A forensic team is excavating a former “mother and baby home” in Tuam, Ireland, where nearly 800 children died between 1925 and 1961. Local historian Catherine Corless revealed in 2014 that many of the children were buried in a mass grave inside a disused sewage tank. Only two were formally buried in a cemetery.
St. Mary’s Home, run by Catholic nuns, housed unmarried mothers and their children, who often faced separation, forced adoption, or neglect. An investigation in 2021 uncovered around 9,000 child deaths across 18 such institutions in Ireland, many from malnutrition and disease.
Corless’s findings sparked national outrage and a government apology. The Sisters of Bon Secours, who ran the Tuam home, also issued an apology and admitted that children were buried in a “rude and unacceptable way.”
The excavation, expected to take up to two years, aims to recover and identify remains through DNA testing and provide the children with proper burials.
