Forensic archaeologist and anthropologist Toni Maguire says the excavation at a mass babies’ grave at Tuam could uncover evidence of potential child trafficking by the Catholic Church.
The expert says witness evidence states children’s remains were wrapped in cloth and left on shelves in the underground tunnel in County Galway.
Some of the tiny remains are now on the floor of what’s believed to be an old septic tank at the former mother and baby home which could be a result of years of rat activity.
Decades after the first discovery of tiny bones on the site, work has finally begun this week to remove and identify the children.
Toni, who has been at the centre of locating remains in Milltown Cemetery of children from mother and baby homes in Northern Ireland, met with Galway historian Catherine Corless, whose discovery of 796 death certificates uncovered the Tuam scandal.
There were no burial records for the dead children, but an incident in the 1970s, when local woman Mary Moriarty fell into the tunnel following the discovery of infant bones by two young boys, confirmed there were remains underground.
“It’s absolutely macabre,” says Toni. “When Mary Moriarty fell into the tunnel she said it was like a scene from Indiana Jones. There were bones everywhere.
“On the shelves there were bundles of what looked like dirty rags. They were using this place like a crypt.
“What you potentially have are individual babies wrapped in cloth and they just stacked them.
“The bones on the floor were indicators of uncoffined burials and rodent activity.”
The expert says the painstaking work could uncover more remains.
A sample of bones taken from the former site of the St Mary’s mother and baby home run by the Bon Secours sisters was of a seven-and-a-half-month-old fetus which would not have had a birth certificate, and therefore no corresponding death certificate to find and include with the 796.
But it could also uncover fewer remains, pointing to a child trafficking operation where unmarried mothers who had been banished to the homes to have their babies were told their children had died.
The Tuam home operated from 1925 until 1961.
“There is the potential for that,” says Toni.
“If they say 1,000 babies died, and I’m only finding 750, where are the other 250?
“If you were a young mum who came back looking for your baby and you’re told it had died you stop looking. One inspector’s report for Mother and Baby Homes in the south said babies had a better chance in a hedgerow than in a mother and baby home, but is that the case or was the high death rate a potential cover for babies being adopted elsewhere?”
Toni, who has given evidence to a Stormont committee as part of the upcoming inquiry into Northern Ireland’s mother and baby homes scandal, which involved more than 10,000 women and girls, says there was widespread movement of pregnant women from south to north to have their babies.
“Babies born in the north were British citizens entitled to birth certificates and passports. In the south illegitimate babies were not entitled to all their documentation.
“Moving people across different legal jurisdictions makes it easier to lose track of them for the purpose of anyone looking for them later.
“They can say there is no record of your birth, because there wouldn’t be. That baby was born in a different country.”
She got copies of the baptism register for the Marianvale home in Newry which showed mothers were from Bessborough mother and baby home in Cork, from Derry and from England.
“One entry in the book said this baby is going to be recorded in the Diocese of Cincinnati. It wasn’t going to be recorded as a British citizen. It was going to be moved to America and recorded there.
“It was potentially people trafficking.”
The expert says remains recovered from the Tuam site could reveal the cause of death among the hundreds of infants. Children in mother and baby homes, north and south, had a much higher death rate than in the general population.
“If you look at a lot of the death certificates there are a disproportionate number which record marasmus, which is malnutrition.
“Inspectors who visited these home said the children were emaciated.
“The evidence from the bones themselves will depend on the state of preservation.”
After the scandal of the Tuam babies broke, the Bon Secours sisters acknowledged the order had failed to protect the ‘inherent dignity’ of the women and children in the home, and in 2021 Taoiseach Micheál Martin apologised on behalf of the state.
Toni, who helped secure historian Catherine’s first meeting with Galway County Council, says it also bears responsibility for Tuam.
“I stated at that first meeting with Galway Council this is Catherine’s research and I’m not here to step on her toes, however I did mention to them that private cemetery status doesn’t apply to Tuam because the Bon Secours sisters didn’t own Tuam, they only leased it.
“Theoretically Galway County Council’s duty was to ensure any burials complied with regulations at that time.”
Following her work at Milltown Cemetery, Toni is backing an Alliance bill at Stormont to bring all of Northern Ireland’s private cemeteries including those attached to institutions under the same regulations as public graveyards by removing private cemetery status.