We’ve become indifferent to dead babies

THE Tuam babies story this week says much about the past, but about the present also.

The graveyard in the grounds of the former so-called mother-and-baby home was first discovered by two 12-year-old boys, in 1975. One of them opened the concrete cover and was met with the horror below. Pretty quickly, the cover was drawn across again. In the 1970s, the past had not yet been acknowledged. Indeed, the past wasn’t even past.

The next major juncture in the story was last October, by which time local historian, Catherine Corless, had painstakingly compiled and matched records from the home. Corless concluded that the concrete tank must contain most, if not all, of the nearly 800 infants who had died in the home during its existence, between 1925 and 1961.