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International archaeologists and forensic experts will begin digging at the site of a notorious Irish mother and baby home on Monday to try to retrieve the remains of 796 babies and young children believed to be buried there.
Grey hoardings cordon off the site where experts must sift through a former underground sewage system and nearby areas to retrieve bones, painstakingly reassemble them into skeletons and try to identify them.
“We cannot underestimate the complexity of the task before us,” said Daniel MacSweeney, a former International Committee of the Red Cross envoy leading the excavation operation that will also lay bare one of the most painful and shame-filled chapters in Ireland’s history.
International experts from Colombia, Spain, the UK, Canada, Australia and the US have been recruited for the dig at the site of the former Catholic Church-run institution for unmarried mothers in Tuam, County Galway, which starts on Monday and is expected to last two years.
Although the team includes archaeologists, forensic anthropologists, osteoarchaeologists and crime scene specialists, “no one has experience” of trying to extract, reorder and identify so many commingled infant remains, according to Niamh McCullagh, senior forensic consultant to the dig, who has worked with police on cold cases and murders.
“This is about a wrong that had to be put right,” said Catherine Corless, the local historian whose research first identified 796 babies and children recorded as having died between 1925 and 1960 at the institution run by Bon Secours nuns, but for whom there were no burial records.
She suspected some children were placed in the septic tank of the now demolished institution that was housed in a former famine-era workhouse.
“You can’t leave it be, you can’t put monuments, you cannot bless the site. This was all wrong. It shouldn’t have been done,” Corless told the Financial Times. “Hopefully they’ll find a lot of the little babies.”
In a formal state apology in 2021 to tens of thousands of women and children, the Irish government highlighted the “appalling” mortality rate in institutions where unmarried mothers were shamed and kept out of sight.
McCullagh, a forensic archaeologist, directed a test dig at Tuam in 2016-17 that identified 35-week-old foetal remains and the bones of children up to three years old at the site, located in the middle of a housing estate.
A playground — demolished for the dig — was erected and ground-penetrating radar found “anomalies” indicating potential burials.
Experts will use novel techniques — including peptide analysis of tooth enamel — to determine the sex of the children, and hope to be able to establish their age and cause of death.
DNA samples from 14 people have been taken. But 80 others have been in touch with the Office of the Director of Authorised Intervention to provide samples to try to identify them.
Personal effects — including nappy pins, enamel plates and baby bottles — were found in the test dig. More such finds could help date the remains.
Two teams will dig at a time in different areas but the septic tank area — covered by a memorial garden to the 796 children — will be left until last.
Relatives are hoping remains can be identified and given a proper burial.
“[The children] have to be put to rest,” said one resident, who asked not to be named, whose house overlooks the site. “It was awful cruel.”
But others disagreed. “We are all upset about disturbing the dead — they should be allowed to rest in peace,” said a woman from a nearby street.
PJ Haverty, 73, who spent his first six and a half years at the institution, recalled a joyless place where mothers were only allowed to feed their babies and change nappies. Infants screamed in cots while the mothers worked.
“I was kind of brain-dead till I came out to the foster home,” he said. “That’s when my life started . . . We didn’t have the love.”
He hailed the excavation as “fantastic” but cautioned: “People say it’s a closure but it won’t take the anger away. That anger is going to stay with [survivors and relatives] until they leave this world.”
Anna Corrigan, whose brothers aged seven months and 13 months died at the home, called it a “light at the end of a very long tunnel”.
But she feared she would “probably not” get answers. “I’m cynical at this stage.”
Haverty was among some children earmarked for adoption in the US, a plan that involved including a girl who would have been passed off as his sister. The adoption never went ahead because his mother refused to sign the paperwork.
But Corrigan believes that death records of some of the Tuam babies were falsified to facilitate illegal US adoptions — a practice suspected at other homes.
She wondered: “Are they walking around America not knowing they are dead in Ireland?”
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