Baby homes death rate up to 50%

Child death rates in three mother-and-baby homes that were run by religious orders were as high as 50% during the 1940s.

According to new research, death rates at homes in Bessborough in Cork, Sean Ross Abbey in Tipperary, and Castlepollard in Westmeath ranged between 30% and 50% between 1930 and 1945.

The Adoption Rights Alliance say children in mother-and-baby homes often died of “entirely preventable ailments” and, at worst, from “infanticide and/or neglect” as children of unmarried mothers were regarded as “sub-human”.