Naming the Bessborough babies is the very least we can do

Treated as disposable in both life and death, these children deserve an identity

Plaque remembering the babies, women and girls on the Greenway between Rochestown and Blackrock near the walkwalk over the Southlink motorway at back Bessborough house in Cork.

To remember the names of the Bessborough babies is the very least we owe to Irish citizens who were considered disposable in life and in death, at a time when to be born in the Cork mother and baby home was akin to a death sentence.

I walked the grounds of Bessborough in August 2019 with Catherine Corless and her husband Aidan. As we crossed the section of ground identified in a 1950 Ordnance Survey map as a children’s burial site, Catherine told me about the moment when the Tuam Babies story shifted in the public imagination.