The home, which was run by an order of Catholic nuns and closed in 1961, was one of many such institutions that housed tens of thousands of orphans and unmarried pregnant women who were forced to give up their children throughout much of the 20th century.
In 2014, historian Catherine Corless tracked down death certificates for nearly 800 children who died at the home in Tuam between the 1920s and 1961 — but could only find a burial record for one child.
What?!!
But only men do horrible things, right?
Imagine reading this headline and instantly jumping to this in your head.
If it was an order of male monks found with 800 dead babies, “men are absolute monsters” would absolutely among the top comments.
Just the age we live in.
Since nobody seems capable of remembering women can be monsters too, I thought I’d help y’all remember for the next time you have the impulse to villify men.
How do they determine age with a DNA test? Wouldn’t say look at the remains from the death baby’s? I have questions.
Probably radiocarbon dating?
The article is crap. The DNA is used to ID siblings, relatives. That’s however not the only thing they got wrong
See here for example: The true horror of Irish mother and baby homes | ARTE.tv Documentary
Thank you for the arte documentary. Will watch it immediately.
Here is some more links on the disturbing stuff:
dna gives you parent gives you when they were there? assuming they kept records of who lived there.
But that would mean they collected maternal samples as well. And they didn’t say that. In the 60s that is highly unlikely.
databases just kind of exist
See my reply to a different comment.
no. if you’re going to be that lazy, don’t bother.
deleted by creator
I don’t know how the laws are in different countries but just analysing and matching them against anyone sounds highly illegal to me. Next, people need to first be sequenced. Unless they asked them, how do they have their data if they are highly private.
Maybe my question was misleading: for me it sounded like they only analysed the infant DNA and did not perform matches etc. if they used skull size etc to identify the victims it wasn’t a DNA analysis to identify the victim.
deleted by creator
Playing devil’s advocate here, could it be that they ran something like a baby euthanasia outfit? like, no contraceptives back then, extreme social stigma surrounding birth out of wedlock, poverty forcing women to give up their newborns, giving them up to the nunnery, which had no resources to deal with feeding caring and raising thousands upon thousands of children, and so either A) simply took it upon themselves to take the logical step and cull some of them, or B) that a high number of babies died of natural causes (neglect, malnutrition, sudden infant death syndrome, disease, whatever) and they simply disposed of them.
I don’t know what else could explain this, it’s not like we’re seriously talking about gangs of murderous baby killing nuns roaming the streets at night and snatching up babies by the hundreds for lust murders, right?
As far as I’m concerned, the only crime here is the institutionalized psychopathy of a religious patriarchal system that refused to take responsibility for giving people a legal and moral avenue to raise children that were brought into life in violation of religious law.
Makes more sense to me at least, I may be fuck way off wrong.
My ¢2, devil’s advocate, maybe they were trying to protect the women from emotional trauma, they’d still have some but, maybe an attempt to reduce it. Obviously they could have done different things to do that better, but, maybe it was what they thought was their only option. New Mom’s baby dies, instead of telling her that her child is dead, they hide it and tell her that it was adopted or transferred somewhere it would be taken care of or whatever.
It’s far fetched, probably unlikely, but hey, devil’s advocate, it’s a possibility.
So you think they “care” so much about these single women and their babies that they would kill their babies and hide their remains in a septic tank?, what’s wrong with you. Don’t you think the more humane thing would be to promote contraceptives and safe sex and safe abortions in case of accidental pregnancies, and run proper orphanages for the unwanted kids. But of course the actual church is against all of this, cause the idea that religion has anything to do with morality is ridiculously stupid. All religions are cults full of dumb fucks desperate to matter in this meaningless existence.
Nuns, historically, have not had much if any authority in the church. I think just a couple of years ago they ousted one of the only female pastors in the USA.
What made you think I’m talking about nuns, I’m talking about those in power, who’s orders they follow willingly, they could choose not to and walk away or expose the church higher ups, they choose not to, so don’t tell me about nuns being powerless, what they are is soulless
If only it were so easy. I’ve been atheist since middle school but I was raised by a Catholic and an Evangelical, if a person actually believes they suffer for eternity for not appealing to the source of all true good then you’re not going to convince them to walk away because of the church’s policy on condoms. And even if you did convince a handful, it’s not going to dent the Church’s bottom line. Real change has to come from the higher ranks.
Article says
DNA analysis found that the ages of the dead ranged from 35 weeks gestation to 3 years.
A major inquiry into the mother-and-baby homes found that in total, about 9,000 children died in 18 different mother-and-baby homes, with major causes including respiratory infections and gastroenteritis, otherwise known as the stomach flu.
So basically just Dysentery, yeah. The nuns were no saints (lol) either, though, because they punished the unmaried mothers and put them through hard labor (lol).
This is a terrible time for jokes, I’m so sorry about that. I always make sure to ask for forgiveness (lol).
Wow! 3 years!
dude… WTF is with the (lol)s in your post? None of what you said is funny, or even reads remotely like it’s even trying to be a joke.
Right, okay
-
“they’re no saints” is funny because they’re part of a religious organization who revere saints
-
“made to do labor” is funny because in english Labor is a term used to describe the final step of childbirth
-
“ask for forgiveness” again because religion that reveres asking the lord for forgiveness.
Hope that helps you out, buddy.
The first rule of comedy is reading the room.
What, too soon?
-
Yeah to me it sounds like the babies died of such causes and weren’t intentionally killed. I can imagine that trying to get rid of the bodies in other ways (burial, cremation, dumping elsewhere) would make the many deaths too visible or obvious, and would lead to questioning. But they could be hidden in the sewage.
Fuck no.
You have a bad situation where babies are dying - a lot of babies - you don’t hide it. You scream for help.
You dump murder victims
That’s not how shame based religions work though
mate I was fucking raised roman catholic
There’s a behind the bastards episode about it if you’d like to actually educate yourself on why so many of the children died and why they were so callously thrown in the septic and stop sounding so ignorant
Which episode?
Or you can just tell us why, instead of being insulting and vague about it. Hell, you didn’t even link which episode has the information you say he is ignorant for not knowing about.
Lemmy is worse than reddit in terms of unhinged and hateful replies to benign, good-faith but ignorant comments. I don’t know how shut-in the users here are but everyone is itching to rip someone’s throat out over imagined slights or the desperate, performative need to look better than someone else who doesn’t know something.
Wow, yeah, i just randomly read through this thread- i basically never read replies because it’s full of the shit you’re talking about and I was just thinking, damn, this is even worse than reddit.
Lots of identity confused kids in here, I think, I ever only hear this type of jargon and lack of openness and anti-intellectuality from that demographic.
Fucking shame. Came here from reddit to get away from that.
This! Im gonna get down voted for this im sure but I’ve been using Lemmy instead of reddit for almost a year now or so but the hive mind is almost worse here than it is on reddit! People here seem to not be interested in actual discussion unless you agree 100% with them. It’s frustrating, I was hoping Lemmy was gonna be better.
Oh well, at least there’s less bigots and my app still works haha
Hey, let’s try and be the change we want to see. I tried, and just ignore the dumb snotty children, not worth neither your nor my time.
There’s probably significant overlap with the Linux warriors here who will respond to people’s legitimate questions with variations of “why don’t you just not do that and instead do this other thing that doesn’t solve your issue” (and also not explain how to do that either).
No, it’s pretty annoying when people don’t link shit that should be easy. At least when I’m doing it from mobile, I’ll promise to do it when I get home.
Btw, here’s the Behind the Bastards episode. Part One: How The Catholic Church Murdered Ireland’s Babies | BEHIND THE BASTARDS
I changed my upvote to a little cute “down” arrow when I got to the end of your short but unhinged comment. Way to turn “informative” into “needlessly spiteful for no good reason.” You could have ended the comment with a link to the episode even.
This isn’t the only place this has happened. More info here.
Flush alligators not children.
Maybe don’t flush alligators either.
You seem biased.
My brain took a moment to register the word infant. As in the child was already born.
Religion is fucked up.
Don’t trust any religious people.
They’re all sick in the head.
Religion is a social cancer. Sometimes it’s benign and the host reabsorbs it. Other times it’s spreads and kills living tissue
I’d say it’s like a tailbone. It was once useful (when we were apes), but has long since lost all purpose. Now it is just a useless appendage and if you touch it the wrong way, you can end up paralized for the rest of your life. We can’t go without though, because it’s attached to out spine and muscles.
If you’re not religious why are you upset that some people didn’t get a proper burial?
There were death certificates so it’s unlikely there’s foul play, unless there’s some details this poorly written article is missing. It’s just they didn’t observe proper religious ceremony on the disposal of the deceased.
So your argument is that religious people are bad because some religious people don’t always follow religious ceremonies? Like if you don’t think religion is good, why would you be upset over improper disposal of the deceased?
Yeah, I’m sure there was no foul play in an abusive institution dealing with most vunerable members of society.
Why do people simp for organized religion so hard?
Because it’s fun to troll atheists ;)
Proper disposal of the deceased isn’t limited to religious people.
These homes existed purely to punish unwed mothers, because Catholicism. Don’t even try to minimise the deep national trauma still felt today because it might show a weirdo cult in a bad light.
Priests molested altar boys. That’s some real fucking trauma that left lifetimes of emotional scars on people that still alive now.
But sure something that happened to some dead bodies over 60 years ago is something you want to devote your two minutes of atheist hate towards today. You’re well adjusted and have everything in the proper perspective, LOL.
You don’t think it was traumatic for young women (plenty of whom are still alive) to be kidnapped into these institutions, physically and mentally abused, and have their newborn child (again, a great number still alive and wondering who they are) forcibly removed from them, with no idea where they ended up?
That’s not very fair. It’s fairly safe to assume that each of those babies were linked to lifetimes of emotional scars, too, just not for the babies.
You realise you don’t need to be religious to believe that people deserve a proper burial right? There doesn’t need to be some man in the sky watching everyone 24/7 for people to be buried with dignity
Yeah, burial is mostly just to make sure critters don’t drag your rotting bits out into the open and your putrid parts don’t contaminate the water supply.
Cremation works really well to prevent that and doesn’t waste as much land.
And there’s no point trying to convince Westerners of the environmental benefits of sky burial.
That’s the practical aspect, but I believe the dignity and respect shown throughout the process gives people some closure.
This is the second time this week I’ve seen this argument:
- Religion has historically done X
- religion is bad
- why do you care about X, that’s religious!
(The last one was about marriage)
I suspect that you’re a religious person making a slippery slope fallacy.
slippery slope fallacy
Did you just randomly select some fallacy from a list in an attempt to sound clever?
I don’t give a fuck about proper burials.
Burying bodies in cemeteries is an incredibly selfish thing. All cemeteries and golf courses should be converted into income based housing.
I only said religious people are fucked in the head. Full stop.
All religious people are mentally unwell and a danger to society.
I hope that cleared it up!
Honestly I think that thinking that having a place for people to grieve their loved ones is a selfish thing is realy fucked in the head.
You don’t need a grief theme park full of buried corpses. You can grieve anywhere.
Believe me, I’ve done it too many times to mention, both for family and friends.
It’s good that this works for you. I’m sorry to here that you had too.
Other people wish to have a dedicated space to grieve their loved ones.
I am (honestly) interested to hear your other arguments against graveyards.
Sure, plant and dedicate a tree. Or a bench by a lake. Or keep an urn on your mantle. Or thousands of other ways. But, sorry you can’t live here because we need this space exclusively to grieve?
Well, the tree thing is reality for those that chose forest burials (at least thats a thing in my country).
I think we would run out of benches by lakes rather quick. Also, that is a thing already.
Keeping an Urn is not legal everywhere. I agree the it should be.
The thing is, that humans want to do something with he their loves ones remains. We are incredibly social creates, to the point where our bonds last beyond death. We have buried our dead for thousands and thousands of years. Neanderthals buried their dead. It’s just an extremely human way to process grieve, complete independent of any religion.
So having a dedicated space to do so makes total sense. Of course that takes up room. But I’d argue that having a park like, walkable and often very beautiful place in your neighborhood is a net win for everybody. Unless you think that we should also get rid of parks and other recreational areas.
And, you have the possibility to visit a dedicated place of grievance close by, which is sensible especially for elderly people.
We would run out of benches by lakes.
But not land to bury dead people forever?!
I find your lack of logic… disturbing.
Fair enoth.
Anything of value to add to the rest of my comment?
Removed by mod
Saucy! No sequitir! Illogical! And removed by mod!? LOL
Holy shit.
Article - 800 dead babies.
You - There was no sign of foul play why would you heathens care about burial?
Get your fucking head checked.
I dont agree with the original commenter, but come on.
This is a thread about babies.
Do you really think people need a religion to see that throwing their dead bodies in a septic tank is an incredibly disrespectful and dehumanizing act?
I dont need to wish for a christian burial to understand the implications of christian nuns doing this.
Wait what? 20 deaths a year and because there is a death certificate there is no fouls play?
The article mentions “tens of thousands” of births but doesn’t state the numbers of people that were at this particular site. The infant death rate ranged from over 60/1000 down to 20/1000 for developed countries and higher for worldwide estimates.
Lacking numbers for the number of births there’s no way to compare to the averages, but yeah 20 deaths per year could very well be a normal rate. We tend not to think a lot about infant death rates because it’s not a fun subject, but it’s it’s a historical fact.
I get that people are addicted to being outraged, but a higher infant death rate over 60 years ago compared to today’s rate may not be something to get super emotional about until there’s specific allegations of foul play or at least some data to indicate there was something out of norm besides improper disposal of the deceased.
There were death certificates so the government at the time was aware of the number of deaths, and they didn’t seem to think it was out of the norm. Though it’s possible they just didn’t care. But in that case the government would be complicit in this so there should be hard questions asked about the government, not just the church. But that doesn’t seem to be happening, so it seems the controversy is just about corpse disposal 60 to 100 years ago.
There is plenty of evidence for the abuse and unaliving of children before the bodies were hidden.
Sources:
There’s only two religions in the planet that do this kind of fucked up shit with any frequency, and it’s only because they’re the norm in both of those regions. Don’t make yourself sound like a literal Reddit atheist. You’re here exactly because Reddit sucks. Don’t bring it back.
Many people are religious without doing this kind of shit.
Only two? Hahahahahaha
Show me examples of Buddhists, Native Americans, or Paganists doing this kind of stuff. The literal reason Islamism and Christianity are particularly bad is because they’re mass-adopted and politicians take advantage of that.
Just remove all religion from politics and there won’t be any problems. Human rights dictate freedom of religion AND FROM religion, not just the later.
Have you heard of the Rohingya genocide? Buddhists absolutely do fucked up shit.
I would agree with you that not all religion is bad. But singling out Christianity and Islam as the exclusively bad ones is absurd. All religions have some really important things to teach us philosophically, but at the same time, pretty much every religion has been used to justify some pretty bad atrocities.
Holy shit. A nuanced take on religion on lemmy not downvoted into oblivion
And let’s not forget what the peace-loving Sinhalese Buddhists did to the Tamils in Sri Lanka.
Buddhists - Rohynga Genocide
Native Americans - Aztec human sacrifice, up to 20,000 per year.
Paganists - not a thing. Paganism is a description, not a religion. But there are plenty of neo-Nazi neo-pagan groups who love burning churches.
Christians, Muslims and Jews. Disproven. Now go away, troll (or misinformed idiot)
Removed by mod
All religions are poison. Picking which is worse between lead poisoning or arsenic?
That’s all you bud.
I’ll be poison free.
This is not a position born out of logic and reason, but out of hate. I hope you get better at some point, you obviously have suffered a lot to become filled with rage this much.
This is not a position born out of logic and reason, but out of hate.
Bingo.
All religions are hate groups. EVERY SINGLE ONE.
You nailed it.
You’re so close to getting better yourself.
You’re so close to getting better yourself.
You don’t sound like someone who is doing well, why would anyone want to be like you? The folk replying to you are applying empathy and patience while you shut everyone down with vitriol.
Being angry isn’t fun, anger slowly drains you of your joy and energy. Anger only feels like fun when the alternative is to face pain
So like I used to be anti-religion. But when I studied the history of religious thought, it seemed like every criticism I had of religion I was able to find a religious tradition which explicitly accounted for that criticism, and it made me realize a lot of the essential beliefs that I had about religion in general were simply untrue. Like there are religious traditions that literally deny institutionalization (so you can’t even associate religion in general with organized religion), there are literally religions that explicitly reject the existence of any kind of deity (so you can’t even identify religion with a belief in some kind of a god). In general, it seemed like the only thing that literally all religions had in common was that they represented a set of metaphysical beliefs that an individual has attached themself to for whatever reason. And I realized that it’s kind of impossible to never make any metaphysical assumptions about the world we live in. And I started to ask myself questions like “is it even possible to reject the entire category of religious thought in a meaningful way while still retaining the ability to reason about the world?” And “is there actually a good reason why I don’t want to think of my own humanist ideas about the world as religious in nature, or does it just make me feel kind of funny because I had already prejudiced myself so heavily against the concept of religious thought?”
Weird. I had the exact opposite experience.
I find every religion to be a liars den of lies.
And all religious people are liars fools or worse.
Humanism and religion are polar opposite ideas.
Don’t apologize for religion. It’s gross.
Keep that shit away from me and my kids. You bring it near my kids we are going to have a fucking problem.
I feel like you didn’t actually try to understand any of what I just said. I hate to break it to you, but it’s literally just a fact that there are religions that make metaphysical assumptions that are literally equivalent to secular humanism. If you think that they’re actually contradictory, it just means that you probably actually haven’t tried to study the history of religious thought from an actually critical perspective where you didn’t just presume that you already had it all figured out.
If you think every religious person is evil then I’m sorry, but your religious trauma is not an excuse. Go back to reddit.
No. You go back to church.
Fuck your god.
Not necessarily evil. But every religious person is damaging to society and the environment out of ignorance, because, for example, their voting is based on beliefs disjunct from reality, including absolute morals that will vilify a substantial part of the populace for no sane reason.
The people are not all necessarily evil. They are mostly indoctrinated and duped. The religion itself is just as evil as any other virus that weasels in.
A lot of words to apologize for evil.
deleted by creator
Tell me you know nothing about buddhism without telling me you know nothing about buddhism. While we’re at it, opinions on hinduism?
Smaller religions have been sacrificing children since the stone age.
I’m not saying its all bad, but singling out two religions in your general area and blaming the problem on them being “political” as if religion isn’t based on dictating social norms is ridiculous.
I agree with the freedom to believe, though. Doesnt mean that there arent inherent dangers to this stuff. You’re in a thread about murdered babies, please keep that in mind.
While we’re at it, opinions on hinduism?
Well, there was the mass murder of Muslims at the time of India’s partition. And the murder of Gandhi by a reactionary Hindu fanatic. Then, there were the anti-Muslim riots organized by the BJP when it was getting started. And now, there’s the persecution of non-Hindus by the same BJP now that that snake Modi is in power.
So, I’d say that Hinduism is a vast, diverse family of religions, but brutality and bigotry are certainly part of at least some variants of it.
Looks like all the kids died of disease? Definitely evidence that the world has gotten better not worse.
The disease / pre-existing condions being “born out of wedlock” and “being in a catholic children camp”.
Since the excavations just happen now as survivors and the general public wont shut up about the atrocities, and ITT there are still plenty of apologist I’m not sure how thick the veneer of better is.
Listen, the Child Mortality Rate from 1935 for ages 1-3 was 13 times that of 2020, according to USA HHS data compiled in a report by GovInfo.
Do I think these children had exasperated risk factors such as psychological stress and malnutrition? Yes.
Do I think these Nuns were practicing health and safety in accordance with a proper understanding of germ theory? No.
Is anybody surprised that this many babies died? No. The shock value here is they didn’t even get buried properly. They’re not psychopathic murdernuns, they’re just the regular people whose sin is never learning the truth or not believing it, of which still exist in droves today.
Sorry, I should have put the sources list at the bottom of my reply.
First off you can’t compare US mortality rates to Irish ones, especially if you can’t apply it to the numbers.
From the Wikipedia article on Tuam: Writing in a 2012 HSE report, Declan McKeown, a consultant public health physician and medical epidemiologist stated that the infant mortality rate in the home were “similar to those recorded at Bessborough” (another mother and baby home), which were five times the rate for Ireland in 1950 and 65 times the 2012 rate. McKeown stated that these rates were equivalent to the infant mortality rate in Ireland in the 1700s.
That seems disturbingly high, don’t you think?
EDIT: Disturbingly high and a common occurence in these facilities in Ireland.
Also check out at least that 1st Arte video. It is not long and features a couple of survivors.
After consuming the sources below I have to say that the disposal of the bodies is IMHO the least atrocious thing that was committed.
Sources:
Well, some things. Science and medicine are two of the things that I count as consistently bettering our lives.
Don’t jinx it, the antivax crowd certainly is growing. And then there is Maha.
But abortion is immoral, right?
nope, not if you wait for 9 months before exercising that option, apparently.
Not in the 4th trimester
How could these nuns think they would be admitted to heaven?
Because they didn’t allow abortion. That’s how
Sounds like they were all about the 4-5-6-7-8-9th trimester abortions.
“The remains ranged from 35 weeks gestation to 3 years old.” So not abortions but stillbirths and dead children. Conditions were appalling, rampant disease etc.
If you wait till it’s born, it’s not abortion anymore but sending those poor little angels directly to God who’s the only one who will ever be able to properly care for them or whatever kind of bullshit they used to justify what they did…
I’m guessing that God probably knows the infant mortality rates throughout history.
One of the selling features of Christianity is that you just need to ask Jesus forgiveness and it will be granted.
With Catholics you’re supposed to confess to a priest, but same difference to them, basically
If they pay an indulgence, even the rich will get into Heaven.
(So there must be a massive divine operation passing camels through the eyes of needles)
Honestly if hell could be livestreamed I’d love to have a kick out of watching a 24 hour stream of them burning on it.
Catholic Islam is a radical sect
Sorry *Christianity
You were right… same God, different prophet
This is probably from poor medical care.
deleted by creator
Not really abortion if it’s post-birth, is it? Once they’re born, if you kill them, that’s simply murder. The line is drawn at birth. Otherwise, where do you draw the line? “Billy was killed at age 13 months and Tommy was killed at age 11 months. Thus Billy was murdered and Tommy was post-birth aborted…” No. They’re both murdered.
Not really abortion if it’s post-birth, is it? Once they’re born, if you kill them, that’s simply murder.
which is exactly what they wrote:
no this is post-birth abortion… aka murder….
deleted by creator
There are thousands of diseases that historically kill newborns. Modern medicine helps with a lot of them from vitamins to antibiotics to surgical interventions.
deleted by creator
You have a serious case of “didnt read the article” going on here. The deaths were already recorded - they were known and nobody was hiding the deaths. They were hiding the bodies.
They pulled up the septic tank because there werent any graves for all the death certificates. This is improper burials. The reason there are so many deaths is likely just poor medical care as the article notes the place closed in the 1960s.
deleted by creator
deleted by creator
No it’s not. Most of the infants died from bacterial or viral infections.
deleted by creator
Religion is such hypocrisy. No wonder people are turning away.
On one hand, they tell people don’t use birth control, no abortion ; on the other hand, they don’t protect them.
I like how everyone claims all religion is fucked up but there’s only one where this is actually extremely common… and the other religion that is mass adopted has different problems.
Mixing religion with political policy here is the problem.
The problem is religion.
Go back to /r/atheism.
I like how everyone claims all religion is fucked up but there’s only one where this is actually extremely common
what
You’re in the vast minority here simping for religion
I’m agnostic. I just don’t think atheism is my religion, unlike some of the people on this thread.
Most people have watched religion destroy lives. In fact we all have. Just a matter of admitting it. It doesn’t require any sort of special magical thinking to admit that.
