There are some telling omissions as well in this book, here she describes the 1947 report by who we now, in 2021, know was Miss Alice Litster: In fact I believe legal action had to be threatened before she agreed to give them back.

Yet, again in her own account in this book, she is listening to the tapes weeks if not months later.

In her own account in this book she describes receiving the Devaney tapes from a lady only under the strict promise that she would get them back a week later. Instead here she generously acknowledges that it was Anne Glennon of that office in Galway “who accumulated the 796 deaths in the Home”. But that is impossible because they are not indexed by place of death. Over the years of this controversy it was frequented stated that she compiled a list of 796 children who died in the Home, using the publicly accessible birth, death and marriage registers. “A member of the Gardaí put Anna in touch with Catherine.” (.

There are frequent factual mistakes about these Mother and Baby Homes listed in this book in my opinion, too numerous to mention but including the false statement that they were buried in a septic tank, and one here where she contradicts the eye witness testimony of Dr Halliday Sutherland:

That’s the whole craziness of all this, they dig up the graveyard of the Children’s Home and express ‘shock’ that children are buried there! While this book is quite an intelligent and interesting account of this controversy, and includes some new insights and genuinely helpful advice for adoptees to locate their biological parents, and other interesting details, I nonetheless believe this is an, at least at times, positively misleading account of the Tuam Children’s Home and this controversy in general.įor example, she asked, in her original journal article, why was this site – the now world famous site with a statue of Our Lady in the corner – not a recognised graveyard? (p.176) But it is, always has been recognised as such by the Church – who held Cemetery Sundays there over the years –, by the Council – who describe it as such in their maps –, by its physical layout with two white crosses built into the gates on the way in and a statue of Our Lady placed there again to recognise the graveyard, by the religious order and the children who went through the Home – as explained by Fr Churchill and the nuns in a letter around this time – and by the local community who always recognised it as the graveyard of the Children’s Home – indeed in the book she describes one of the local community forcefully stating that to her at the site.

Belonging by catherine corless