5. A Mass Grave at “The Home” in Tuam, County Galway, Ireland
Called “The Home” by locals in Tuam, the Bon Secours order of nuns operated a mother and baby home in County Galway between 1921 and 1961. Unwed pregnant women harmed their families through shame that would prevent them from work and housing. If a family did not have money to send their daughters or sisters to England or America, they sent them to “The Home,” a magdalen laundry. Inside the facility, the nuns provided food and shelter. After giving birth, the moms cared for their babies with assistance from orphaned girls and older inmates. Babies that survived infancy were adopted. Those that died were buried on property near “The Home.”
As women suffered the trauma associated with giving up their child, they were forced to work in the laundry without pay. Many of the babies adopted from the facility were sent to America as a way to ensure that birth mothers would never find their babies. Between 1945 and 1965 over 2,220 Irish babies were adopted from the magdalen laundry. In 2014, an unmarked mass grave was found that contained over 700 dead infant and children buried without ceremony or in a coffin. Examiners determined that most of the dead succumbed to “malnutrition, measles, convulsions, tuberculosis, gastroenteritis and pneumonia.”