Catherine Corless is an Irish historian in Tuam, County Galway. She spent many years researching the church records for Bon Secours Mother and Baby Home and found that something didn't quite add up. According to death certificates she discovered, nearly 800 babies and toddlers had died there between 1925 and 1961 from issues like whooping cough, premature birth, gastroenteritis, and respiratory infections, but only two of them actually had burial records. What happened to the remaining children? 

The home itself was run by Catholic nuns and served as a place where unwed pregnant women were sent to give birth in secret during the early twentieth century. However, once they had their babies, they were forced to give them up, often without consent, and made to stay there for a year, doing unpaid work. The nuns would raise the babies until they could find adoptive parents for them. At least, this was the case for the ones who survived. Corless was determined to figure out what happened to the others.  

In 2014, Corless published her discovery in the Irish Mail, and suggested that there may be a mass grave on the property. The home was demolished in 1971 and is now surrounded by an apartment complex. 

The backlash she initially received was overwhelming. She was told she was giving the town a bad name and said people would stop her in the supermarket to complain and would even harass her family, telling them "she shouldn’t be doing that, it’s wrong, leave them there, it’s terrible what she’s doing." 

She received an email from a man in the United States that said, "You’re about as credible as Santa Claus. You’re a disgrace. I hope those nuns bring you to court."  

She even faced some hesitation inside her own home. "My husband Aidan  — he was very uneasy at the start because he said, ‘You’re taking on the State and you’re taking on the [Catholic] Church, the biggest, the most powerful people in Ireland.'"   

But Corless didn't give up the fight to find out what happened to those babies. "They didn’t matter in life, and they didn’t matter in death," she said. She was determined to provide these little ones with the dignity and respect they never received when they were born.   

"In recent years, the name of Tuam has become synonymous with an Ireland of the past  — a place which treated children born outside of marriage, and the women who gave birth to them, as problems that needed to be hidden," reports the Irish Times, adding, "They were often shipped off to live in mother and baby institutions, kept behind high walls. Out of sight and, largely, out of mind."   

Fox reports that "All told, about 9,000 children died in 18 different unwed mother homes in Ireland." But the ones at Bon Secours were never accounted for. 

Finally, in 2017, an investigation found DNA that suggested an old septic tank on the property contains the remains of infants and toddlers that ranged in age from 35 weeks gestation to three years old. In 2022, Parliament passed legislation that allowed officials to excavate the property. 

Now, some of those babies may receive that dignity and respect at last. Excavation on the grounds began earlier this week. Corless and others hope it will help many come to terms with what Irish Prime Minister Micheal Martin calls a "very, very difficult, harrowing story and situation." The process is expected to take two years, but Corless hopes it will bring some closure to the community and the families involved. When remains are located and identified, the families will receive them and can lay them to rest the way they see fit. 

Annette McKay, the sister of one of the victims, is hopeful. She told Sky News that her mother was raped at the age of 17 and gave birth to a baby girl at the home. She was out hanging laundry about six months later when a nun came to find her and simply said "the child of your sin is dead."

"I don’t care if it’s a thimbleful, as they tell me there wouldn’t be much remains left; at six months old, it’s mainly cartilage more than bone," she said of her sister's remains. 

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