Fallible wrote:I often wonder why my dad never did that. He clearly despises them.

Thomas Eshuis wrote:

Fallible wrote:I often wonder why my dad never did that. He clearly despises them.

I haven't because it's to much work.

Rivu wrote:According to this article on The Guardian, the secretary of the Tuam archediocese said:

"I suppose we can't really judge the past from our point of view, from our lens. All we can do is mark it appropriately and make sure there is a suitable place here where people can come and remember the babies that died." ( My Bold)

It goes without saying that I am feeling very violent towards this person now.

Animavore wrote:http://www.irishtimes.com/news/social-affairs/mother-and-baby-inquiry-will-go-beyond-tuam-says-flanagan-1.1821947

A Government inquiry into the mother and baby homes will not be confined to St Mary’s in Tuam, Minister for Children Charlie Flanagan has said.

“Tuam was not unique in Ireland as a mother and baby home. Mother and baby homes were not unique in Ireland as cold and brutal places of refuge from an unforgiving society,” he said in a statement this afternoon.

It was expected that officials will advise the Government on the best form of inquiry “before the end of the month”, he said.

There've been a lot of headlines over the past few days in the Irish papers talking about 'shock' and 'horror' over this business. The thing I found most shocking or horrifying was how absolutely un-surprised I actually was.

Sarah Hrdy, in 'Mother Nature' wrote:

(Page 299) “Unintended consequences on a massive scale”

The explicit aim of foundling homes was to prevent abandoned infants from dying. The “Hospital of the Innocents,” one of the earliest such institutions in the world, still stands in Florence, a stately reminder of a catastrophic experiment in social engineering. Founded in 1419, with assistance from the silk guilds, the Ospedale degli Innocenti was completed in 1445. Ninety foundlings were left there the first year. By 1539 (a famine year), 961 babies were left. Eventually five thousand infants a year poured in from all corners of Tuscany.

Although the best known, the Innocenti was just one, the largest, of sixteen such foundling homes in the Grand Duchy of Tuscany. Three centuries after it opened, mortality rates were still appalling. Of 15,000 babies left at the Innocenti between 1755 and 1773, two-thirds died before reaching their first birthday.

Elsewhere in Europe groups of citizens and governments were similarly disturbed by the large numbers of unwanted infants left along roads and in gutters. In city after city the same painful experiment was repeated. In England, retired sea captain Thomas Coram got royal backing to build a home for deserted children. When it opened in 1741, it became immediately apparent that he had underestimated the magnitude of the problem. Mothers fought at the gates for admission. By 1756 the British Parliament guaranteed funds to ensure open admissions, with the result that within four years, 15,000 children had been admitted. Mortality rates soared, as there were simply not enough wet nurses to go around.
…

(Page 302) Epidemics of foundlings

Because there were rarely enough lactating nurses to go around, foundling homes did little more than forestall death from exposure – just long enough to ensure that the baby was baptized. Without the nutritional and immunological benefits of mother’s milk, most died in the first months, of infectious diseases or starvation. We know this because of just how well the staff at the foundling homes did at least part of their job. Keeping infants alive was often beyond their capacity. But an extraordinary bureaucracy grew up to record, in neat columns, detailed information of each of their charges: the exact date the infant was admitted; its sex, age, and whether or not the baby was baptized; any identifying tokens, coins, or scraps of cloth or notes parents might have left with the baby; and date of death. As historical demographers began, locality by locality, to transform neatly scripted columns of figures into rates and totals, it became clear that foundling homes were magnets for a much wider population than simply unwed mothers and poor domestics seduced by employers. Parents – often married couples – from a broad catchment area saw the orphanages as a way to delegate to others parental effort for offspring they could scarce afford to rear. Mothers poured in from the rural areas to deposit babies in the cities. What has generally been studied as a patchwork of various, discrete, local crises is really a wide-scale, demographic catastrophe of unprecedented dimensions.

I still recall the crisp autumn day in the old cathedral city of Durham, England, when at a conference on abandoned children, the full extent of a phenomenon I had been aware of for years sank in. The talks were routine scientific fare. Overhead projectors flashed graphs and charts onto a screen. The black lines sprawling across the grid summarized data from European foundling homes, tracking changes in infant mortality rates over time. As the morning wore on, the phenomenon of child abandonment was described, country by country, epoch by epoch, for England, Sweden, Italy, even Portugal’s colony in the Azores. Gradually it dawned on me that this phenomenon affected not tens of thousands or even hundreds of thousands of infants, as I had long assumed, but millions of babies. I grew increasingly numb.

Made of Stars wrote::waah:

I found Sarah Blaffer Hrdy’s book “Mother Nature” a somewhat startling read. Apparently this kind of death rate used to be common in foundling hospitals across Europe, though it seems to have continued longer in Ireland than in most countries. Before the foundling homes were set up, similar numbers of babies probably died from abandonment or neglect but were not recorded.

zoon wrote:I found Sarah Blaffer Hrdy’s book “Mother Nature” a somewhat startling read. Apparently this kind of death rate used to be common in foundling hospitals across Europe, though it seems to have continued longer in Ireland than in most countries. Before the foundling homes were set up, similar numbers of babies probably died from abandonment or neglect but were not recorded.

Agrippina wrote:Yeah, the RCC would rather toss babies down the toilet than allow their mothers to have a properly-managed abortion. My eyes rolled around in my head when I saw this.

Beatsong wrote:

zoon wrote:I found Sarah Blaffer Hrdy’s book “Mother Nature” a somewhat startling read. Apparently this kind of death rate used to be common in foundling hospitals across Europe, though it seems to have continued longer in Ireland than in most countries. Before the foundling homes were set up, similar numbers of babies probably died from abandonment or neglect but were not recorded.

Agrippina wrote:Yeah, the RCC would rather toss babies down the toilet than allow their mothers to have a properly-managed abortion. My eyes rolled around in my head when I saw this.

I'm not sure I'm clear what's actually going on here.

Is the story just about the fact that when these children died (of disease and "natural causes") they were chucked in the septic tank instead of being given a proper burial?

Or is there a much stronger claim involved - that they killed the babies, or neglected them until they died prematurely or something, to avoid the religious disgraces of bastardy or abortion?

Beatsong wrote:I'm not sure I'm clear what's actually going on here.

Is the story just about the fact that when these children died (of disease and "natural causes") they were chucked in the septic tank instead of being given a proper burial?

Or is there a much stronger claim involved - that they killed the babies, or neglected them until they died prematurely or something, to avoid the religious disgraces of bastardy or abortion?

Strontium Dog wrote:

Beatsong wrote:I'm not sure I'm clear what's actually going on here.

Is the story just about the fact that when these children died (of disease and "natural causes") they were chucked in the septic tank instead of being given a proper burial?

Or is there a much stronger claim involved - that they killed the babies, or neglected them until they died prematurely or something, to avoid the religious disgraces of bastardy or abortion?

I too am unclear.

I thought, as atheists, we don't consider dead bodies to be endowed with special qualities? They're just organ sacks, aren't they? A "collection of cells which will soon begin to disassemble and rot away". Not a person, but a "lump of meat".

Once again, zero consistency being displayed on these forums. And people claim that Mick is trolling...

Strontium Dog wrote:I too am unclear.

I thought, as atheists, we don't consider dead bodies to be endowed with special qualities? They're just organ sacks, aren't they? A "collection of cells which will soon begin to disassemble and rot away". Not a person, but a "lump of meat".

Once again, zero consistency being displayed on these forums. And people claim that Mick is trolling...

Mari Tatlow-Steed lives in Philadelphia, but was born at the Bessborough home run by Sacred Heart sisters in County Cork.

She said there were two categories of children in the home.

"Children that were earmarked to go over to the United States for adoption or even remain in Ireland, we were fattened up, we were given the better food," she said.

"And I have no doubt there were probably children who might have had difficulties when they were born, congenital problems, weaknesses whatever it may be, that the nuns just decided, 'well we know this one is not going to be earmarked for adoption', so they're not going to get the same level of decent care."

She described it as a form of "benign neglect".

"They (nuns) felt these children were not going to thrive or be as marketable, 'well, we're just not going to spend as much effort or time'," she said.

Strontium Dog wrote:

Beatsong wrote:I'm not sure I'm clear what's actually going on here.

Is the story just about the fact that when these children died (of disease and "natural causes") they were chucked in the septic tank instead of being given a proper burial?

Or is there a much stronger claim involved - that they killed the babies, or neglected them until they died prematurely or something, to avoid the religious disgraces of bastardy or abortion?

I too am unclear.

I thought, as atheists, we don't consider dead bodies to be endowed with special qualities? They're just organ sacks, aren't they? A "collection of cells which will soon begin to disassemble and rot away". Not a person, but a "lump of meat".

Once again, zero consistency being displayed on these forums. And people claim that Mick is trolling...