The lucky ones were shunned and segregated, looked upon by others and themselves as another species because their mothers were not married. The others, 796 of them, most under three years of age, died of disease and neglect. Their bodies wrapped in gray blankets and stacked like cordwood in the septic system beneath the St. Mary's Mother and Baby Home run by the Catholic Church in Tuam, Ireland. In vivid, understated prose, Dan Barry tells their stories.
From the New York Times:
Read Full Article »Many survivors have only the sketchiest memories of those days, a haze of bed-wetting and rocking oneself to sleep. One man, now in his 70s, remembers being taken for a walk with other home babies, and the excitement of seeing themselves in the side-view mirrors of parked cars.
“We didn't even know it was a reflection of ourselves in the mirror,” he recalled. “And we were laughing at ourselves. Laughing.”
Until they were adopted, sent to a training school or boarded out to a family, the older children walked to one of the two primary schools along the Dublin Road, some of them calling out “daddy” and “mammy” to strangers in the street. Shabby and betraying signs of neglect, they sat at the back of the classroom, apart.
“I never remember them really being taught,” Catherine said. “They were just there.”
