Bon Secours Mother and Baby Home
Coordinates: 53°30′28″N 8°50′34″W / 53.50765°N 8.84291°W The Bon Secours Mother and Baby Home (also known as St Mary's Mother and Baby Home or simply The Home) was a maternity home for unmarried mothers and their children that operated between 1925 and 1961 in Tuam, County Galway, Ireland. The Home was run by the Bon Secours Sisters, a Catholic religious order of nuns, who also operated the Grove Hospital in the town. Unwed pregnant women were sent to the Home to give birth.
In 2012, the Health Service Executive raised concerns that up to 1,000 children had been sent from the Home for illegal adoptions in the United States without their mother's consent.
In 2014, a local amateur historian, Catherine Corless, published an article documenting the deaths of 796 babies and toddlers at the Home during its decades of operation. The report noted that the most commonly recorded causes of death among the infants were congenital debilities, infectious diseases and malnutrition (including marasmus-related malnutrition). The report claimed that the bodies were buried in a site at the Home and that there was a high death rate of its residents. Her research led her to conclude that almost all had been buried in an unmarked and unregistered site at the Home. The report noted that the site was also the location of a septic tank when overlaid with maps of the period of use as a workhouse. The allegations are being investigated by a statutory commission of investigation under Judge Yvonne Murphy - the "Mother and Baby Homes Commission of Investigation."
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