I Get Catholic and Irish Bashing Hate Mail

Note: This was posted by error, yesterday, here is a revised version of that post.

The story of the disposal of nearly 800 corpses of infants and toddlers in the old septic tank of the home for unwed mothers at Tuam in Galway, Ireland is bad enough to stand as a scandal of the Catholic Church without you falsely attributing the similar Butter Box Babies scandal at the "Ideal Maternity Home" in East Chester, Nova Scotia to the Catholic Church as well.   The two criminals in that case, William and Lila Young, were not Catholics, he was apparently some kind of a Seventh Day Adventist minister or something as well as a chiropractor, she was a midwife.  [Note: Thinking about this more, the scandal from Nova Scotia is not known to be like what happened in Tuam, it is more like the baby farming infanticide in the update, below.  So far as anyone has said there is no evidence that the babies who died in Tuam were intentionally starved to death.]

As I said the scandal in Tuam is bad enough but the stories are complicated by the fact that the site was also the home of one of the infamous British workhouses, under the British occupation.   While I can't find anything like complete records, for that work house,  I would imagine like most of them, it had an appallingly high infant and child mortality rate for longer than that and it likely had serious issues of where to bury the dead before the end of its use as a workhouse*.  Whether or not the reports of digging up human remains from the people whose houses occupy that site now are from when it was a home for unwed mothers or from the far longer period when it was a workhouse would be useful to know.   If accurately assigning blame were the object.

If you've read anything I've written on the topic you will known I've been on record as in favor of a more thorough and public exposure of the horrors of the British Workhouse and Poor Law for several years.   Workhouses were set up to be death houses with inadequate food and appalling conditions.  Entirely relevant to the present scandal in Tuam, extremely young children and infants who survived long enough were often taken from their mothers and families were routinely broken up on being condemned to the workhouse.  Under the British Poor Law being destitute made even infants outlaws sent to workhouses where the allowed daily ration of food had fewer calories than that provided for prisoners.

I am certainly not against looking at similar crimes against humanity committed by whatever institution is at fault.  I'm certainly no admirer of the Irish government in the period under question.  It was a system with entirely too much collaboration between the state and the church, both corrupted by it and both having a lot to answer for in history.  Though most of the countries in the world have a lot to answer for, as the Butter Box Babies scandal in Nova Scotia and many others like it in an entirely secular context.  Though it was common for the state to expect religious institutions to provide any provision of welfare at all.

For obvious reasons, this reminded me of the parts of William Carlos Williams memoir detailing his experiences as a young doctor working at the disease and vermin infested Nursery and Child's Hospital in Hell's Kitchen, about that same period.   With his description of the conditions it's no surprise that deadly epidemics, killing large numbers of babies were not unknown.  Neither were corruption and incompetence.  And this was in a state, in a country with far more economic resources than Ireland at the same time, a country without the heritage of the workhouses and poor law, which Ireland had imposed on it during the British occupation.  By today's standards, the infant mortality rates, especially for poor people,  were rather stunning, everywhere. It also reminded me of his horribly sad short story, Jean Beicke.  Child mortality was extremely high, especially before the discovery of antibiotics.   Among poor people it was not uncommon for babies to die of infection from the umbilical cord during the first days of life.

*  See this:

POOR LAW (IRELAND)—BELFAST WORKHOUSE—INFANT MORTALITY.

HC Deb 02 September 1880 vol 256 cc1053-4 1053

§MR. MOORE asked the Chief Secretary to the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland, Whether his attention has been called to the statement in Dr. M'Cabe's recent Report on Belfast Workhouse, that within the six months from January to June 82 infants have died in that institution; and, if he would inform the 1054 House what per-centage of the whole number of infants this represents?

§MR. W. E. FORSTER Sir, I have seen the Report to which the hon. Member refers, and I am sorry to observe that the rate of infant mortality in Belfast Workhouse is very high. I believe it is true that there were about 82 deaths in six months. I have only this moment received an answer to an inquiry that I made as to the percentage of deaths to the whole number of infants who are in, or have passed through, the workhouse. I understand that it is believed to be about 80 per cent; but I am afraid that I cannot absolutely pledge myself to the accuracy of that statement. As I told the hon. Member yesterday, I will make further inquiry.

And also this interesting paper about the extremely high infant mortality rates in workhouses even before the far more horrific conditions that prevailed after the New Poor Law came into effect.   If I could, I would reproduce the graph of deaths in the work house during that period compared with deaths of infants from puerpural fever in Scotland during the period of 1929-1933, on page 39.  They were stunningly similar.

Also a revelation is the high number of new born children who died in the first two weeks of life due to infection.

Though, since there is no Catholic Church to bash I am skeptical that you'll see these as important, compared to the Tuam scandal.  Which, as I said, is bad enough without using the victims in an unrelated campaign of vilification of people alive today who had nothing to do with what happened then.   The Catholic Church owes the victims of its past and present wrongs a full and open confession of what was done and compensation to survivors.  It doesn't owe more in that line of shame than other institutions and governments that have a similar record, including the far more recent and ongoing cases of governments as impeccably anti-religious as your langauge. North Korea?  China?  Romania?

Update:  This paper, Bastardy and Baby Farming in Victorian England  by Dorothy L. Haller,  is worth reading because it documents the casual, commercial industry in infanticide that sprang up due to the New Poor Law.   How horrific it was can be seen in just two of the cases discussed.

The response to a proposed registration of those engaged in the trade of baby farming [you can safely read that "infanticide"] was met with outraged reaction from both the establishment and what were, I'd imagine, considered the official radical opposition.

In July 1870 the Brixton horrors perpetrated by Mrs. Waters filled the newspapers. In a matter of a few weeks, she had drugged and starved approximately 16 infants to death, wrapped their emaciated bodies in old rags and newspapers, and dumped them on deserted streets. Nine infants in precarious condition were removed from her home and taken to the Lambeth Workhouse; the majority died from thrush and fluid on the brain shortly thereafter.  This and the story of Mrs. Harnett in Greenwich, who, for a fee, took a newborn from the lying-in house of Mr. Stevens and fed it watered down sour milk, arrowroot and corn flour until it succumbed from starvation 18 days later,  led to the formation of the Infant Life Protection Society (hereafter called the ILPS) by Curgenven, Hart, and their associates. Through their dedicated efforts, and those of Mr. Charley and Mr. Robinson (MPs), The Infant Life Protection Bill 1871 -- aimed at protecting the lives of bastard children-was drawn up.

The Bill contained a clause which required the registration and supervision of nurses in the manufacturing districts who cared for children on a daily basis, and, much to the ILPS' amazement, it enraged members of the suffrage movement. Lydia Becker, editor of the Women's Suffrage Journal and leader of the Manchester branch of the National Society of Women's Suffrage, blasted the clause. Her journal reeked of the laissez-faire attitudes of the day, "officialism, police interference, and espionage," would oppress the ratepayers and infringe on the rights of the individual. She also objected to the entire registration and supervision process being handled entirely by men. 

Adversaries in the House of Commons saw it as an infringement on the rights of parents, stating, "The responsibility for the child in infancy as in later life, lies with them [parents], and we emphatically deny that the State has any right to dictate to them the way it shall be fulfilled."  In lieu of reform, the ILPS were forced to settle for yet another commission to investigate baby farming.

The commission's investigation included the testimony of Sergeant Relf, investigator in the Brixton case, which revealed facts in the case of Mary Hall, a lying-in house owner. Neighbors reported a steady stream of young pregnant women entering her home, but infants were never heard crying or seen leaving the premises. Those infants that lived long enough were farmed out, those that did not were buried in the backyard or dumped on some dark street. Neighbors reported seeing Mr. Hall feeding small bloody lumps (believed to be aborted fetuses) to his cats. When Mrs. Hall was finally arrested, she had 800 pounds in her possession; evidence of just how lucrative her murderous business was. The Metropolitan Police Superintendent testified to the difficulty of apprehending and prosecuting baby farmers. On July 10, 1871, the Select Committee on the Protection of Infant Life recommended the registration of all births and deaths, compulsory registration and supervision of lying-in houses and baby farms, all of which were included in the Infant Life Protection Act of 1872.

Dorothy Haller ended her paper this way:

At the close of the Victorian era, Curgenven and members of the Harveian Society, supporters in the House of Commons and in the House of Lords had tenaciously battled for the protection of infant life and a more equitable law regarding the financial security of illegitimate children for almost 40 years. The Victorians heightened sense of social conscience in the latter half of the 19th century certainly recognized the need for reform, but their laissez faire attitudes toward social and economic matters caused the wheels of change to turn slowly. An appeal made before The Society for the Prevention of the Cruelty to Animals in 1881, is indicative of how slowly. Their appeal for the organization of a Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children took 8 years (1889) to come to fruition, 65 years after the establishment of the Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals.

Obviously, the expectation of people who read with anger and horror about the bodies found at the site of the former institution for unwed mothers at Tuam are naive about how callously infants and children were treated in Victorian Britain, those institutions certainly reproduced in places under British occupation.  The New Poor Law ended only after the Second World War in Britain but its cultural impact is likely still here, now.  I would like to do more research into how the infants and children of the destitute fared in the United States during the same period but I haven't been able to get to it.  I would imagine it would vary quite dramatically from place to place but I doubt that Catholic institutions would be dependably worse than others.