One of the things about being known as a person who writes and talks about Irish politics and society for a living is that people tend to offer you their opinions, by way of making conversation, on a regular basis. Often times, these opinions are mild and conversational. At other times, they can be aggressive and challenging.
I had the latter experience early last year at a social event when a professional woman I know slightly through friends challenged me on the Tuam Mother and Baby home. “How can you defend the church”, she asked, “after the way those babies were slaughtered and thrown in a sewer in Tuam”. The word “slaughtered” stuck with me, since she seemed to really believe that Nuns in Tuam had been wringing the necks, or worse, of babies born to unwed mothers.
Regular readers will know two things: First, that I am not what one would call a stalwart defender of the Roman Church. Second, that I rarely, if ever, write about Tuam or other mother and baby homes. But it became apparent to me quickly in that conversation that neither of these things mattered much to my interlocutor: To her, I was simply the nearest representative of Ireland’s dark past™ and a vessel into which she could pour her disgust and outrage. And sure enough, the conversation soon turned to my role in the abortion referendum of 2018, where it was alleged that I had tried to condemn even more Irish women to the kind of fate suffered – she alleged – by those dead children in Tuam.
This week, a literal excavation has begun in Tuam. If one could previously have said metaphorically that digging up the past was a favourite pastime of modern Ireland, we can now say it literally.
The broad outline of what happened in Tuam is already established, or at least established to the fullest extent possible for events that took place in an institution that closed its doors sixty-four years ago. The state has already completed an extensive commission of investigation into the Mother and Baby Homes, of which a 63-page detailed report on Tuam was the centrepiece. Anyone with even the slightest interest in Tuam should read it.
That report makes a few important points, most of which I think are unknown to the public. Certainly, they were unknown to the very angry woman who upbraided me about Tuam last year.
First, the Tuam Mother and Baby Home was a state institution, not a church institution. That it was managed by the Bon Secours sisters is true enough, but it was funded (often disgracefully under-funded) by Galway County Council.
Second, the vast majority of admissions to the home were made not at the behest of the church, but of the state. The report notes:
The records of admission pathways are very incomplete, but of those that exist, the most common referrals were by the local health authority or by a dispensary doctor/medical officer. Galway local authority records show that officials made serious efforts to pursue the putative fathers of these children for maintenance or to secure a contribution from the woman’s family. In June 1930 the CHHAC recommended that all women admitted to Tuam should be interviewed by the county solicitor. In December 1930 the Senior Assistance Officer (SAO) (see Chapter 1) visited and interviewed all the women. He reported that they were mostly servant girls; the putative fathers tended to be labourers or servant boys.
Third, that the nuns regularly implored the state for more funding to improve conditions at the home and provide basic things like a running water supply and workable heating for the dormitories.
Fourth, that the state actively placed limits on the care offered to pregnant women at the home. Another direct quote from the report:
“In 1947 Miss Litster also commented that many Tuam mothers received no pre-natal care. She criticised the county manager for issuing an order that prohibited the admission of expectant mothers, chargeable to Co Galway, prior to the seventh month of pregnancy.”
Then in 1951, another report noted that:
“The memorandum indicated that a number of causes were given for the high death rate, the ‘chief one being lack of pre-natal care, a cause which the authorities of the home cannot remedy’. It added that ‘several other improvements in the home itself are necessary both in personnel and facilities’
Note the pattern here: The state, at each step of the way, was refusing to provide the basic tools needed to improve the home and reduce the infant mortality rate. A significant portion of the deaths were being attributed by the state to a lack of pre-natal care, but that same state was insistent that such pre-natal care would not be funded or provided. The nuns had no input into that decision, and argued against it.
A previous report in 1945 had noted that the nuns were desperate to have central heating installed, in order to improve the chances and prospects of infants in their care. This, too, appears to have been denied by the County Council. Babies were being left exposed to the cold. But not at the nuns’ behest.
Fifth, contemporary reports made absolutely clear what the causes of death in Tuam were. It is worth quoting this paragraph in full:
“Miss Litster said that it was time to enquire into possible causes of death before the rate became higher. She noted that there was a constant risk of infection because of admissions of entire families, ‘itinerants, destitutes, evicted persons etc. into the Children’s Home’. She remarked that Dr Dillon had previously drawn attention to this in 1945. There was no isolation unit, which meant that children newly-admitted were mingling with others in the home and there was no routine examination and testing for venereal diseases. Dr Costello was praised for his keen interest in the welfare of the children, their progress and diet. However, he was then 80 years old and Miss Litster commented: ‘I think we are entitled to ask that the advice and assistance of a younger doctor with more up-to-date knowledge and methods should be available’. This report stated that the infants ‘received good care in the Children’s Home. The Bon Secours Sisters being careful and attentive and excellent diets were available’. ‘It is not here that we must look for the cause of the death rate’.
Take all of this together and what do you get? The state’s own commission of investigation into Tuam paints a very clear picture, which is presumably why that commission’s own report has been so poorly reported.
It paints a picture of a state that essentially gave the nuns a job but refused to offer even the most basic supports. It shows us that it was the state, not the church, that referred mothers and their children to the home. It shows us an order of nuns constantly imploring the state for more resources, and being denied. It shows us a state that was constantly investigating death rates in the home, but constantly refusing to take the basic measures required to reduce those death rates.
Somehow, in the Irish media and popular imagination, this has been twisted into an image of feral and malevolent nuns sweeping up vulnerable women and subjecting them to the most awful, and at times murderous, abuse. This is an image based entirely on cultural currents in modern Ireland, rather than any of the available facts about what actually went on.
Now, the state has commenced a two year excavation of bones at the site, formally for the purpose of identifying some of the remains of children who died (in the vast majority of circumstances from illness and infection before the age of one).
But the reality, as the state’s own commission of investigation shows, is that demand for the home was fuelled by the state and its civic administrators; that the nuns were completely under-resourced and over-whelmed, and that the nuns were the very people imploring the state for aid that never came.
What has been perpetrated here, on the Irish psyche, is a calumny of the most egregious kind. It is a form of fictional history designed to legitimise modern prejudices, in which the worst things that Irish society did were actually inflicted upon us by religious orders.
Irony of ironies, the belief in the Nun’s villainy has become a kind of religious conviction in and of itself, evidence be damned. All the while, Irish society has simply found new and more efficient ways to dispose of inconvenient and unwanted children, as the enormous surge in the abortion rate in Ireland would tend to confirm.
If you’re interested in what happened in Tuam, read the state’s own report. If you are mainly interested in condemning the nuns, then I suggest you give it a miss.