'I thought I'd seen it all. Then I found nuns' secret grave for 800 babies': By Philomena writer MARTIN SIXSMITH

Catholic Church took 60,000 babies for adoption in the 1950s and 1960s,

Many sent to America in return for large payments disguised as 'donations'

Martin wrote about one case in his book Philomena, later made into a film

News of the mass graves at Tuam finally made the newspapers last week

Religious community's site had primitive conditions with babies neglected

Infection and disease ran unchecked; measles and dysentery killed hundreds

Two locals, Catherine Corless and Teresa Kelly, set out to uncover the truth

Catherine calculated nearly 800 babies were buried beneath the estate

 

In nearly two decades as a foreign correspondent, I covered stories of mass graves in far-flung locations in Eastern Europe  and Russia. The thought of them has remained lodged in my memory. 

But never did I expect to be covering a mass grave from modern times on my own doorstep; I thought Western and Northern Europe was immune from such horrors. 

Yet that is exactly what I came across in January this year in the small Irish town of Tuam in County Galway, an ugly place with its rundown streets and council estates.

On a grey, rainy afternoon, I was taken to a patch of land in the centre of one such estate. Surrounded by houses built in the 1970s, on the edge of a scruffy playground, I found a plaster statue of the Madonna on a pile of stones, incongruously sheltered by an old enamel bathtub. Beneath it were the bodies of nearly 800 babies.  

The remains of a forbidding 8ft  wall nearby were a clue to the place's  history. Until 1961 this had been the site of a Catholic religious community run by the Sisters of Bon Secours. 

They had bought the workhouse in the 1920s and converted it into a home for unmarried mothers. For the next 36 years, the nuns took in thousands of women. In those days, sex outside marriage was proclaimed a mortal sin.

READ MORE: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2651484/I-thought-Id-seen-Philomena-And-I-nuns-secret-grave-800-babies-By-Martin-Sixsmith-exposed-Sisters-sold-children-fallen-girls.html


'A miserable, emaciated child with a voracious appetite and no control over his bodily functions': Documents which reveal the tragic story of a short life at St Mary's 

There are no details given of his father. Records from the home show how a health inspection was carried out in April 1947 by a man known as Mr Humphreys.

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Tragic: Bridget Dolan, whose sons died at the mother and baby home

Despite being born a healthy baby, a year later John was described as a 'miserable emaciated child with a voracious appetite and no control over his bodily functions'.

Doctors referred to John as 'probably mental defective'.

That year there was an outbreak of measles in the home, which John contracted.

He died on June 11, 1947. On his death certificate it showed how Ms Rabbitte was again present at the time of John's death

READ MORE: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2651857/Death-certificates-tragic-story-short-life-St-Marys.html