Mass grave for children uncovered in Lanarkshire

"The bodies of hundreds of children are believed to be buried in a mass grave in Lanarkshire, southern Scotland, according to an investigation by BBC News."

"The children were all residents of a care home run by Catholic nuns."

"At least 400 children are thought to be buried in a section of St Mary's Cemetery in Lanark."

"The Daughters of Charity of St Vincent de Paul, which ran the home, refused to comment on the findings."

"The research by the File on 4 programme in conjunction with the Sunday Post newspaper focused on Smyllum Park Orphanage in Lanark."

"It opened in 1864 and provided care for orphans or children from broken homes. It closed in 1981, having looked after 11,600 children."

"A burial plot, containing the bodies of a number of children, was uncovered by two former residents of Smyllum in 2003."

"Frank Docherty and Jim Kane discovered an overgrown, unmarked section of St Mary's Cemetery during their efforts to reveal physical abuse which they said many former residents had suffered..."

"The death records indicate that most of the children died of natural causes, from diseases common at the time such as TB, pneumonia and pleurisy."

"Analysis of the records show that a third of those who died were aged five or under. Very few of those who died, 24 in total, were aged over 15, and most of the deaths occurred between 1870 and 1930..."

"Many allegations of abuse at the care home were also uncovered by File on 4 and the Sunday Post, including beatings, punches, public humiliations and psychological abuse."

"This case mirrors the investigation into the Tuam mother and baby home, an Irish institution run by a religious order, where it is thought nearly 800 babies and young children died and were buried in unmarked graves between the 1920s and 1960s."

"What happened at Smyllum is one of the topics that the Scottish Child Abuse Inquiry is examining..."

"Two representatives of the Daughters of Charity gave evidence to the inquiry this summer in which they said they could find no records of any abuse taking place."

"The nuns refused to respond to detailed questions from reporters about how many people were buried in the mass grave."

"File on 4: The Secrets of Smyllum Park was broadcast on BBC Radio 4 on Tuesday 12 September 2017 at 20:00 BST. You can also catch up on the BBC iPlayer."

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-41200949　

Children`s bodies uncovered at former mother & baby home

"CATHERINE CORLESS SAYS she is not shocked by the confirmation today that a large number of children’s bodies have been found at the former mother and baby home in Tuam, Co Galway. The only thing she is surprised about is how the news is already out in the open."

"`So many things get covered up these days, I am just so thankful that this has come out,` she told TheJournal.ie this afternoon. `I think I half expected that it would be toned down or covered up in some way`."

"At a hastily-convened press conference this morning, Minister for Children Katherine Zappone confirmed that a ‘significant’ number of human remains have been discovered at the site of the former Bon Secours home in Tuam. A forensic analysis of some of the remains has found that they were children, ranging from tiny babies to 2-3-year-olds."

"It is not yet known how many children were buried at the site. `We simply don’t know the numbers,` Zappone told the media."

http://www.thejournal.ie/catherine-corless-tuam-mother-and-baby-home-3268501-Mar2017/?utm_source=twitter_self

 

WARNING; VERY STRONG LANGUAGE

Suspected illegal drug trials in care homes

"In harrowing new information revealed this weekend, the Daily Mail has uncovered medical records that suggest 2,051 children across several Irish care homes were given a diphtheria vaccine from pharmaceutical company Burroughs Wellcome in a suspected illegal drug trial that ran from 1930 to 1936. As the Mail reports, "Michael Dwyer, of Cork University’s School of History, found the child vaccination data by trawling through tens of thousands of medical journal articles and archive files. He discovered that the trials were carried out before the vaccine was made available for commercial use in the UK."

"There is no evidence yet – and there may never be – that any family consent was ever offered, or about how many children had adverse effects or died as a result of the vaccinations. Dwyer told the Mail, "The fact that no record of these trials can be found in the files relating to the Department of Local Government and Public Health, the Municipal Health Reports relating to Cork and Dublin, or the Wellcome Archives in London, suggests that vaccine trials would not have been acceptable to government, municipal authorities, or the general public. However, the fact that reports of these trials were published in the most prestigious medical journals suggests that this type of human experimentation was largely accepted by medical practitioners and facilitated by authorities in charge of children’s residential institutions."

"Irish Minister of State for Training and Skills Ciaran Cannon has called for a public inquiry into the treatment of the children and their deaths."

https://trove.com/?hash_nav=1#me/content/V7Ra7?chid=82583&utm_source=webapp&utm_medium=fbshare&utm_content=article_host

Files removed from national archives in Ireland

"THE DEPARTMENT OF Health has removed a dozen files from the National Archives since revelations about the deaths of almost 800 children at a mother and baby home in Tuam hit the headlines."

"The department confirmed to TheJournal.ie that since 25 May – when the Irish Mail on Sunday led with the story – 12 state files have been withdrawn from the archives."

"The spokesperson said that the files will be returned because they are still the property of the National Archive."

"However, no copies of the 12 files which were taken are currently available to readers in the archive."

"Furthermore, over 40 state files relating to unmarried mothers, such as health inspection reports on unmarried mother’s homes and other aspects of their administration, were "recalled" by the Department of Health in May 1992 and on 8 February 2006."

"Typically, lending of documents is permitted, but generally only for a period of up to six months. Some of these documents have been withdrawn for nearly 10 years."

http://www.thejournal.ie/state-files-removed-from-national-archive-following-mother-and-baby-home-revelations-1510066-Jun2014/

Mass grave for babies

 

"According to a report in the Irish Mail on Sunday, a mass grave has been located beside a former home for unmarried mothers and babies in County Galway. The grave is believed to contain the bodies of up to eight hundred babies, buried on the former grounds of the institution known locally as "The Home" in Tuam, north of Galway city, between 1925 and 1961."

"Run by the Bon Secours nuns, "The Home" housed thousands of unmarried mothers and their "illegitimate" children over those years."

"According to Irish Mail on Sunday the causes of death listed for "as many as 796 children" included "malnutrition, measles, convulsions, tuberculosis, gastroenteritis and pneumonia."

"The babies were usually buried without a coffin in a plot that had once housed "a water tank," the report claims. No memorials were erected, the site was left unmarked and unmourned."

"The staggering mortality rate of "The Home" was apparently replicated elsewhere in Ireland."
　

http://www.irishcentral.com/opinion/cahirodoherty/Mass-grave-of-up-to-800-dead-babies-exposed-in-County-Galway-.html

Magdalene Laundries - an apology

 

"Women who had their childhoods ‘stolen away’, locked up in Catholic-run workhouses received a qualified apology from the Irish government ... Over a period of 70 years, an estimated 10,000 were sent to the ‘Magdalene laundries’ to carry out unpaid manual labour under the supervision of nuns."

"Some were sent because they were the children of unmarried mothers, others for crimes as minor as not paying a train ticket.
Survivors of the Catholic-run institutions have asked for a fuller and more frank admission from government and the religious orders involved."

"Incredibly the last of the ten laundries, which washed clothes and linen for major hotel groups, the Irish armed forces and even the brewer Guinness, was in operation until 1996. They were established in 1922."

"The move follows an 18-month inquiry chaired by senator Martin McAleese which found one in four of the women sent to the laundries had been sent by the state."

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2273961/Ireland-says-sorry-10-000-women-slaves-Catholic-workhouses-locked-brutalised-nuns.html