Tuam Babies

Started by Tubberman, March 03, 2017, 09:35:41 PM

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seafoid

Quote from: Main Street on March 10, 2017, 11:11:03 PM
Got you, thanks.
Where did he get the 5 x figure from?
Based on unmarried mothers'  infant mortality statistics in general or just  from those who went to the institutions?
Diarmuid Ferriter in the video link
"f**k it, just score"- Donaghy   https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IbxG2WwVRjU

seafoid

There was no social welfare system.The poor were divided into hard working respectable and pariahs  The latter had no chance.  Even now court reports include the line "comes from a respected family.  "  This story is mostly about poverty.
"f**k it, just score"- Donaghy   https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IbxG2WwVRjU

seafoid

Very good Diarmuid Ferriter video here

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fpMLB1icn0w

http://www.irishtimes.com/culture/tv-radio-web/a-scholar-with-passion-on-his-mind-1.670834

.....the letters to various authorities written in the 1950s by a survivor of Letterfrack, Peter Tyrrell, underpin Ferriter's palpable anger at what he sees as the greatest failure of the State: the abandonment of the strong pledges in the Democratic Programme of the first Dáil to make the welfare of children the central priority of the new republic.
"There's a complete betrayal at a very early stage of some of the promises that were made around welfare and especially around children. It's doubly galling that children were so much a part of the revolutionary rhetoric and yet everything we did flew in the face of the notion that children were meant to be prized."
Ferriter also uses a document in which the first taoiseach, William Cosgrave, suggested that children brought up in workhouses could be of no use to the State and should either emigrate or be kept in institutions. The retention of the hated workhouse system (with the institutions merely renamed as "county homes") directly contradicted one of the key promises in the Democratic Programme.
Filming in the old workhouse in Dingle, Ferriter found himself carried beyond his script. "The place is practically unchanged since the 19th century. You can really sense the desolation and the sense of abandonment.
"There's a line in that scene where I say 'The retention of these institutions was a sick joke.' That line wasn't in the script at all, but as I was standing there amidst all that, I thought I had to say it."
...
"f**k it, just score"- Donaghy   https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IbxG2WwVRjU

Main Street

Quote from: seafoid on March 11, 2017, 08:29:49 AM
Quote from: Main Street on March 10, 2017, 11:11:03 PM
Got you, thanks.
Where did he get the 5 x figure from?
Based on unmarried mothers'  infant mortality statistics in general or just  from those who went to the institutions?
Diarmuid Ferriter in the video link
Where did he (Diarmuid) get the 5 x figure from?  and is that 5x figure based on Irish unmarried mothers' infant mortality statistics in general or is it specifically based on the infant mortality rates in the institutions?

I'd hazard a guess that the 5x higher figure be the infant mortality rates in the institutions, based recorded deaths/numbers of  instutionalised mothers and comparing that to the figures in general.

seafoid

Quote from: Main Street on March 11, 2017, 06:42:19 PM
Quote from: seafoid on March 11, 2017, 08:29:49 AM
Quote from: Main Street on March 10, 2017, 11:11:03 PM
Got you, thanks.
Where did he get the 5 x figure from?
Based on unmarried mothers'  infant mortality statistics in general or just  from those who went to the institutions?
Diarmuid Ferriter in the video link
Where did he (Diarmuid) get the 5 x figure from?  and is that 5x figure based on Irish unmarried mothers' infant mortality statistics in general or is it specifically based on the infant mortality rates in the institutions?

I'd hazard a guess that the 5x higher figure be the infant mortality rates in the institutions, based recorded deaths/numbers of  instutionalised mothers and comparing that to the figures in general.
It must be from institutional data . Very few of those children were outside the gulag system
"f**k it, just score"- Donaghy   https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IbxG2WwVRjU

Main Street

Quote from: seafoid on March 11, 2017, 09:10:41 PM
Quote from: Main Street on March 11, 2017, 06:42:19 PM
Quote from: seafoid on March 11, 2017, 08:29:49 AM
Quote from: Main Street on March 10, 2017, 11:11:03 PM
Got you, thanks.
Where did he get the 5 x figure from?
Based on unmarried mothers'  infant mortality statistics in general or just  from those who went to the institutions?
Diarmuid Ferriter in the video link
Where did he (Diarmuid) get the 5 x figure from?  and is that 5x figure based on Irish unmarried mothers' infant mortality statistics in general or is it specifically based on the infant mortality rates in the institutions?

I'd hazard a guess that the 5x higher figure be the infant mortality rates in the institutions, based recorded deaths/numbers of  instutionalised mothers and comparing that to the figures in general.
It must be from institutional data . Very few of those children were outside the gulag system
On the contrary, there are records of thousands of children born to unmarried mothers, who gave birth supported by their families/friends.

Though sometimes I find it hard to imagine that there was so much sex in the dark decades. 
Love in times of the looming crucifix.
If we hadn't had the menacing influence of the dark catholic church down through the centuries, I reckon the Irish if left to an organic evolution, would have been among the most care free, randy tribe on the planet.


seafoid

Quote from: Main Street on March 11, 2017, 09:56:21 PM
Quote from: seafoid on March 11, 2017, 09:10:41 PM
Quote from: Main Street on March 11, 2017, 06:42:19 PM
Quote from: seafoid on March 11, 2017, 08:29:49 AM
Quote from: Main Street on March 10, 2017, 11:11:03 PM
Got you, thanks.
Where did he get the 5 x figure from?
Based on unmarried mothers'  infant mortality statistics in general or just  from those who went to the institutions?
Diarmuid Ferriter in the video link
Where did he (Diarmuid) get the 5 x figure from?  and is that 5x figure based on Irish unmarried mothers' infant mortality statistics in general or is it specifically based on the infant mortality rates in the institutions?

I'd hazard a guess that the 5x higher figure be the infant mortality rates in the institutions, based recorded deaths/numbers of  instutionalised mothers and comparing that to the figures in general.
It must be from institutional data . Very few of those children were outside the gulag system
On the contrary, there are records of thousands of children born to unmarried mothers, who gave birth supported by their families/friends.

Though sometimes I find it hard to imagine that there was so much sex in the dark decades. 
Love in times of the looming crucifix.
If we hadn't had the menacing influence of the dark catholic church down through the centuries, I reckon the Irish if left to an organic evolution, would have been among the most care free, randy tribe on the planet.
The attitude to sex was heavily influenced by the Victorian
English. If 5x is institution/population you would need hundreds of thousands of stay at home kids of unmarried mothers to have an appreciable difference on the 5x. Because it related to a minority group of less than 10% of the population. Once a child entered the institutional.system it was at a higher level of risk.

I remember kids who were supposed to be children of their grandparents.
"f**k it, just score"- Donaghy   https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IbxG2WwVRjU

Armamike

Quote from: vallankumous on March 11, 2017, 07:44:03 AM
Quote from: Armamike on March 09, 2017, 08:21:17 PM

The poor children.  It's hard to fathom how inhumane the actions of these people were.  I don't know what their attitudes were towards these innocents, but we know how they behaved and treated the unlucky ones who never managed to make it out of this place and other similar places.  They certainly were not treated with any humanity, respect and dignity in death.  So God knows how they were treated during their short lives.  So so sad.  It's unlikely we'll ever hear the truth from the nuns and the church on this.  These people don't talk.


True but there are other ways to find out.

Ask your parents, grandparents, retired Gardai, long term or retired politicians, elder community activists within the church.
Ask what was their knowledge and attitude at the time to pregnant women being locked up and having their children taken away.
Ask if they had any knowledge of what happened these women and children during detention or what became of their children.
Ask if it happened to someone they know or if it might have happened to them if they had have fallen pregnant at a young age or while unmarried.
Ask if there's a possibility that some of them might have been the father if such a case did happen.

There are many social secrets in our communities about this.
I know of no one put in one of these homes but I do know of people forced to adopt their children and other who hid pregnancy through emigration or forced marriage.
I believe they might have been aware of their fate had they not done so.

This generation don't talk much either.  There is a code of silence - certainly very little detail passed on to sons and daughters, nephews and nieces.


That's just, like your opinion man.

Main Street

#128
Quote from: seafoid on March 12, 2017, 06:06:21 AM
Quote from: Main Street on March 11, 2017, 09:56:21 PM
Quote from: seafoid on March 11, 2017, 09:10:41 PM
Quote from: Main Street on March 11, 2017, 06:42:19 PM
Quote from: seafoid on March 11, 2017, 08:29:49 AM
Quote from: Main Street on March 10, 2017, 11:11:03 PM
Got you, thanks.
Where did he get the 5 x figure from?
Based on unmarried mothers'  infant mortality statistics in general or just  from those who went to the institutions?
Diarmuid Ferriter in the video link
Where did he (Diarmuid) get the 5 x figure from?  and is that 5x figure based on Irish unmarried mothers' infant mortality statistics in general or is it specifically based on the infant mortality rates in the institutions?

I'd hazard a guess that the 5x higher figure be the infant mortality rates in the institutions, based recorded deaths/numbers of  instutionalised mothers and comparing that to the figures in general.
It must be from institutional data . Very few of those children were outside the gulag system
On the contrary, there are records of thousands of children born to unmarried mothers, who gave birth supported by their families/friends.

Though sometimes I find it hard to imagine that there was so much sex in the dark decades. 
Love in times of the looming crucifix.
If we hadn't had the menacing influence of the dark catholic church down through the centuries, I reckon the Irish if left to an organic evolution, would have been among the most care free, randy tribe on the planet.
The attitude to sex was heavily influenced by the Victorian
English.
I disagree, as the 19C progressed, whatever victorian moral influence that crept into upper echelons of irish society, what filtered down to the vast majority of the low income population became something else, morality as it existed in rural Ireland by the end off 19C  had been more  shaped by the dramatic events in Ireland over the course of the 19C and the responses to those events.

There was a definite break in the social history of Ireland when women took their place in the republican war for independence.
In the dark decades from the Free State onward,  the Church reasserted their assumed role as having the monopoly on morality and the state complied with repressive legislation. The women were shoved back inside the home but it was the malign influence of the Church  which resulted in a more guilt ridden, sexually ignorant society than existed in other societies around Europe. Ireland was always different eg. the so called sex revolution of the 1960s happened elsewhere.


QuoteIf 5x is institution/population you would need hundreds of thousands of stay at home kids of unmarried mothers to have an appreciable difference on the 5x. Because it related to a minority group of less than 10% of the population. Once a child entered the institutional.system it was at a higher level of risk.

I remember kids who were supposed to be children of their grandparents.
[/quote]
Statistics such as mortality rates  are  compiled from inferring proportions from figures, not from counting the numbers.

eg   infant mortality rate was 10% in institution infants  and  2% in general population
therefore , infant mortality  rate is 5 time higher in institutions.
From the figures that Catherine provides, the infant mortality rates before 1945 in the institutions were similar to the infant mortality rates in the population that lived in urban slum like conditions.
Post 1945, the infant mortality rates leveled off in the general population, the positive effects of imposed social health changes reulted in huge drops in mortality rates in the urban slums.
Those social changes in attitude and practical hygiene passed the convent run institutions by, therefore their infant mortality rates remained sky high, @ 5x the general population after 1945.
That's afaiu Diarmuid who is learned in these matters.

dec

There was a long article in the New York Times this weekend.

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2017/10/28/world/europe/tuam-ireland-babies-children.html

In the printed edition is was actually contained in it's own 8 page section.

seafoid

Quote from: dec on October 30, 2017, 12:35:37 PM
There was a long article in the New York Times this weekend.

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2017/10/28/world/europe/tuam-ireland-babies-children.html

In the printed edition is was actually contained in it's own 8 page section.

They put a lof of work into it.
But what a miserable and brutal system. Some of the bits I thought were interesting:

"the misogyny, morality, and economics that informed the public debate of the time — when a pregnancy out of wedlock could threaten a family's plans for land inheritance, and even confer dishonor upon a local pastor — imagine that naïve young woman from the country: impregnated by a man, sometimes a relative, who would assume little of the shame and none of the responsibility. She might flee to England, or pretend that the newborn was a married sister's — or be shipped to the dreaded Tuam home, run by a religious order with French roots called the Congregation of Sisters of Bon Secours.

Children born out of wedlock during this period were nearly four times more likely to die than "legitimate" children, with those in institutions at particular risk. The reasons may be many — poor prenatal care, insufficient government funding, little or no training of staff – but this is certain: It was no secret.

In 1934, the Irish parliament was informed of the inordinate number of deaths among this group of children. "One must come to the conclusion that they are not looked after with the same care and attention as that given to ordinary children," a public health official said.

Thirty died in the Tuam home that year.

In 1938, it was 26. In 1940, 34. In 1944, 40.

In 1947, a government health inspector filed a report describing the conditions of infants in the nursery: "a miserable emaciated child...delicate...occasional fits...emaciated and delicate...fragile abcess on hip...not thriving wizened limbs emaciated...pot-bellied emaciated...a very poor baby..."

That year, 52 died.

The investigation's broad mandate also includes scrutiny of the network's links to the notorious Magdalen Laundries. The apparent coercion of unmarried mothers to surrender their children for adoption, often to Catholic Americans. The vaccine trials carried out on mother-and-baby-home children for pharmaceutical companies. The use of home-baby remains for anatomical study at medical colleges.

It was all part of a church-state arrangement that, decades earlier, a longtime government health inspector named Alice Litster had repeatedly denounced, mostly to silence. This system marginalized defenseless Irish women, she asserted, and turned their unfortunate offspring into "infant martyrs of convenience, respectability, and fear."

Catherine assumed the role of pro bono private detective, following paper trails that often led to some cemetery in England, where many unmarried mothers had gone to start anew. The children they were separated from, she said, needed to hear that their mother had "fared all right."

Before long, some of these survivors were gathering at the Corless house for a cup of tea and a chat. In their habits and manners of speech, they reminded Catherine of someone close to her who also had been born out of wedlock.

"They all have a kind of low self-esteem," she said. "They feel inadequate. They feel a bit inferior to other people. It mirrored, really, the way my mother was.""
"f**k it, just score"- Donaghy   https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IbxG2WwVRjU

Captain Scarlet

An update here:

https://www.irishtimes.com/news/politics/katherine-zappone-warns-over-dna-testing-of-tuam-remains-1.3339791?utm_source=dlvr.it&utm_medium=twitter

The Min warns that the DNA route may not be very good at identifying remains and mentions the cost a few times.

I have an awful dislike of this woman. She laps up the Twitterati praise and is all over Repeal the Eight but is silent on major issues like child homelessness and then she isn't too keen on putting the resources in place to investigate Tuam. As noted by one of the lads in the Examiner, she also is failing to look at other possible sites.
She is a dose!
them mysterons are always killing me but im grand after a few days.sickenin aul dose all the same.