The Catholic Cure for Poverty
Through the twentieth century, Irish elites treated poverty as a moral failing — and built a brutal carceral state to correct it.
Catherine Corless, a retired secretary turned amateur historian, worked tirelessly in early 2014 to get local officials, newspapers, and radio stations in Tuam, Ireland to care about her discovery.
Nearly eight hundred infants and children died in the town’s mother and baby home between 1925 and 1961, yet none, Corless revealed, received a proper burial. Burial records for the deaths seemed not to exist, leading Corless to the conclusion that many of the babies were likely buried in the home’s unused septic tank.
Corless’s persistence in demanding recognition of the deaths eventually paid off; international media outlets picked up the story that, while initially ignored in Ireland, shocked readers elsewhere and eventually garnered attention in the country.
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