A wet sample
• 1:22:34
  Speaker 1: is a stillborn baby. Eighteen children were legitimate, the rest
• 1:22:42
  Speaker 1: were not, but the medical schools paid for this privilege.
• 1:22:47
  Speaker 1: Some homes were given ten shillings per dead child's body
• 1:22:51
  Speaker 1: that they sent to the schools. Now, it's not too
• 1:22:56
  Speaker 1: much of a stretch to think that, hey, they getting
• 1:23:00
  Speaker 1: paid to have this child. Right. So, when you have
• 1:23:04
  Speaker 1: a mother and baby in a home, so the state
• 1:23:07
  Speaker 1: is paying you money for the mother and that child
• 1:23:10
  Speaker 1: as long as that child is still there. So if
• 1:23:12
  Speaker 1: that child is going up for adoption, then that mother
• 1:23:16
  Speaker 1: can stay there, which is why sometimes they would keep.
• 1:23:18
  Speaker 2: The mother on for nursing.
• 1:23:20
  Speaker 1: Now, otherwise the mother would go and the child would
• 1:23:25
  Speaker 1: stay there and they would get money for the child.
• 1:23:29
  Speaker 1: They would also ask for money off of parents, off
• 1:23:33
  Speaker 1: of mothers who you know, the ones who actually wanted
• 1:23:37
  Speaker 1: to support their children. They would ask them for funding.
• 1:23:41
  Speaker 1: And sometimes they'd be asking for funding for children who
• 1:23:45
  Speaker 1: were already dead or that had been adopted. Like what
• 1:23:52
  Speaker 1: on top of this, like, considering they've got these dead bodies,
• 1:23:59
  Speaker 1: do they pay to bury them or do they make
• 1:24:01
  Speaker 1: money off them? Considering they don't really see them as
• 1:24:04
  Speaker 1: human anyway. And another thing I want to bring up
• 1:24:08
  Speaker 1: actually is children from mother and baby homes, like the
• 1:24:13
  Speaker 1: children that were there when they were older, Like they
• 1:24:17
  Speaker 1: used to do double blind testing on them. So like
• 1:24:19
  Speaker 1: medical experiments they would test you know, vaccines and oculations
• 1:24:25
  Speaker 1: like whatever, they would test it on these children because yeah,
• 1:24:32
  Speaker 1: why not test it on the vulnerable children like of course,
• 1:24:36
  Speaker 1: So yeah, scientific experimentation on children, And of course the
• 1:24:41
  Speaker 1: nuns were paid for this privilege. Now, the excavation and
• 1:24:50
  Speaker 1: Chum is still ongoing, and the report by the Commission
• 1:24:54
  Speaker 1: is out and it is it is Wow. It's a
• 1:24:58
  Speaker 1: lot of hot air and regurgitation of the fact that
• 1:25:01
  Speaker 1: we already know the infant mortality rate was high. It
• 1:25:05
  Speaker 1: was double that of other mother and baby homes and
• 1:25:09
  Speaker 1: nine thousand children had died in the eighteen institutions covered
• 1:25:12
  Speaker 1: by the Commission's terms of reference between nineteen twenty two
• 1:25:16
  Speaker 1: and nineteen ninety eight. The chumh Home Survivor's Network says
• 1:25:21
  Speaker 1: that it's not finished till it's finished, until every cause
• 1:25:26
  Speaker 1: of death is accounted for, and that the horrors, the
• 1:25:29
  Speaker 1: full horrors of what's happened at Chum has yet to
• 1:25:33
  Speaker 1: come to light. We only have the snippets, and it
• 1:25:37
  Speaker 1: could be that some people are still not telling the
• 1:25:39
  Speaker 1: whole truth and some people will have their secrets die
• 1:25:42
  Speaker 1: with them. After the report came out, the Bonn Skilled
• 1:25:46
  Speaker 1: Sisters offered a two point five million voluntary contribution towards
• 1:25:51
  Speaker 1: the cost of excavation and forensic excavation like at the
• 1:25:55
  Speaker 1: Chum's site, which the cost of this excavation is between
• 1:26:00
  Speaker 1: six and thirteen million, right, And the Bonza Girls Sisters are.
• 1:26:05
  Speaker 2: Like, here's two point five million.
• 1:26:08
  Speaker 1: We just happened to have kicking about and it's voluntary. Now.
• 1:26:14
  Speaker 1: The Minister for Children, she contacted Pope Francis, right, and
• 1:26:19
  Speaker 1: he's like, oh, I'll pray for you whatever. And it's
• 1:26:24
  Speaker 1: kind of a shitty response considering the reason that the
• 1:26:27
  Speaker 1: head of the church was contacted was because you know,
• 1:26:32
  Speaker 1: it's regarding reparations for the victims from what the church
• 1:26:36
  Speaker 1: had done to them specifically, and he's like hmm, thoughts
• 1:26:40
  Speaker 1: and prayers. Following the release of the final report of
• 1:26:46
  Speaker 1: the Mother and Baby Homes Commission of Investigation, the Bonzacer
• 1:26:50
  Speaker 1: Sisters released an apology. It states, the commission's report presents
• 1:26:59
  Speaker 1: a history of our country in which many women and
• 1:27:01
  Speaker 1: children were rejected, silenced and excluded, in which they were
• 1:27:04
  Speaker 1: subjected to hardship, and which their inherent human dignity was
• 1:27:08
  Speaker 1: disrespected in life and in death. Our sisters and Bonseiccoris
• 1:27:12
  Speaker 1: were part of this sorrowful history. Our sisters of Saint
• 1:27:16
  Speaker 1: Mary's Mother and Baby Home in Chuham from nineteen twenty
• 1:27:19
  Speaker 1: five to nineteen sixty one, we did not live up
• 1:27:21
  Speaker 1: to our Christianity when running the home. We fail to
• 1:27:24
  Speaker 1: respect the inherent dignity of the women and children who
• 1:27:26
  Speaker 1: came into the home. We failed to offer them the
• 1:27:29
  Speaker 1: compassion that they so badly needed. We were part of
• 1:27:32
  Speaker 1: the system in which they suffered hardship, loneliness and terrible hurt.
• 1:27:36
  Speaker 1: We acknowledge, in particular that infants and children who died
• 1:27:39
  Speaker 1: at the home were buried in a disrespectful and unacceptable way.
• 1:27:43
  Speaker 1: For all that, we are deeply sorry. We offer our
• 1:27:47
  Speaker 1: profound apologies to old women and children on said Mary's
• 1:27:49
  Speaker 1: mother in baby home, to their families and to the
• 1:27:51
  Speaker 1: people of this country. Healing is not possible until what
• 1:27:55
  Speaker 1: happened is acknowledged. We hope and pray that healing will
• 1:27:57
  Speaker 1: come to all those affected, those who were living, those
• 1:28:00
  Speaker 1: who have died. We hope that we, our church and
• 1:28:03
  Speaker 1: our community can learn from this history.
• 1:28:06
  Speaker 2: Yeah, it's easy to do an.
• 1:28:08
  Speaker 1: Apology after all of the physical forensic evidence points to
• 1:28:14
  Speaker 1: you like, oh, I'm sorry I did the thing that
• 1:28:16
  Speaker 1: we deny doing, like you literally spent years lying about it,
• 1:28:21
  Speaker 1: and then you were like, oh, you're upsetting the people
• 1:28:23
  Speaker 1: who abused women and children, Like I don't give a fuck.
• 1:28:27
  Speaker 1: So the excavation is still ongoing. It was properly started
• 1:28:32
  Speaker 1: in July twenty twenty five, and it is a laborious
• 1:28:35
  Speaker 1: process and they're using what DNA they can to find
• 1:28:39
  Speaker 1: the family and give each of these children their name
• 1:28:42
  Speaker 1: and a respectful burial. Initially they uncovered eleven remains and
• 1:28:48
  Speaker 1: as of February twenty twenty six, they have found another
• 1:28:52
  Speaker 1: twenty two bodies, so this is a total of thirty
• 1:28:55
  Speaker 1: three thus far. But because the Bonds occurs also ran
• 1:29:00
  Speaker 1: the Grove Hospital, there are calls to excavate those grounds too,
• 1:29:04
  Speaker 1: but it's still ongoing. They need to get an archaeologist
• 1:29:08
  Speaker 1: in like this ground, like it is being watched right
• 1:29:14
  Speaker 1: like the excavation is happening and the area is being
• 1:29:17
  Speaker 1: monitored because they need to keep an eye on it
• 1:29:21
  Speaker 1: to make sure nobody tries to mess with it. Like
• 1:29:23
  Speaker 1: it's such it's so hard. They're trying to keep whatever,
• 1:29:28
  Speaker 1: like forensic stuff they need. They're trying to keep on
• 1:29:31
  Speaker 1: top of that right now. But the excavation is ongoing.
• 1:29:37
  Speaker 1: You know, we don't have answers. I hope one day
• 1:29:42
  Speaker 1: we will because those who suffered they deserve better and
• 1:29:48
  Speaker 1: these children did not get a voice, Those women didn't
• 1:29:53
  Speaker 1: Many died with a shame that they did not earn
• 1:29:56
  Speaker 1: or deserve. And for every dud bro out there HARKing
• 1:30:01
  Speaker 1: on about traditional values, I hope you choke on your
• 1:30:04
  Speaker 1: protein shake. Traditional values rely on the oppression and abuse
• 1:30:09
  Speaker 1: of women. Now I will be delving more into Ireland's
• 1:30:12
  Speaker 1: hidden history at some point because those children did not
• 1:30:17
  Speaker 1: get to live in peace. So I'm not going to
• 1:30:18
  Speaker 1: let the debt like this dark history committed by the
• 1:30:22
  Speaker 1: church in Ireland and abroad like I'll be going into it.
• 1:30:25
  Speaker 1: I'll be sharing it. But it's time, it's research, and
• 1:30:29
  Speaker 1: we will get there and they don't get to hide anymore.
• 1:30:32
  Speaker 1: And I don't want to say here ends the story
• 1:30:34
  Speaker 1: of the tum seven ninety six, because it's not the end,
• 1:30:39
  Speaker 1: because it's still ongoing. We still don't have the answers.
• 1:30:41
  Speaker 1: It is part of a history that we still need
• 1:30:45
  Speaker 1: to unravel and understand because I hate I hate this
• 1:30:52
  Speaker 1: covering up bullshit. I mean, I spend like that's my focus,
• 1:30:55
  Speaker 1: isn't it. It's like bullshit and history and I'm uncovering
• 1:30:59
  Speaker 1: it like that's oh, such a thing, and I hate
• 1:31:03
  Speaker 1: it so much.
• 1:31:04
  Speaker 2: And I also I grew up in.
• 1:31:07
  Speaker 1: A society where it's like, don't air your dutty Lennen
• 1:31:10
  Speaker 1: in public, and it's like, I'm not the one with
• 1:31:12
  Speaker 1: filthy sheets here, like I'm not airing anything.
• 1:31:17
  Speaker 2: Like I'm name and shame.
• 1:31:19
  Speaker 1: I don't give a damn. But I think we hold
• 1:31:23
  Speaker 1: accountable not only you know, the people, many of them
• 1:31:28
  Speaker 1: are now gone, but the institutions which still exist.
• 1:31:32
  Speaker 2: We can hold the.
• 1:31:33
  Speaker 1: Institutions accountable, right, That's all we have left. So if
• 1:31:39
  Speaker 1: you liked or didn't like this episode, feel free to share,
• 1:31:41
  Speaker 1: Feel free to share with everybody everywhere because it's Irish
• 1:31:46
  Speaker 1: Heritage month. Guess you should know Irish history now. Of course,
• 1:31:51
  Speaker 1: sharing is caring, Sharers follow on the socials.
• 1:31:54
  Speaker 2: Interact.
• 1:31:55
  Speaker 1: Interaction is great. Interaction is what keeps the lights on.
• 1:32:00
  Speaker 1: And yeah, I will give you another deep dive into something.
• 1:32:04
  Speaker 1: Next week's episode is not going to be as long
• 1:32:06
  Speaker 1: as this. I need you all to know that. Dear goodness,
• 1:32:09
  Speaker 1: I'm losing my voice. So without further ado, I am
• 1:32:12
  Speaker 1: going to give you recommendations for reading. I am going
• 1:32:18
  Speaker 1: to recommend my name is Bridget by Alison O'Reilly, for
• 1:32:26
  Speaker 1: listening anything by Shinei O'Connor, and for watching you know
• 1:32:31
  Speaker 1: what you deserve something light, So running point Scott Kay Hudson.
• 1:32:36
  Speaker 1: It's kind of fun like it's not incredibly depressing, So
• 1:32:41
  Speaker 1: go to town on that one. And with that, I'm
• 1:32:44
  Speaker 1: going to bid you goodbye. Adios. AU haveavoir of Where
• 1:32:48
  Speaker 1: is My Friends