An excavation crew in County Galway, Ireland, has begun digging up the site of the former Bon Secours Mother and Baby Home. Catholic nuns ran the facility until its closure in 1961. Sadly, many now believe the site holds a decades-old secret. From 1925 to the end of its run, 798 infants and children died at the facility dubbed “The Home” by locals. Shockingly, only two received proper burials. Local historian Catherine Corless believes the site has a much more sinister past that she hopes to quite literally unearth.
Corless has spent countless hours meticulously researching the Bon Secours Mother and Baby Home, a place for unwed mothers in Taum. In 2014, she discovered the babies were missing, Sky News reported. Corless hopes the dig, led by Daniel MacSweeney, will bring closure to the families of women and infants who lived at the home.
DNA evidence revealed the ages of the dead ranged from 35 weeks gestation to 3 years old, per Fox 11.
“I’m feeling very relieved,” Corless told Sky News. “It’s been a long, long journey. Not knowing what’s going to happen, if it’s just going to fall apart or if it’s really going to happen.”
Corless says many of the children’s remains ended up dumped in a former sewage tank referred to as “the pit.” Now crews are working to identify those remains, per Fox 11.
MacSweeney and his team will use DNA testing, and ultimately he hopes to give all the deceased a proper burial.
Corless posted an update to her Facebook page prior to the excavation’s start, explaining that, according to MacSweeney, the process would be lengthy.
“I am happy to say we are still on track to begin the excavation of the site in the second half of June, as the first step towards restoring dignity in death to those inappropriately buried at the site. We will confirm the exact date very soon,” MacSweeney shared. “Once works start the entire site will be forensically sealed, we will erect 2.4-meter hoarding and put in place 24-hour security monitoring. It is expected that the works on the site may take up to 24 months to complete.”
The dig gives hope to people like Annette McKay. Her mother, Margaret O’Connor, gave birth to a baby girl at the home in 1942, following a rape at age 17. McKay shared a tragic story with Sky News about her mother’s time in Taum and a dark part of Irish history.
“We locked up victims of rape, we locked up victims of incest, we locked up victims of violence, we put them in laundries, we took their children, and we just handed them over to the Church to do what they wanted,” she said.
“My mother worked heavily pregnant, cleaning floors and a nun passing kicked my mother in the stomach. And when that place is opened, their dirty, ugly secret, it isn’t a secret anymore. She named her baby Mary Margaret, but sadly she died six months after birth,” she added.
McKay also told Sky News that her late mother told her “she was pegging washing out and a nun came up behind her and said ‘the child of your sin is dead.'”
McKay would love to see her mother reunited with her baby.
“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,” McKay shared with the news outlet. “I don’t care if it’s a thimbleful for me to be able to pop Mary Margaret with Maggie. That’s fitting.”
Crews demolished the Bon Secours Mother and Baby Home in the early 1970s.
